Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Time Out of Joint
Book Review: Disguise Is the Nature of Nature
Summary: 4 Stars
Somewhere I read Philip K. Dick say that the one most important piece of knowledge he had picked up from philosophy is that, "The nature of reality is to disguise its true nature" (which he claimed to have read in Heraclitus, though it's difficult to be sure if Heraclitus actually said that).TIME OUT OF JOINT is one of Dick's earlier novels that treats the theme of "The World Is Not What We Think It Is" explicitly. It's a novel about knowledge and recognition. The characters play parts in a detective story where the mystery involves piecing together missing parts of the world. Some of the clues include finding light switches on the wrong side of the door, finding a note where a lemonade stand used to be, finding pictures of some actress nobody's ever heard of, and seeing visions.
A number of PKD's later books involved more significant permutations of this theme of Nature-In-Disguise. This story is like a one-trick pony in comparison to books like PALMER ELDRITCH, NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR, UBIK, MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, MAZE OF DEATH, or VALIS. But the gradual accumulation of evidence, the dawning of recognition in the main characters, makes for pretty fascinating reading.
For good or ill, several modern film makers have really taken this motif to heart (e.g., Dark City, The Matrix, The 13th Floor, The 6th Sense, etc.).
Book Review: Don't believe what you see...
Summary: 5 Stars
It's difficult to talk a lot about what this book is about without giving important plot elements away. This was the first PKD book that I read and, while it is not as deep in meaning as some of his later works, I still think it's one of his best. Time Out of Joint takes place in a 1959 small town world where nothing is as it seems, and it should appeal to both the non-science fiction fan who wants a good suspenseful read, and to dedicated sci-fi readers.Book Review: Get Back to Me in Forty Years
Summary: 5 Stars
Appearing in 1959 when P.K. Dick was 31 this book is set in a nameless town and centers around the gyrations, mental and physical, of Ragle Gumm, a paranoiac but proficient loner who lives nonetheless with his sister Margot and brother-in-law Victor, a supermarket employee. Other characters of note are Bill Black and his stunning but jejune wife Junie. Gumm is famous in his world, set contemporaneously in 1959, for the improbable skill of solving a daily newspaper puzzle, "Where Will the Little Green Man be Next?" He listens in a tree house with his nephew Sammy over a crystal radio set and detects people improbably discussing him. Since he is paranoid one might thing they are aliens but they are not. One of the biggest contributors to Gumm's paranoia is his world's tendency to alter precipitously. A maelstrom of things not being what they seem starts innocuously when he goes to the bathroom and reaches up for a string to pull the light off--a string which does not, and never did, exist in said bathroom. Far more radical is the tendency of things to turn into words. This slide down the Saussurean abyss is most startling after Gumm, taking time out from flirting with his neighbor Bill's wife Junie (he goes so far as to kiss her and tell her he loves her in the middle of the day as they lounge in public by an outdoor swimming pool), treks up a hill to a hotdog stand. "The soft-drink stand fell into bits. Molecules. He saw the molecules, colorless, without qualities, that made it up. Then he saw through, into the space beyond it, he saw the hill behind, the trees and sky. He saw the soft-drink stand go out of existence, along with the counter man, the cash register, the big dispenser of orange drink, the taps for Coke and root beer, the ice=chests of bottles, the hot dog broiler, the jars of mustard, the shelves of cones, the row of heavy round metal lids under which were the different ice creams. In its place was a slip of paper. He reached out his hand and took hold of the slip of paper. On it was printing, block letters. SOFT-DRINK STAND." Ragle thinks he is being recognized and followed--and to an extent he is, because he is famous for his work on the puzzle. We realize we may be in a parallel universe when pictures of a girl (she had "heavy hair, well-groomed and quite long. She smiled in an amazingly sweet manner, a jejune but intimate smile that held him. Her face was as pretty as any hea had seen, and in addition she had a deep, full, sensual chin and neck, not the rather ordinary neck of most starlets but an adult, ripe neck, and excellent shoulders. No hint of boniness, nor of fleshiness. A mixture of races, he decided. German hair. Swiss or Norwegian shoulders") turn out to be Marilyn Monroe in England making a film with Sir Laurence Olivier. A series of coincidences spur Gumm to escape, despite the fact that Junie is ready to leave her husband for him, hijacking an eighteen wheeler. Without giving the ending away, let's just say that Dick's estate deserves royalties for The Truman Show, the Jim Carey show where reality turns out to be a huge staged production. In Time Out of Joint, leaving your home town takes you to the future-or what was the future, 1997-a time when Lunatics (moon settlers) are in civil war with Earth, where women wear boy's clothes and the height of young male fashion are tribal tattoos and "cones of hair, each with a sharp, colorful, spike stuck into it." In addition to everything else, Dick seems to have predicted punk (anti-)fashion, almost half a century before its appearance.Book Review: Going Sane and loving it. Read the story then the introduct
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the smoothest, most charming, funny, and light-hearted books by PKD. Warning! Do not read the introduction! It spoils the book!The introduction gives us a new way to look at the works of PKD and I highly recommend it(after you have read the story.)
If you like movies like "The Matrix" you might be surprised at their possible (subconscouis or otherwise) origins in stories like this one. Dick is to Sci-Fi movies what Lovecraft is to Horror movies. The going may be rocky, but what a spectacular view at the top!
If you prefer the idea of science, over the idea of fiction, this may not be for you. If you suspect that the most creative science fiction was written before we went to the moon, this is definitely for you!
Book Review: Good, but not great
Summary: 3 Stars
This book has a great set-up - a man who slowly starts to realize that his "reality" is just a sham. There is a long (compared to the length of the book) build up, where piece by piece, he starts accumulating information that leads him to finally break out of his world. It is at this point where you figure the story can really take off. Instead, it ends, pretty much in short order. It's sort of like opening a huge beautifully wrapped present and then finding there's a gift certificate inside. Not so bad, but, it brings the experience down. Worth a read.