The Real Ideas of Philip K. Dick
by Michael Moorcock
Vector, No. 39, April, 1966, pp. 7-14]
����������� The demands
of the science fiction field have been, until comparatively recently at any
rate, somewhat detrimental to an author wishing to develop his work in any
�serious� or �artistic� way.� Primarily,
this detrimental influence is due to the fact that any individual author is
never expected to repeat his ideas.� He
must write a story speculating in biological and social developments one month
and a story about the problems relating to an experimental space-drive the
next.� He is praised for this
butterfly-ability in much the same way as a magician who never repeats a trick
is praised and he is as often as not attacked if he uses the same theme, or
�trick�, twice.� He can use the same
backgrounds, however, time after time and never come in for strong criticism �
he can even use the same basic plot formula repeatedly without being attacked
very much.
����������� A typical
formula is the one involving an Exploration Team landing on a new planet,
discovering some mystery regarding the behaviour of the inhabitants, becoming
involved in some action stemming from their attempts to unravel the mystery and
finally solving the problem and blasting off again.� Another involves the space war (usually between Earth and Aliens
from another system or group of systems) in which a decisive point has been
reached (usually, Earth is up against it) and a device has been invented which
can, once certain problems have been solved, swing the balance in Earth�s
favour.� You can probably think of
several more basic formulae involving psi-powers, time paradoxes, collapsed
civilisations and so on.
����������� The
formula, the usually cardboard characters and the familiar backgrounds are
acceptable in most SF circles so long as the �idea� is different � the social
set-up on the New Planet or the device which will win the war for Earth.� These are what many people in science
fiction mean when they talk about �Ideas�, but this is not really what the term
means in mainstream fiction and there is sometimes confusion aroused when it is
discovered that what some SF readers would call an �idea� is not the same thing
as what others would call an �idea�.
����������� To the
reader of good mainstream literature the �idea� of the average SF story is
nothing much more than a �notion� or �story gimmick� for ringing the changes on
an old theme � in much the same way as a mystery writer rings the changes on
the locked room murder mystery by coming up with yet another ingenious explanation
of how the corpse came to be alone in the room locked on the inside.� This notion can be inventive, startling,
highly entertaining or merely dull depending on the skill and invention of the
particular author, but it remains merely an ingenious gimmick.
����������� An �idea�
in literature is usually considered to mean something different and much more
general.� Briefly, it is taken to mean
the essential outlook and obsession which dominates a particular work.� Albert Camus�s stories and plays, for
instance, are stories and plays of ideas.�
In the early play CALIGULA, the idea, or primary theme, involves an
analysis of the nature of power (inspired, in this case, by the sudden rise of
the Dictators in Europe at the time Camus was writing).� In the novel THE PLAGUE, he investigates the
nature of fear.� In THE OUTSIDER, it is
the nature of reality which interests him.�
Camus�s work tends to be allegorical (as is most fiction and drama
concerned not so much with social observation as with the fundamental issues of
human behaviour throughout history) but the allegory is only made specific
where it does not intrude on the �reality� of the particular drama, background
and characters he has built up � where it doesn�t hamper the �suspension of
disbelief� in the particular work of fiction (whether prose or play) in
question.� Thus, in CALIGULA, the mad
emperor behaves and speaks in the terms and manner of his own age; only at the
end of the play, just before the curtain falls, when his assassins ring him,
stabbing him to death, does he throw up his hands and laugh: �I still live!�,
meaning that what he represents still lives and making the link quite plain
between himself, as seen by the playwright, and the European dictators like
Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.
����������� The reason
I�ve spent so much space describing this play is in order to show that to be a
successful piece of fiction, the allegory must never dominate the story and,
even if this results in a puzzling end to the superficial storyline, the rule
must be observed.� If the end of the
story is puzzling, this, as often as not, gives the reader (or playgoer) an
incentive to go over the story and find its underlying theme or �idea�.� There�s even a case to be made out for
deliberately making a story apparently obscure if this end is reached �
the �suspension of disbelief� in the superficial narrative is retained right up
to the last possible moment so that the reader has become completely involved
in it until it cuts off quite suddenly leaving him bewildered.� Only when he goes back over the story (which
has become �real� to him by this time) does he realise the underlying theme is
there and, having come to believe completely in the characters, etc., in the
book or play, is able to do what the author has meant him to do � relate the theme
to his own life and the life he sees around him.� This is a technique used by William Golding in all his novels
which are also novels of ideas.� One can
read at least three of them entirely on the superficial level only to get to
the last page, turn over, find nothing there and go back over them to realise
what his underlying themes were.
����������� Whether
this technique is successful or not depends, of course, on the talent of the
writer.� And there are writers of
limited talent, too, who will use this technique quite unsuccessfully for a
number of reasons � i.e. lack of ability to suspend disbelief in the first
place, lack of intellectual grasp of their subject matter, even lack of
understanding about what this particular kind of technique is meant to do!
����������� Authors who
have used this technique in science fiction with varying degrees of success
include Brian Aldiss, Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick.� All but the last have found respect for
their work outside the science fiction field, and deservedly so; yet it is Dick
who has in many ways been most successful in that he has used the conventional
SF plot to tell an entertaining superficial story which at the same time
relates in every way to his underlying theme.�
He is lucky in that his great obsession and the way he looks at things
blend easily with conventional SF backgrounds and plots whereas Aldiss,
Vonnegut and Ballard need to create much more personal backgrounds and plots
before they can get to work � Ballard in particular.
����������� When I say
that Dick has been more successful than the other writers, I am in no way
making a comparison of the quality of their work � I am simply stating that
Dick has successfully managed to entertain the average reader without, on the
whole, puzzling him.� To a large extent
this ability has cut him off from the success enjoyed by the other writers
outside the limited world of science fiction because his work has, until
recently at least, not been obviously allegorical and people who have seen his
work have accepted him as a good SF craftsman rather than a �serious� writer
working in the medium of SF.� Also, by
not puzzling the average reader (at least, not very much), by producing a
well-rounded superficial plot, he has failed to some extent to show the reader
the way through to his underlying themes.
����������� Earlier I
explained how the demands of the science fiction market have hitherto hampered
writers from developing their work in the accepted literary ways by forcing
them to flit from theme to theme, from �idea� to �idea�, without ever
developing whatever literary obsessions they may have.
����������� With a
writer like Graham Greene, for instance, it is perfectly acceptable for him to
develop one dominant theme through all his novels, from his first to his last,
returning time after time to a single obsession or group of obsessions to
probe, re-investigate, look at from a fresh angle and so on.� Such a writer is respected for doing this
rather than denigrated and he is judged not by whether his �idea� is new for
him, but by how successful he is at creating a fictitious �reality� � whether
his backgrounds come �alive�, whether his characters convince and �live�, and
so on.
����������� Even a
non-intellectual writer like Dickens could return to a theme (the persecution
of the innocent, for instance) time and time again and escape criticism of
repetition because he was able to give reality to his situations and vary the
circumstances of his characters sufficiently to give the theme fresh power and
insight.
����������� Where a
science fiction writer refuses to give in to the narrow demands of the field,
he tends to come under attack.� J.G.
Ballard, for instance, is subjected to a great deal of intolerant and
unintelligent criticism of his �repetitiveness� of theme and background � and
characters, for that matter � primarily by people who demand sensation alone
from literature and are either incapable of understanding the essential themes
of his work or too impatient to bother to look for them.� Yet outside the science fiction field, as I
have shown, it is expected of an author that he returns to the same themes over
and over again, so long as he looks at these themes from a fresh angle, as
Ballard does in his three books DROWNED, BURNING and CRYSTAL WORLD.� Part of Ballard�s obsession involves
questioning the nature of reality and wondering if the yardsticks by which we
judge �reality� are necessarily the best ones.
����������� This is the
dominant theme in the work of Philip K. Dick who deals with the theme much more
specifically and without the highly individualistic vision of Ballard �
substituting for it, however, almost as remarkable an ability to manipulate
standard SF trappings to produce wholly fresh, superficially entertaining
stories with abstract, intellectually underlying themes.� Dick, perhaps because he is working with
more conventional backgrounds, has on the whole escaped the kind of criticism
leveled at Ballard.
����������� Like
Ballard, Dick works without pretension.�
He is not out to impress; there is no virtuoso display in Dick�s work,
none of the literary posturing which so mars the work of Vonnegut, who manages
to state the obvious so brilliantly that one is very often fazed by it for a
while.� What is so admirable and
agreeable about books like THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, THE GAME-PLAYERS OF
TITAN or DR. BLOODMONEY is the solid, skilful craftsmanship with which they are
written.� His characterisation is never
brilliant, he does not create great, bizarre characters that live in the mind
long after the books are finished (Bunny Jingadangelow in GREYBEARD, Strangman
in THE DROWNED WORLD or Gully Foyle in THE STARS MY DESTINATION), but his
characters are exceptionally easy to identify with and they are
convincing.� They are almost always
�ordinary� people, even if they possess psi-powers as many of them do, and
while their personalities do not impress us, they are exactly the right kind of
characters needed to convince us of the �reality� of their existence.� Their problems are ordinary problems to do
with sex, money and prestige and it is these problems that tend to lead them into
the bigger issues involving the fate of many.
����������� In
virtually all his novels Dick is interested primarily in the workings of the
human mind and how these relate to the world in general.� In an early novel, EYE IN THE SKY, he takes
a group of �ordinary� people and gives them the ability to create their ideal
worlds.� These worlds are then shown up
in all their many defects � they are the worlds of various sorts of American
Dream and one by one Dick picks them to pieces and reveals them for what they
are.
����������� The element
of satire in Dick runs through almost all his work, often in the form of little
cameos as in DR. BLOODMONEY where, in the early part of the book and with quiet
amusement, he shows us various representatives of the world about to be blown
up � the American Liberal boasting of his liberalism is one of many such
cameos.
����������� In some
ways Dick seems an innocent, looking calmly and seriously at the world and
saying �But that just isn�t true,� or �Are you sure that�s necessarily the
case?�� Dick�s clarity of vision and his
accuracy of observation can be seen at their most impressive in the
Hugo-winning THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.�
Here is an America occupied in the North-East by the Nazis and in the
South-West by the Japanese.� The plot
does not hinge, as one might expect from standard science fiction, on an
underground resistance organisation out to overthrow the conquerors, but on the
subtle difference in national character between the conquered Americans, the
occupying Japanese and the Nazis.�
Dick�s Japanese and Germans are not so much �real� Japanese and Germans
as the popular idea of what Japanese and Germans are, except that Dick�s
admiration for the Japanese tends to make them much more sympathetic than the
Germans, perhaps fairly so.� This
doesn�t matter, for it emerges that the world Dick has built up so successfully
and with such excellent detail is probably not the real world at all � a world
where the Japanese and Germans were beaten is probably the real one, though
even that is not the same as ours!� This
information comes from the I CHING, the Chinese Book of Changes which many,
including Dick, I understand, believe capable of prophecy and communicating
advice to those who consult it.
����������� What is
�reality�? is the question we are left asking in THE MAN IN THE HIGH
CASTLE.� In THE GAME-PLAYERS OF TITAN
the question is asked again as well as such questions as �Is the hallucination
of the schizophrenic as real as, less real or more real than, the �normal�
world?�; �Can �reality� be created, and if created, can it be
controlled?�.� In this book Dick�s
interest in games theory forms an important part of the novel�s
development.� This interest was seen
earlier in SOLAR LOTTERY (or WORLD OF CHANCE).�
To what extent are events random and to what extent are they
controlled?� At its most obvious, and
perhaps most neurotic, this theme takes the form, in science fiction, of the
story where it is discovered that humanity is being manipulated by alien powers
(THE PUPPET MASTERS, Heinlein; �Come and Go Mad�, Brown; �You�re All Alone�,
Leiber and perhaps the most successful of all, if not the best written � FEAR
by Hubbard).� Some of Dick�s books do
use this theme, and they are his least successful.� They are at their best where they leave the question open.
����������� It would be
impossible to deal with all the books Dick has written � there are nearly
twenty of them � and I�d like to concentrate now on his latest, THE THREE
STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH (Doubleday in US, due from Cape here this year).
����������� It is in
this novel that Dick makes use of his technique I described of leaving the
reader apparently in the air on the last page.�
Here it is not for specific purposes of allegory so much as to make the
reader wonder just what the nature of reality is.
����������� Palmer
Eldritch himself is one of Dick�s few bizarre characters.� The stigmata referred to are his artificial
eyes, artificial hand and steel teeth.�
These blemishes seem to have some sort of symbolic significance to do
with sin and redemption, but I must admit to not being able to relate this
element to the rest of the book.
����������� A very
brief resume of the plot:
����������� Leo Bulero
is a 21st century tycoon catering to the drafted colonists of the
near-uninhabitable worlds of the solar system.�
They lead utterly miserable lives and their only escape is into a
fantasy world of the Perky Pat layouts � a doll called Pat with a boyfriend
called Walt, a doll�s house full of the latest luxuries, cars, even a doll
psychiatrist � in fact, all the material comforts of the modern world.� By chewing an outlawed drug, which Bulero
also markets, Can-D, the colonists can transfer completely into these worlds
and for a short time live the pleasant, idle lives of Perky Pat and Walt � the
men transfer to Walt and the women to Pat.�
Many believe that Perky Pat�s world is �real� and that they �go� there
when they chew Can-D.� Thus, by this
escape, they manage to survive the hardships of their existence.
����������� Down on
Earth, Bulero discovers that a new company is starting up in competition and
his chief �pre-cog�, Barney Mayerson, gives him information that makes him
believe that Palmer Eldritch, recently returned from Proxima Centauri, is
behind the new organisation which, it eventually emerges, has UN sanction for
marketing a rival drug called Chew-Z.
����������� Bulero also
gets information that he is destined to kill Eldritch.� Finally he gets to meet Eldritch on the moon
and is administered a dose of Chew-Z.
����������� From this
point on the plot becomes quite deliberately confused � with no lack of
enjoyment, I might add � because Bulero finds himself in a world that seems to
him as real as the world he left.� But
as Eldritch explains, when he makes an appearance in this world, this is the
world Eldritch has created.� Bulero is
at that moment in a drugged sleep � which only lasts a matter of seconds, but
in one of these fantasy worlds centuries can pass in a split second of �real�
time.� The taker of Chew-Z can create
any world he chooses and live in it virtually as long as he likes.
����������� Eventually,
Bulero is allowed to leave Eldritch�s world � or is he?� From now on we can�t be sure if the rest of
the action takes place in Eldritch�s world, a world Bulero has created, a world
created by his pre-cog Barney Mayerson, a world that is the fantasy of a native
of Proxima Centauri, or any one of a near infinite series of possibilities.
����������� There are
three separate descriptions of Eldritch�s final encounter with Bulero, some
traveling in time which could be into the �real� future or into an �unreal�
one, a suggestion that Eldritch is actually God, another one that he is
actually the Devil, another that he is both.�
Eldritch might not even exist, we might not exist, the book might not
exist.� Dick is doing his best to help
us go insane � or, at any rate, experience the same sort of schizoid
hallucinations that can be achieved with drugs like LSD 25 or even
autohypnotism.� And if one concentrated
on the book, became completely absorbed by it, doubtless a partial experience
of this kind could be obtained.
����������� The plot is
never resolved in the formal sense and the reality of the events which have
taken place is left in question, but nonetheless the novel is complete once it
becomes clear that it is Dick�s intention to leave you guessing.
����������� It may
sound easy to write a book like this, once the initial idea has been worked
out, but it says a great deal for Dick�s craftsmanship that the story, even at
its most confusing, never loses its pace and never loses its ability to keep
disbelief suspended until the last possible moment.� The reader expects some kind of ingenious denouement � as in a
van Vogt novel, for instance � but it never comes.� The only explanation is implicit in the novel itself.
����������� There is
also a certain interest in religion running through THE THREE STIGMATA OF
PALMER ELDRITCH and most of the central characters are seeking to redeem
themselves in some way or another, though the particular nature of the guilt
they feel is not clearly specified.�
Also one wonders if the fact that the temperature of the Earth (as in
THE DROWNED WORLD) is rising, has any symbolic meaning � Hell, for
instance.� Perhaps Dick is hinting at
some sort of moral implication concerning the use and selling of the drugs, but
I think not.
����������� Dick�s work
is not profound in comparison with established philosophical literature like
Goethe�s FAUST and so on, neither does it have the sense of depth found in
contemporaries like Borges.� It lacks
the intensity of vision and powerful symbolism of Ballard and the elegance and
ability to create mood of Aldiss.� What
it does have is a seriousness of purpose, an unfaltering intention to get at
the truth as Dick sees it, the power to create everyday environments which
gradually shift in perspective until every aspect of the particular environment
is held in question; the same is done with character � a man may begin by
feeling that he knows himself, but gradually Dick will whittle away at that
belief, leaving the man totally unsure even that he exists.� Dick uses all the skill of an excellent
science fiction craftsman to produce books which are more than just craftsmanly
pieces of escapism.� He is not toying
with half-baked, half-understood notions like so many contemporaries who have
managed to impress so many readers with their oversimplified social and
�philosophical� gimmickry and who are so dull, so far away from making any sort
of true observation about anything that one is bewildered by their lack of even
the simplest insights.
����������� Dick is
quietly producing serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater
praise.� It�s time he got the critical
attention he deserves.
����������������������� ����������������������� ����������������������� ����������������������� ����������� ����������� Michael
Moorcock
BOOKS BY PHILIP K. DICK
CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON����������� ����������� THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH
THE COSMIC PUPPETS���� ����������������������� ����������� THE SIMULACRA
DR. BLOODMONEY������������������ ����������� ����������� SOLAR
LOTTERY
DR. FUTURITY����� ����������������������� ����������������������� ����������� (aka
WORLD OF CHANCE)
EYE IN THE SKY��������������� ����������������������� ����������� THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER
THE GAME-PLAYERS OF TITAN������ ����������������������� ����������� ����������� ELDRITCH
A HANDFUL OF DARKNESS� ����������� ����������� TIME
OUT OF JOINT
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE������� ����������� THE VARIABLE MAN
THE MAN WHO JAPED����������������������� ����������� ����������� VULCAN�S
HAMMER
MARTIAN TIME-SLIP���� ����������������������� ����������� THE WORLD JONES MADE