'60s Dick Reading Challenge, Book 1

So, I set a goal for myself, to read all of the books written by my favorite SFF author, Philip K. Dick, in the 1960s. This is a somewhat arbitrary goal, but I've been jonesing to get back into some good SFF, and specifically PKD, so that's what I did. I eventually want to read all the novels, as I am obsessive about completion. I just wish I hadn't picked this one to start with. It is bad.

I'll give PKD some props; I think his heart was in the right place. Probably beating too fast, thanks to the amphetamines he frequently wrote with.

[b:The Crack in Space|22586|The Crack in Space|Philip K. Dick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320394432l/22586._SY75_.jpg|23604] serves as a good example of why I've always disliked religious propaganda disguised as mainstream media. When I was growing up, there was a push to like "Christian rock," but it stood out to me as disingenuous, motivated by the religion and not the art, and therefore missing most of the stuff that appealed to those who just wanted some good music. Like stirring baby aspirin in applesauce. Here, Dick has a message, and it's about as subtle as Stryper was in the 80s.

[b:The Crack in Space|22586|The Crack in Space|Philip K. Dick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320394432l/22586._SY75_.jpg|23604] focuses on an in-progress presidential campaign, and like much of Dick's writing, the future setting of the story is one that is noticeably different than our current (or his 60s-era current) times. A black man is running for president in this future, and putting aside the fact that it seems quaint given the post-Obama world I read it in, it just manages to feel forced and a little cringe-y. Some of this can be attributed to the outdated language used when talking about race. No, it doesn't go there, but it gets uncomfortable.

Not surprisingly, the ideas in Dick's novels are sometimes better than the execution, and when dealing with the realities of race (putting aside the very obviously treated as pure, fantastical speculation that the presidential run must have seemed to him) and the economy, systemic inequalities, and over-population. The fact that there are millions who are in suspended animation due to a severe lack of jobs, that those suspended are mostly "cols" (see? yikes) who see long-term hibernation for a possible future as being more hopeful than living in a world that, even in the mind of this writer, still can't come to terms with systemic racism and economic oppression, really says a lot.

The problem with this novel is that this commentary on race, as much as it is present at all, seems to have happened by accident, and is a theme that is never fully explored. Add to that a soap opera-esque inclination to have characters speak much of the exposition, and to craft that dialog as if intending to represent the Transatlantic accent in written form, well, it gets to be a bit much, with little to tempt a reader who hasn't challenged himself to read all the novels written in the 60s by a particular author.
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This was one of the books I picked up during my last visit to my library. It caught my eye as I walked past the Fantasy & Sci-fi section, a section that I rarely venture into. I have a strange relationship with Sci-fi, I love watching it but the bug hasn't translated to my reading for some reason. The few Sci-fi titles that I have read have all been entertaining but I still haven't found the book that makes me really sit up and say 'wow'.

I was a little worried when I started this book that it would be a sequel and I would miss out on not having the back story. From what I can make out having finished the book is that some of the characters do feature in other books but I didn't really feel like I should have read the others first. There were a lot of characters in the opening chapters and I did find myself flicking back in the initial stages checking who certain people were. This was short lived though and by a quarter of the way through the book I had settled with the characters and the world in which the inhabit. One thing that I did have difficultly visualizing though was the Jifi-scuttler.

A huge theme in the book is race and it is introduced very early. Initially I was put off but the term 'cols' used to describe anyone who wasn't white in the American future. I always try to accept that certain language was acceptable when a given book was written (1966 in this case). It became apparent very quickly though that this term is used to demonstrate that prejudice still existed in this world and that it was wrong. Another thing that struck me is that as the time this book was written a black presidential candidate would have been unthinkable. Of course, today we have Obama as the president of America but it is still a very powerful aspect of the book.

The writing is very easy on the mind, the pace just about right and the story is a great one. The fact that Dick manages to get so many social issues into one story is a testament to the talent he clearly had. There are so many issues that it would have been easy for them to all feel crow-barred into the story but they don't. They fit naturally and are presented really well.

This was a very entertaining read, I look forward to reading more Philip K. Dick. ( )

The Crack in Space posits our world about 2080 (which, at the time it was published, would have been over 100 years in the future): there is severe overpopulation, to the extent that many young people are choosing to be cryogenically frozen until the labor market is better. It's an election year, and there's a black presidential nominee for the first time ever. That nominee, Jim Briskin, is struggling in his campaign until he's tipped off about some major news: there's been a rift discovered to a whole new world...one that looks like it will support human life. Briskin seizes on this development to announce that it will be his platform to thaw out the frozen and give them this world to settle, and his opponent jockeys to match his promises, when it's revealed that the new world is populated after all, but not by people as we know them. Instead it's Peking man that survived. So now what?

That's maybe half the plot of this slim volume (it's about 200 pages long), but it's the main one. First of all, let me say that I'm glad that we beat out Dick's predictions and had our first black president 75 years ahead of schedule. Moving on from that, though, what I really enjoy about reading Dick's work is that he poses interesting, thoughtful questions rooted in an understanding of human nature. As much as we might think that if we discovered a parallel Earth we'd learn from our past and thoughtfully go about exploration and potential colonization, the reality is that in an election year, politicians would be falling all over each other to posture and secure an important position for themselves. If the world's population was so huge that abortion wasn't just widespread but encouraged, that people were freezing themselves in hopes of a better life someday, it would absolutely end up with people getting sent through the door/portal/whatever without much in the way of an actual plan while news cameras flashed and the powers that be congratulated themselves on a job well done. Maybe I'm a little cynical (I was a litigator and now I'm a lobbyist, so that probably comes with the territory), but I feel like Dick gets how people would actually behave instead of how they'd prefer to imagine they would. I found it a quick and enjoyable read which had me pondering alternate realities. ( )

Although for PK Dick standards it feels "conventional", this is still a good and enjoyable science-fiction book.

In a future with new technologies but the same old problems about population and racism we find an idealistic politician, a mean business man (or two) and some sci-fi surprises. Don't want to reveal more!

Again, good plain science fiction to have a good reading time. ( )

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

In Philip K. Dick�??s The Crack in Space (1966), American technology and civilization has advanced so far that citizens can easily take a spaceship to make daily visits to an orbiting satellite whorehouse, personal Jifi-scuttlers are used to warp space/time so that people can quickly travel from home to work in a distant city, and overpopulation is such a public concern that millions of dispossessed Americans have chosen to be put in cryogenic storage until a habitable planet is discovered.

Yet, America has not advanced so far in other respects. Itƒ??s 2080, racism is still rampant, and Jim Briskin is hoping to be elected as the first African-American President. He needs to convince both the ƒ??Caucsƒ? and the ƒ??Colsƒ? (oh, what horrible nicknames!) that heƒ??s the best man for the job. This isnƒ??t always easy to do for a principled man who isnƒ??t willing to abandon his conservative ideals just to get the endorsement of the powerful mutant who controls the satellite broadcasts. It gets even harder when his white campaign manager defects to the other side and Briskin is now the target of assassination attempts.

But when a repairman discovers an alternate universe in his clientƒ??s broken Jifi-Scuttler, Jim Briskin sees a way that he can win the election ƒ?? by promising to send all the frozen people to inhabit the alternate Earth. Sure enough, in pure PKD style, the Americans quickly and unthinkingly embrace Briskinƒ??s crazy idea and off they go, heading for disaster!

The Crack in Space is related to one of my favorite PKD short stories: ƒ??Prominent Author,ƒ? in which weƒ??re introduced to the Jifi-scuttler. Dickƒ??s stories are always bizarrely entertaining. Theyƒ??re usually fast-paced and full of weird people with weird ideas doing weird things. In The Crack in Space, which contains a more straight-forward plot than many of his novels, we have a famous organ transplant doctor whoƒ??s divorcing his wife (an ƒ??abort-consultantƒ?) while hiding his mistress in a parallel universe. Where is Dr. Sands getting all the organs for his transplants? Then thereƒ??s George Walt, the man with two bodies (but only one head) who runs the orbiting whorehouse and wants to get rid of Jim Briskin because Briskin wants to shut him down. As usual, all the characters talk on vid phones, drink synthetic coffee, avoid the automatic reporters, get divorced, and worry about overpopulation.

The Crack in Space is fun, but not up to par with the best PKD offers. I donƒ??t know if Dick really imagined that in 2080 American race relations wouldnƒ??t have progressed beyond 1960s levels, but this really makes the novel feel more dated than his other works do. Also, the way that Americans dealt with the parallel universe was so simplistic and na??ve that this was hard to swallow, but yet itƒ??s so typical of PKD. Fans, who are used to his frenzied plots and other little writing quirks, are likely to just chuckle and let it go. In the end, though, thereƒ??s a beautiful ironic message. As Americans are dealing with race warfare, PKD shows us that, really, weƒ??re all human after all.

Brilliance Audio, who is gradually producing all of Philip K. Dickƒ??s novels in audio format, did another wonderful job with this one. Eric Dawe performs it superbly. ( )