For Dick, averagely crazy and by today's standards, very non PC. ( )

nu chiar best of PK Dick, nici tocmai tipică lui (deși pe alocuri zgâlțâie nițel ”ce-i real?”), dar stranie într-un sens bun și cu niște personaje foarte bine conturate ca individualități. Fiind cam schematică și pe alocuri haotică, tindeam să-i dau 4/5. Dar apoi, out of the blue, când credeam că povestea s-a așezat pe-un făgaș, au venit fazele cu Bill și m-au dat pe spate: surprinzătoare, mind-fucking și grotești. Hell, yeah!
Bună treabă, mr PKD, tare bună! ( )

A very enjoyable post-apocalyptic novel. Dick is especially interested here in the ole mind/body conundrum. There’s no central character, the POV conveniently flitting from one to another, but the best-developed is the limbless Hoppy Harrington, “the first phocomelus”, whose “phocomobile” and mechanical manipulators allow him more agency than the whole-bodied characters — and on top of this, Hoppy has precognition as well as telekinetic and other psychic powers. Then there’s seven year old Edie Keller, whose twin brother Bill is a homunculus inhabiting her inguinal cavity. Bill too is capable of projecting himself beyond his physical confinement, briefly co-opting the body of a worm (to his great disappointment) and ending up in a wild power struggle with the increasingly megalomaniacal Hoppy. Finally we have Walt Dangerfield, whose mission to Mars is curtailed in low earth orbit by the nuclear dingdong, and finds himself circling the irradiated earth as humanity’s only common referent, playing songs over the radio by request and reading Of Human Bondage to keep peoples’ spirits up (ha ha). Another mind confined, straining to connect, to loose the bonds of flesh.

There’s a certain amount of horror in this brutalized California — raw rat, yum yum — but also aspects of anarcho-utopia, especially out in West Marin where society is gradually reorganizing along cooperative agrarian lines. The title character, the Dr Strangelove figure responsible for the whole damn mess, ranches sheep in pseudonymous retirement until his sins catch up with him. Featuring an adorable talking dog who talks exactly like you imagine a dog would talk, homeostatic vermin traps, and a whole lot more delightful Dickian idiosyncrasies, this is almost up there with his best work imo. ( )

Dreaming of Nuclear Destruction

When Philip K. Dick wrote Dr. Bloodmoney, nuclear holocaust was a real possibility, a real fear, as evidenced by the effectiveness of "Daisy," the Johnson TV ad, run once, playing on the fear of Goldwater’s extremism writ large in a giant fireball seen in the eye of a little girl. Those were the days of mutually assured destruction, the idea of the two world powers equally armed to the point that neither could win an all out nuclear war. However, some may not be aware that military planners had conceived of another type of nuclear use: battlefield tactical. Here they would employ lower variable yield bombs and artillery shells that would cripple enemy troops but spare general populations from total annihilation. These tactical weapons comprised a good portion of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. And as some may also know this idea of limited nuclear engagement has reached the public forum again. Which in an oddly prophetic way makes Dick’s novel as relevant now as it was in 1965.

In Dr. Bloodmoney, we get a glimpse of a post nuclear war world that hasn’t been entirely destroyed, just blown back into the early 19th century. Harnessed electricity is scarce. Cities lie in ruins. Barter economies prevail. Horses make a comeback as the sole means of land locomotion, apart from walking. And there’s an added feature: mutated humans and animals, like talking dogs, intelligent rats, and the like, as well as psychic humans. It might be a Dick amphetamine fired nightmare, but it has the ring of veracity to it.

In the future, 1972, a Livermore scientist, Bruno Bluthgeld (blood-money in German), initiates a high altitude nuclear test that goes horribly wrong. It blankets much of the world in radiation. Suffering from self-hatred and hated by everyone, Bluthgeld carries on under the name Jack Tree, settling in West Marin, where he, with the help of Bonny Keller, seeks psychiatric help from Dr. Stockstill. In town resides a collection of characters who surface from time to time as the novel progresses. Most important of them are the phocomelus (congenital deformity of the limbs) Hoppy Harrington, child Edie Keller, Bonny’s daughter, and Walt Dangerfield. Hoppy uses artificial limb extenders to accomplish tasks, both ordinary and extraordinary. Edie converses with her unborn twin resident in the area of her appendix. Walt Dangerfield and his wife circle Earth in a capsule on their way to start a settlement on Mars. Aside from the effects of radiation poisoning, life is fairly normal in 1981, when the novel opens. Then bombs begin falling and the world is reduced to ruble. The novel fast forwards to the end of the decade, where we see how people live in the post-holocaust world that appears to have been created by limited nuclear warfare.

This is an odd world, where people gather round a radio to hear stranded Walt read to them, almost as if hearing the word of God, or the word of the way it was. It’s also a world where the once weak, Hoppy in particular, acquire frightening power, and where a girl and never born child must bring him down. It’s also a world where normal life and commerce emerge from the destruction, where there is yet hope for a better future. (Of course, it would be much better for all if we could control ourselves and not blow up the world we have, imperfect as it may be. Something to thing about when pundits spout off about tactical nuclear strikes, as they have been lately on news shows.)

Dick fans, if they haven’t already read it, will like it. Others who wish to discover why people like Dick so much might be better served by starting with The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, three of his best known works, each filmed, as well. ( )

Dreaming of Nuclear Destruction

When Philip K. Dick wrote Dr. Bloodmoney, nuclear holocaust was a real possibility, a real fear, as evidenced by the effectiveness of "Daisy," the Johnson TV ad, run once, playing on the fear of Goldwater’s extremism writ large in a giant fireball seen in the eye of a little girl. Those were the days of mutually assured destruction, the idea of the two world powers equally armed to the point that neither could win an all out nuclear war. However, some may not be aware that military planners had conceived of another type of nuclear use: battlefield tactical. Here they would employ lower variable yield bombs and artillery shells that would cripple enemy troops but spare general populations from total annihilation. These tactical weapons comprised a good portion of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. And as some may also know this idea of limited nuclear engagement has reached the public forum again. Which in an oddly prophetic way makes Dick’s novel as relevant now as it was in 1965.

In Dr. Bloodmoney, we get a glimpse of a post nuclear war world that hasn’t been entirely destroyed, just blown back into the early 19th century. Harnessed electricity is scarce. Cities lie in ruins. Barter economies prevail. Horses make a comeback as the sole means of land locomotion, apart from walking. And there’s an added feature: mutated humans and animals, like talking dogs, intelligent rats, and the like, as well as psychic humans. It might be a Dick amphetamine fired nightmare, but it has the ring of veracity to it.

In the future, 1972, a Livermore scientist, Bruno Bluthgeld (blood-money in German), initiates a high altitude nuclear test that goes horribly wrong. It blankets much of the world in radiation. Suffering from self-hatred and hated by everyone, Bluthgeld carries on under the name Jack Tree, settling in West Marin, where he, with the help of Bonny Keller, seeks psychiatric help from Dr. Stockstill. In town resides a collection of characters who surface from time to time as the novel progresses. Most important of them are the phocomelus (congenital deformity of the limbs) Hoppy Harrington, child Edie Keller, Bonny’s daughter, and Walt Dangerfield. Hoppy uses artificial limb extenders to accomplish tasks, both ordinary and extraordinary. Edie converses with her unborn twin resident in the area of her appendix. Walt Dangerfield and his wife circle Earth in a capsule on their way to start a settlement on Mars. Aside from the effects of radiation poisoning, life is fairly normal in 1981, when the novel opens. Then bombs begin falling and the world is reduced to ruble. The novel fast forwards to the end of the decade, where we see how people live in the post-holocaust world that appears to have been created by limited nuclear warfare.

This is an odd world, where people gather round a radio to hear stranded Walt read to them, almost as if hearing the word of God, or the word of the way it was. It’s also a world where the once weak, Hoppy in particular, acquire frightening power, and where a girl and never born child must bring him down. It’s also a world where normal life and commerce emerge from the destruction, where there is yet hope for a better future. (Of course, it would be much better for all if we could control ourselves and not blow up the world we have, imperfect as it may be. Something to thing about when pundits spout off about tactical nuclear strikes, as they have been lately on news shows.)

Dick fans, if they haven’t already read it, will like it. Others who wish to discover why people like Dick so much might be better served by starting with The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, three of his best known works, each filmed, as well. ( )