2001: A Martian Odyssey (Martian Time-Slip - Philip K. Dick)

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Product:	Martian Time-Slip - Philip K. Dick
Date:	23/08/07 (84 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well-developed characterisation of descent into madness

Disadvantages: Rather slow-moving and not a little confusing; probably not for those new to PKD

Having very much enjoyed the first two Philip K. Dick novels I read – which had coincidentally been his first two (Solar Lottery and The World Jones Made) – I jumped to a mid-career novel, Martian Time-Slip, due mainly to the fact I’d bought several while half-price on Amazon.

The setting, obviously enough, is Mars, circa 2001. It’s still a bleak, desolate planet, where water is precious and the few human settlers eke out something of a frontier existence, with luxuries from home only available on the black market. Incidentally, the planet is populated by a few surviving natives – little black men, known as Bleekmen, or sometimes niggers. There’s an interesting suggestion that they share a common ancestor with humans, which sadly is never followed-up. The whole scene put me in mind of something rather like the Australian outback, with them the Aborigines (they even have their own ‘Ayers Rock’).

The principal character, Jack Bohlen, is a repairman – a job that keeps him very busy on a planet where mechanical equipment is expensive to import and regularly breaks down. Other significant persons include Arnie Kott, head of the powerful Water Workers Union, his secretary-cum-mistress Doreen Anderton, and Jack’s neighbour’s autistic son, Manfred Steiner. Though there are, typically, quite a few characters involved, most are introduced fairly early on and quickly entangled by some chance encounters. Since they’re all very different, I found it a bit easy to keep track of who was who than sometimes, even if it was a bit harder to remember all the relationships between them.

Plot-wise, this is quite a slow-moving book, where – at least for a long time – not much really happens. Arnie Kott finds some interest from speculators on Earth about the Franklin D. Roosevelt Mountains, and wants to know what’s going to happen on ‘his’ planet. Inspired by Dr Glaub’s theory that autism involves the sufferer being somehow out of sync with time, he hopes that if he can communicate with Manfred he can find out what the future holds, and enlists Jack’s help in the project.

What drives the novel is not so much as action as character development, as it seems almost an exploration of mental illness and Jack’s own psychotic struggles. At times, it’s hard to keep track of what’s happening, with the chronological sequence of events occasionally jumbled, and one particularly memorable scene near the middle repeated about four times over, leaving the reader as disoriented as the character.

I’ve said before that I enjoy some of the philosophical ideas usually thrown up in Dick’s novels. Here, I’d say those were a bit rarer. There were two references to Manfred’s incomprehensible noises, always coming out ‘gubble gubble’, as a ‘private language’, which I’d bet must be a reference to Wittgenstein (even though he denied the possibility of such). I suppose the main theme, however, is the nature of mental illness – and, sometimes, leading the reader to ask who’s really most ill or human.

I’d have to say I definitely enjoyed this novel less than the previous two I’d read. It took me longer to get into, and even once it got going I hardly found it as compulsive, perhaps because what action there is is slower. Further, I found following events sometimes confusing, and I’m still not entirely sure how some of the threads come together or what the ending was supposed to mean. That said, however, it isn’t a bad story by any means. At no point was I tempted to give up, and the ideas developed are intriguing in their own way. Moreover, whatever I thought on first reading, I can say this would be one I feel I’m likely to want to re-read in future, if only in the hope I can make more sense of it on a second (or third) attempt.

Not one I’d recommend for someone who hadn’t previously read any Dick, but with the new Gollancz edition (ISBN 0575079967) still half-price on Amazon – just £3.99 – definitely a worth-while buy for existing fans.

Summary: The story of one man's struggle against psychosis, set against Martian power struggles.