Martian Time-Slip

Author - Philip K. Dick ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Vintage was reviewed on 30-Jul-2008.

Search ISBN:0679761675 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Martian Time-Slip Reference Book. Classifications : United States 18th Century 19th Century 20th Century African American Asian American Classics Collections & Readers Drama General Hispanic History & Criticism Humor Jewish American Letters & Correspon . Click the following link to view the cover of Martian Time-Slip.

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1) Paperback Book Martian Time-Slip by Vintage. This is a difficult book to discuss without revealing spoilers, but I´d like to say it´s quite a bit more than what some of the reviewers here suggest.

This is more than just a book about Mars colonies and inventive ways of understanding schizophrenia. As usual, Dick is creating a world where so many layers intertwine and interconnect, that at the end, one might feel a little confused, wondering what the point was.

I don´t know if I have it all "figured out" but in this book Dick creates a convincing and unnerving inner-portrait of schizophrenia, mixed in with themes of "history repeating itself" and a healthy dose of "predestination vs. freewill."

It´s a brooding story, but clear, and bright like the Martian landscape he describes. It raises at least as many questions as it answers, but I think many questions can be filled in, such as where did the original Martians ("the Bleekmen") come from? Somehow they are both our present and our past, this much is clear, though its ominous and disconcerting that it is never entirely explained.

Like most PKD stories, this novel tends to dig in and live a bit in your psyche long after the initial reading.¤

2) Paperback Book Martian Time-Slip by Vintage. Having read many Philip K. Dick books, I find myself returning to this one the most (after _Man in the High Castle_, of course). I love the weirdness of the society on Mars, and I find the characters compelling and captivating. Like so many of Dick´s books, one persistently approaches themes of reality in this one. Fun book with an ending I REALLY enjoy!¤

3) Paperback Book Martian Time-Slip by Vintage. I really enjoyed this one. It slowed down a little in the middle, but after that, it got really good and pretty creepy. I have read Ubik, Flow My Tears, Scanner, and I think this is my favorite one of his books so far. The character of Manfred is especially cool.¤

4) Paperback Book Martian Time-Slip by Vintage. I not a huge reader of science fiction, and the only Dick I´ve read is The Man in the High Castle. Seeking to remedy this underexposure, I picked up this entry in the "Masterworks" series. Originally written in 1964 (and boy does it feel like it), the story is set amidst struggling human colonies on Mars. There, we meet a whole host of one-dimensional characters -- union boss, electronics repairman, robot teacher, poor native Martians, black marketeer, psychiatrist, and so on. The plot is set in motion by the impending United Nations-led development of the "FDR" mountain range. This sparks a greedy union boss to embark on a harebrained scheme to channel the untapped psychic abilities of schizophrenics in an attempt to see into the future in order to learn which parcels of real-estate are worth speculating on. No, really...

I managed to make through most of this setup, about 1/3 of the way into the book, before giving up. The story moves at a glacial pace, with a ton of plodding discussion of schizophrenia and autism and how they relate. The characters are so flat, the dialogue so mundane, and the plot so banal, that the book feels mainly like Dick´s attempt to write his way to understanding schizophrenia. (Dick apparently suffered from mental illness himself.) Not being a mental health professional, I have no idea to what extent the portrayal of schizophrenics or autism is realistic -- but at a certain point I realized that I didn´t care about any of the characters and I didn´t care about the situation, and so there was little point in continuing. The ideas aren´t interesting, the writing is pedestrian at best, and it´s hard to imagine Dick being capable of worse.¤

5) Paperback Book Martian Time-Slip by Vintage. Next to reading "The Man in the High Castle", I was prepared to read something as deep and as drawn out as that Hugo winning quasi-science-fiction novel from the same author. "Martian Time-Slip" is described as being similar in nature to that style of writing. I also discovered "Clans of the Alphane Moon", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (Blade Runner), "Ubik" and "The Simulacra", all of which are 5 star reads, "Martian-Time Slip" comes highly recommended because it is in the top twenty science-fiction books, Orion Publishers and the SF Masterworks series listing it as #13 in their collection. Unfortunately I was surprised by how little I enjoyed any of it and in fact I hated a lot of it, however the author should be credited and published for creating this world, but as for reading it... well that is a totally different matter. This is an oddity, more for collectors than readers. I am glad to have it in my Philip K. Dick collection.... However, it is at the back of his collection.

Mars is populated by settlers from Earth, starting a new world there, with Bleekmen Martians, like primitive man, selling trinkets to earthlings, who mostly need clean water, which is owned by the waterworks manager, Arnie Kott, who has acquired a former mentally ill repairman, Jack Bohlen, to plug into the mind of an autistic boy, Manfred, who might be able to see the future and tell him why the UN wants to buy in on Mars soil. Jack´s father arrives from Earth, turns out to be a prospector and Jack ends up double-crossing Kott, over and over again in alterative universes, until he figures what is going on and by that stage you just don´t care because there is no ending, there is no science-fiction, the politics and extraterrestrial real estate scams became moot long ago, the penetration of the mysteries of being and time totally abstract to the point of meaninglessness anywhere else except in Dick´s mind, then we get his over-excuse for adultery neatly wrapped in a package "Sleep with other people so that you get to know what your spouse is doing right and wrong", Dick who happens to have been married five times, really doesn´t come across as that faithful to his characters and his alter-ego chews through them, mostly sexually, and quite disturbingly, ending up in a Dick book that doesn´t quite have the same panache as anything I have read from him before.

Even though "Martian Time-Slip" puts forward some very interesting notions that make you think ah, here it comes, the plot or the twist, it never really does. Instead you end up with an extended soap opera on Mars, not that this is a bad idea, Dick writes good soap into his science-fiction ("Clans of the Alphane Moon" does it well), but the soap here pretty much envelops any science-fiction under all the smut and suds that come out of nowhere around page 100 and continue to dominate the later half of the book with the theories discussed in pages 70 to 100, never going anywhere, after the huge 70 page opening, yes many of you will be wasting your time, characters are introduced far too slowly, jacked around half way through the story and replaced by new characters towards the end, meaning what you have covered so far has been lost to the warping and bending of time in the story, unfortunately not working out as a good read, but maybe as good writing, and certainly Philip K. Dick can not be faulted for his literature skills, dialogue or introduction of descriptions that should have occurred towards the start of the book, we don´t mind all of this, but the story thus is boring, without centre and does not deliver on a payoff like the last two or three pages of "The Man in the High Castle." It isn´t like that work at all. This is a self-serving science fiction rant to explain the author´s own problems with mental health and infidelity.

As many of you know Dick can be more suggestive than fleshing out those suggestions. Here he makes a suggestion that quite frankly we are not in the least bit interested in because of the way he puts it forward, that some people´s mental illness can be confused with people who really have special talents, but the story boxes this concept into replaying a scene a couple of times over again in variation each time, the Martian Time-Slip explained by changes in people´s perceptions, this concept comes up in the middle of the book, then takes a back seat to more suds and soap about adultery... and never emerges again. I am glad to be free of this book. That is not a good sign.

It hurts me to say this but... "Martian Time-Slip" stinks. Only get it to see into the mind of a science-fiction writer beginning to question the depths of the mind and reasons for his own unfaithfulness. If you want to learn more about Dick through his work, then certainly this has lots of insight, but the story, not even close to what he is capable of doing.

I am going to move onto "A Scanner Darkly" next. Hopefully that will go a bit better than this one did. Five stars all the way and then this bumpy ride. Only get this Philip K. Dick if you have read everything else. Comes nowhere even close to #13 place that Orion SF Masterworks gave it.¤

6) Paperback Book Martian Time-Slip by Vintage. On the arid colony of Mars the only thing more precious than water may be a ten-year-old schizophrenic boy named Manfred Steiner. For although the UN has slated "anomalous" children for deportation and destruction, other people--especially Supreme Goodmember Arnie Kott of the Water Worker´s union--suspect that Manfred´s disorder  may be a window into the future. In Martian Time-Slip Philip K. Dick uses power politics and extraterrestrial real estate scams, adultery, and murder to penetrate the mysteries of being and time.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 27-Aug-2008, 06797616759780679761679, 460-620-510-6X0-040-750-8

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