This blog post is a continuation of my effort to learn about the fiction stories that were written by Philip K. Dick. Previously, I found it difficult to enjoy his early published "science fiction" (fantasy?) stories due to their lack of concern for providing readers with reasonable scientific plot elements and technological issues.
What is the distinction that I make between science fiction and fantasy? I find it useful to think of science fiction as a subdomain within fantasy. If, when constructing your fantasy story, you take pains to write from a perspective of scientific literacy and for an audience that is interested in how science and technology impact human cultures then you have a chance of writing a science fiction story. If you are ignorant of science and assume that your audience is also uninterested in technological details then you have little chance of writing a good science fiction story.
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some subdomains of fantasy
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Writers such as Ray Bradbury might include in their fantasy stories some plot elements that are commonly included in science fiction stories, but Bradbury admitted that while doing that, he was not writing science fiction.
I'm particularly intrigued by "hard science fiction" and repulsed by fantasy stories that have an anti-science bias at their core. I would classify "The Last Question" (by Isaac Asimov) as a type of science fantasy story, but I appreciate Asimov most for his hard science fiction stories. Asimov could write in many sub-genres; what about Philip Dick?
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Ancient aliens: was there intelligent life on Mars?
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I have a deep interest in science fiction stories about brains and how memories can be stored. I once saw the last ten minutes of
Total Recall and that convinced me that I had seen enough. Now, I finally read "
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick.
At the start of his story, Philip Dick had to ruin my mood by saying that there is plant life on Mars. But does it matter? Is Dick's story about Mars or did he just casually include Mars as a plot element so that he could sell his story to a Sci Fi magazine? Let's find out.
My kindred of town. The story begins in a future Chicago with smog imported from 1966 and frog-pelt suits imported from Mars. The one fun part of Dick's imagined future is that female office workers are permitted to bounce around the workplace topless.
Wouldn't it be fun to go for a vacation on Mars, complete with paper ticket stubs and "film" recordings of your trip? I suggest that Dick would have been better off setting his story in 1966 and saying that alien technology had been developed (at Area 51 ?) that allows for memories to be implanted inside human minds. But no, Dick insists that he is telling us about a future time when passenger travel to Mars and memory transplants (using the "extra-factual memory implant™") are common...and, ya... in that future time, plant life exists on Mars along with maw-worms and frogs. Total Recall was set in 2084.
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in the Ekcolir Reality
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There is no explanation of how the "extra-factual memory implant" is accomplished, just a guarantee that these fake memories will be even better than real memories (impossible to forget). Think of all the wonderful things that could be done if you could provide people with implanted memories... but Dick does not go there. The entire plot of "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" is like a frantic
James Bond movie that makes no sense. A man with an ordinary job is to be given 2 weeks of memory during which he is to be a spy on a secret mission to Mars. The memory implant will "simply" be inserted so as to erase the existing memories from a recent 2 week vacation. In our time, everyone gets 15 minutes of fame, but in the future everyone gets to be James Bond for 2 weeks.
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in the Ekcolir Reality
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Sciency. But wait! It turns out that this dude actually did go to Mars as a spy and then somebody erased all his memories of that exciting life as a spy, converting him into a dull clerk.
But the memories were
not completely erased because... plot. The vacation memory-insertion company
notices his old (erased) memories of Mars. So, it is a dilemma: adding new fake memories of going to Mars on top of the old (half erased) memories might "
bring on a psychotic interlude".
Dick tells us that the good folks at a government military-sciences lab can erase all of a person's conscious memories. The vacation memory company does not want to have anything to do with this secret agent man so they don't implant any fake vacation memories. However, just the fact that they were preparing to do so and had used narkidrine, that alone "re-awakens" the "erased" memories. It makes no sense, but there it is.
My Favorite Martians... and Moon plasma, too! Dick was not content to simply populate Mars with plants, frogs and maw-worms. My favorite line from the story: "
The protozoa were dried-up, dusty, but he recognized them." These Martian protozoa are souvenirs from Mars, kept in a small box. And Dick tells his readers that the Moon was a source of a "
living plasma" that when injected into your body acts as a "
telepathic transmitter". This telepathic transmitter is used by the interplanetary police to keep track of people's thoughts.
In 1952
Isaac Asimov published a story called
The Currents of Space that was about a protagonist who had his memories erased. Asimov used the same lame plot element: the "erased" memories did not stay erased. Similarly, in 1975,
Jack Vance published
Marune, another story about a man who has his memory erased and then manages to regain his erased memories. How does Philip Dick's memory erasure story measure up to these other stories?
Given the magic lunar telepathy plasma, Interpol instantly knows that Dick's memory-erased protagonist (Quail) has remembered his mission on Mars. In our Reality, it was 1976 when the USA banned political assassination. In Dick's imaginary world, his interplanetary police don't want it known that they assassinated a politician on Mars.
So now Quail must die because he has remembered that truth. Why can't Interpol just erase Quail's memories again? Because... plot. We have to have the super assassin Quail on the run, trying to avoid his death sentence! Tune in next week for the trilling conclusion of... "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale".....
But no, that had already been done for dozens of episodes of The Fugitive. So Philip Dick threw in the towel space aliens. As a boy, Quail single-handedly stopped an alien invasion of Earth. The aliens promised not to invade Earth as long as Quail was alive. So now Interpol becomes very interested in keeping Quail alive.
In 1953, Harry Walton published a science fiction story called "Intelligence Test" in which space aliens were defeated by "clever" humans. Heinlein's 1958 story "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" is another example of this sub-genre of stories in which alien invaders are stopped by an unlikely Earthling. Why shouldn't Dick have added his own entry to this sub-genre? My favorite such story of bumbling humans saving Humanity from extermination by aliens is Asimov's "What Is This Thing Called Love?" Sadly, Dick tells us almost nothing about his aliens.
Non sequitur. The ending of Dick's "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" is silly and rushed, like a joke punch-line. "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" is not really about Mars and the reader is left wondering about a future in which telepathy and memory transfers are used only for the silly purposes depicted by Dick. There is no evidence here that the 1960s version of Philip Dick became any more concerned with the pesky science details in stories than he was in 1953.
I'm stumped. I can't decide which is the sillier ending: the instant creation of a breathable Martian atmosphere in Total Recall or the idea that as a boy, Quail saved Earth from an alien invasion.
How does "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" measure up to other Sci Fi stories about lost memories? Dick went beyond mere memory loss into the more technically challenging domain of implanting new memories. In 1957, Isaac Asimov published 'Profession',
which involves a future Earth where human brains are routinely
programmed for abilities such as reading and the skills needed to
perform specialized jobs within a profession. Asimov depicted memory transfer technology as being used on the brains of young people to quickly teach skills like reading.
In Dick's imagination, human memory is like a tape recorder. Even in an adult it is trivial to erase a small portion of one's memories and splice in a new set of memories. In Asimov's Foundation Saga, a secret agent of the
Second Foundation (
Bail Channis) was depicted as having had memories erased and replaced by a set of false memories so he could defeat the telepathic
Mule. Then in the end, after completing his mission, Bail's original (somehow recorded?) memories were eventually put back in his brain and everyone lived happily ever after.
Are any of these old memory transplantation stories by writers like Asimov and Dick actually science fiction or are we in the land of magical fantasy? Here is an analogy: in 1865 we had "
From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne which used a giant cannon to send men to the Moon. This made no sense and it was not until 60 years later with the development of rocketry that a sensible method for reaching the Moon was available for the use of science fiction story writers.
I'm intrigued by Dick's idea that a "living plasma" from the Moon could function inside a human brain so as to provide for technology-assisted telepathy. For the Exode Saga, I imagine that the human brain evolved with nanite endosymbionts as sub-microscopic components that could allow for technology-assisted telepathy. People did not really start thinking seriously about nanotechnology until after the arrival of molecular biology and micro-electronics.
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Who needs reporters?
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Philip Dick's "living plasma" is as silly as Verne's
space gun. However, I will give Asimov and Dick credit for
trying to write science fiction stories about memory transfer before anyone had a clue as to how memories are stored in the brain. ✓
If There Were No Benny Cemoli. In 1963, people had recently been through the Cuban Missile Crisis and so a science fiction story about the aftermath of a terrible war was not unexpected. Dick called this fictional war the "Misadventure". Why did Philip Dick imagine a war in the 22nd century? The "star" of his story ("If There Were No Benny Cemoli") is the "cephalon" of the New Your Times.
Extra! Extra! Although not described in any detail by Dick, the cephalon seems to be a computer much like the "machines" of Isaac Asimov's 1950 story "The Evitable Conflict".
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in the Buld Reality
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If there were no reporters. Rather than directly manage the economy of Earth as in Asimov's story, the cephalon can control the flow of information to a struggling planet Earth as it recovers from its devastating war. So, sit back and enjoy the rumble of NYT printing presses in the 22nd century when you don't need reporters because the magical cephalon sees all and knows all....
I don't have much patience with fictional politics. In "If There Were No Benny Cemoli" the two political factions are "the Party" and CURB (the Centaurus Urban Renewal Bureau). After the Misadventure, how far has earth fallen? The head of "the Party" drives around in a steam powered car that takes 20 minutes to warm up. However, when the cephalon of the New York Times is provided with electrical power (this comes ten years after the war), it flawlessly starts churning out newspapers that include news reports with details harvested from individual private conversations among CURB officials.
Dick never explains the seemingly magical ability of the cephalon to obtain such information, but the technology-savvy folks of CURB seem to expect such magic. Further, a world-wide distribution system still exists that creates printed copies of
New York Times newspapers around the world. We have no choice but to go along with Dick's fantasy.
Apparently, "the Party" is using steam-powered listening devices to spy on CURB and then they secretly feed their version of the "news" into the cephalon for printing and world-wide distribution. By using an invented bogeyman, Benny Cemoli, "the Party" is able to distract the CURB police force from investigating the war criminals who were responsible for the Misadventure and the collapse of Earthly civilization.
I can't stop myself from comparing Dick's story of an imaginary future cephalon-powered
New York Times with Jack Vance's futuristic magazines
Extant and
Cosmopolis. The Dec. 1963
Galaxy magazine issue where "If There Were No Benny Cemoli" was first published also held the first part of "
The Star King" by Vance. Later, after
Kirth Gersen has become wealthy (as told in
The Killing Machine), he buys
Cosmopolis magazine and uses the newly begun sister magazine
Extant to attract the attention of a secretive criminal,
Howard Allen Treesong.
Both Dick's and Vance's stories depict far future times when interstellar travel is possible, yet printed newspapers and magazines are used and there is no mention of electronic publishing. According to this online commentary, Dick's imaginary computer-produced newspapers ("homeopapes") appear in several stories that were written by Dick.
Humor. I don't mind funny science fiction stories. Here are two of my favorite examples. In his story "Cal", Asimov depicted a robot as writing an amusing story that its "master" did not find to be amusing. In The Book of Dreams, Jack Vance included an amusing part of the story depicting a school reunion. Sometimes science fiction stories get written that are entirely a joke or completely centered on humor. In 1964 Philip Dick published "The War with the Fnools".
Dick's story about alien Fnools makes me think of the "comical" Ferengi when they were first depicted in the Star Trek fictional universe. In that case, the absurd behavior of the alien Ferengi made no sense and ruined the story.
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Miss Smith defeats the Fnools.
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For "The War with the Fnools", we are cheated out of seeing any details of the scene in which an alien Fnool gets to have sex with a human female who has a 42 inch bust measurement. The big breasted Miss Smith is the secretary of Major Hauk, the CIA agent in charge of combating the invading Fnools.
I like to imagine that in the Ekcolir Reality it was women who dominated the early years of science fiction. In that Reality, maybe Miss Smith was the secret agent who was in charge of the defense of Earth against the invading Fnools.
In the end of "The War with the Fnools", it is Miss Smith's sexual contact (off stage 😞) with an invading space alien that saves Earth from being defeated by the invaders. Thank you for your service, Miss Smith!
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Are you sure this will make it grow?
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I suppose some science fiction fans might be amused by "The War with the Fnools", but I feel like Dick crossed over the boundary of science fiction and was wallowing in magical fantasy land. A Fnool can not only instantly grow taller by smoking, drinking or having sex, but when just one of the invading Fnools is thus made to grow taller, every other Fnool also magically grows taller at the same time. Just because you call your magical leprechaun a space alien that does not make your story science fiction.
The best thing I can say about Philip K. Dick stories such as "The War with the Fnools" is that they are short. I've now started reading two longer stories, "The Unteleported Man" and "A. Lincoln, Simulacrum" and I'm having difficult finishing either one. Wish me luck... I'll report back if when I make it to the end.
Next: alien Exvasions
