Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - By Philip K. Dick

PHILIP K. DICK

AN INTRODUCTION BY ROGER ZELAZNY

(1) Once there was a man who repaired trash compactors because that was what he loved doing more than anything else in the world—

(2) Once there was a man who repaired trash compactors in a society short on building materials, where properly compacted trash could be used as an architectural base—

(3) Once there was a man who hated trash compactors but repaired them for a living and to keep his manic wife in tranquilisers so that he did not have to spend so much time with his mistress, who was less fun now that she had converted to the new religion—

(4) Once there was a man who, in purposely misassembling the trash compactors he hated, produced a machine which—

It is no good. I can’t do it. I can play the Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Trash Compactor Repairman Game, but I cannot turn it into a story at once puzzling, poignant, grotesque, philosophical, satirical, and fun. There is a very special way of doing this and the first step in its mastery involves being Philip K. Dick.

Brian Aldiss has called him “one of the masters of present-day discontents,” a thing readily apparent in much of his work. But one of the great fascinations his work holds for me is the effects achieved when he dumps these discontents into that special machine in his head and turns on the current. It is not simply that I consider it a form of aesthetic cheating to compare one writer with another, but I cannot think of another writer with whom to compare Philip Dick. Aldiss suggests Pirandello, which is not bad for the one small aspect of reality shuffling. But Pirandello’s was basically a destructive machine. It was a triumph of technique over convention, possessed of but one basic message no matter what was fed into the chopper. Philip Dick’s is a far more complicated program. His management of a story takes you from here to there in a God-knows-how, seemingly haphazard fashion, which, upon reflection, follows a logical line of development—but only on reflection. While you are trapped within the spell of its telling, you are in no better position than one of its invariably overwhelmed characters when it comes to seeing what will happen next.

These characters are often victims, prisoners, manipulated men and women. It is generally doubtful whether they will leave the world with less evil in it than they found there. But you never know. They try. They are usually at bat in the last half of the ninth inning with the tying run on base, two men out, two strikes and three balls riding, with the possibility of the game being called on account of rain at any second. But then, what is rain? Or a ballpark?

The worlds through which Philip Dick’s characters move are subject to cancellation or revision without notice. Reality is approximately as dependable as a politician’s promise. Whether it is a drug, a time-warp, a machine, or an alien entity responsible for the bewildering shifting of situations about his people, the result is the same: Reality, of the capital “R” variety, has become as relative a thing as the dryness of our respective Martinis. Yet the struggle goes on, the fight continues. Against what? Ultimately, Powers, Principalities, Thrones, and Dominations, often contained in hosts who are themselves victims, prisoners, manipulated men and women.

All of which sounds like grimly serious fare. Wrong. Strike the “grimly,” add a comma and the following: but one of the marks of Philip Dick’s mastery lies in the tone of his work. He is possessed of a sense of humour for which I am unable to locate an appropriate adjective. Wry, grotesque, slapstick, satirical, ironic…None of them quite fits to the point of generality, though all may be found without looking too far. His characters take pratfalls at the most serious moments; pathetic irony may invade the most comic scene. It is a rare and estimable quality to direct such a show successfully.

Who else in this cockeyed universe could design a society thriving on the bridge-playing abilities of its leaders, with the delightful rule that a husband and wife team may undergo instant divorce at the end of a bad game? Or throw in a car that nags its owner for oil changes, tuneups, and new tires? I see you’ve already guessed. The book is The Game-Players of Titan.—Or a story which opens with a psychoanalyst diagnosing his patient as a typical paranoid for