Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick

Posted by: Redhead on: January 15, 2015

• In: Philip K. Dick
• 24 Comments

Martian Time-Slip, by Philip K Dick

published in 1964

where I got it: purchased used

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I’ve never had much luck reading Philip K. Dick.  I enjoyed reading The Penultimate Truth, and got through Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but other than that, I was rarely able to get more than 20 pages into one of his books. I assumed I didn’t like his writing style, and I gave up.  On a lark, I picked up a used copy of Martian Time-Slip.  It looked short, and thus easily survivable even if I ended up not caring for it.

 

What a happy surprise, to find myself really enjoying it! The beginning of the story follows Jack Bohlen, a highly skilled mechanic at a Mars colony.  He’s able to provide quite well for his family, as it’s nearly impossible to import spare parts, so anyone skilled with fixing machinery is in high demand on Mars.  From Jack’s observations, we get some information on the different colonies his employer sends him to. We also learn about the indigenous Martians, who are still alive. Sometimes hired as cheap labor, the Martians, known as Bleekmen (also known as an offensive term that I can’t bring myself to use), know how to survive away from the canals their ancestors cultivated.  The colonists generally treat the natives like shit, but it’s the law of the air that if you are piloting a flyer, and you see Bleekmen (or anyone) stranded in the desert, you are required the land and provide help as you are able. I’m not sure if it was Dick’s intention, but I saw the colonists treatment of the natives as a commentary on casual racism and post colonialism.

The story then shifts to Arnie Kott, who is the union boss of the colony. While Jack is working for him, they get talking about schizophrenia, which Jack had suffered from as a young man. Kott learns of a ten year old autistic boy who lives in a Martian institution (any child who doesn’t meet certain qualifications of “normal” is institutionalized), and becomes privy to the theory that this child, Manfred, has a completely different sense of time than we do. If we could only communicate with the boy, he’d be able to tell us the future.  At Kott’s insistence, Jack works on developing a machine that will help them communicate with Manfred.  Kott will then know exactly how to manipulate markets and businesses to as to rule over the other Martian colonies.  It was darkly funny that Kott never once questions that just maybe this theory about Manfred is complete crap. Is Kott desperate? is he gullible?

 

Jack was a great character to follow, and even through it’s Arnie Kott who pushes the story along, the entire story is really all about Jack.  Humiliated about his youthful diagnosis, Jack begins to lose trust in the system that diagnosed him, and question if anything was ever wrong with him in the first place.  There’s a great scene where Jack is visiting his son’s school, and all the teachers are actually androids who have been programmed with specific personalities so the students can learn history, art, rhetoric, respect, etc.  And it’s these androids who decide if a student is normal, or defective. In a later scene at the school, the “teachers” are made very uncomfortable by their attempts to communicate successfully with Manfred.

 

Dr. Milton Glaub, the psychiatrist, was also an interesting character to watch. He makes his income on a per-patient basis, so the more people he can diagnose as psychotic or otherwise mentally ill, the higher his paycheck.  He reminded me of all the prescription drug ads I see on tv and see in magazines. Should you talk to your doctor about SuchandSuchitis because you might have it? or because someone will make money off you thinking or assuming that you have it because you answered yes to three out of five questions?  I imagine Dick’s future Earth and the Martian colonies have those same adverts, as characters casually (and legally) take high quantities of drugs so they won’t have to worry about what’s going on around them.

 

Just as I was really getting into the book, it got weird on me. We get some scenes from Manfred’s point of view, and while he can, in a way, see the future, he doesn’t understand what anything he sees means, nor does he know how best to communicate what he sees. One scene in particular happens over and over again, with Jack sometimes trying to change the outcome. And I was never really sure what going on with that.  Has Jack gotten stuck in a time loop, perhaps through Manfred? Is Jack seeing possible futures, with the opportunity to choose his fate? Is he simply hallucinating and falling into an uncontrolled state of psychosis?

 

At the close of the book, Kott gets what he deserves, and Jack’s life sort of goes back to normal. Well, as normal as possible, now that Jack has had another brush with what he’s been trained to believe is mental illness.

 

I don’t know that I will ever “get” Philip K. Dick. But I did good enough with Martian Time-Slip that I’m willing to give his other, more famous books another chance.

Tags: Mars, psychosis