Time Out Of Joint by Philip K. Dick
01/11/2003 . Source: Sue Davies 

pub: Gollancz. 220 page enlarged paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-575-07458-2.

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He is romancing Junie Black who after all is married to his next-door neighbour maybe he should stop that. It's 1959 and everything seems mellow. Why then is he increasingly convinced that things are out of kilter?

What is the meaning of the phone book found on a local tip where all the telephone numbers don't appear to exist?

With his sense of what is real and what is false slipping away maybe the Civil Defence Class will bring him back to reality. After all, the Soviet Union is a real threat during the 50s and the Civil Defence organiser seems awfully keen to get him to come to meetings.

Ragel keeps a box with slips of paper in it. They have titles such as 'gas station' and 'cow'. He found these on the ground after the 'real thing' vanished before his eyes. It is only when Ragel's brother-in-law, Vic, starts experiencing similar blips in reality that they decide to escape from Old Town.

This book addresses themes that are constantly reworked in Dick's books. His own rather peculiar nature seemed to demand he went over this ground again and again. Reading this book and his others it is easy to see where films such as 'The Matrix' get their inspiration. Dick himself produced a substantial body of work including one of my favourite's 'Ubik'.

It starts well with an apparently normal family in a normal town. It soon moves into darker territory causing the reader to consider possibilities of mind control and brain washing. It made me think of Russian 'sleeper' agents who were trained in facsimiles of American towns.

There are some superb passages in the book. Those dealing with the breakdown of expectations when the reality apparently breaks down for a few seconds are particularly precise. Having set it up so beautifully, the final explanation when it comes is disappointing. It does not fit with the previous section of the novel.

The human brain's desire for closure is so strong though that I was relieved before I was disappointed. By accepting the explanation we deny the 'reality' of what went before. A scene where the bus that Vic is travelling on becomes 'hollow' with only him and the driver with 'upright featureless shapes like scarecrows' instead of 'all the nodding people...the noise the smells and chatter.'

This creates a sense of a great void and nothingness that makes the reader cold with anticipation. This breakdown in a carefully constructed reality occurs to Vic not Ragel. These two are the only ones that suffer this stutter in the construction. At the end, we understand what Ragel has done but the future for Vic looks bleak indeed.

Dick was creating for a specific market but what would have happened if he had junked the second half of the book and gone for broke. Well, probably he would have written something like 'Ubik' where the nature of what is real and what has been created by the mind is twisted and turned to the nth degree.

Contained within this book is a look at how the mind protects itself, the power of the Government, free will and family ties. Quite a substantial basket of goods for a straight Science Fiction novel? No, because as we have already established Science Fiction is simply a method bringing into popular discussion some extremely important issues.

Another one to tick of the list of Philip K. Dick novels and I'm left with a sense of incompleteness. Time to read some more I think.

Sue Davies