Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #84940 in Books
• Published on: 1995-05-30
• Released on: 1995-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780679761679
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Library Journal
Dick's 1968 novel offers a world in which water is a precious commodity and schizophrenia is the norm. For all sf collections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
The fact that what Dick is entertaining us about is reality and madness, time and death, sin and salvation -- this has escaped most critics. Nobody notices that we have our own homegrown [Jorge Luis] Borges. -- Ursula K. LeGuin

From the Inside Flap
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.

Customer Reviews

A mature, humane book
Philip Dick, like most science fiction writers, wrote enough action-oriented novels and stories to satisfy die hard genre fans, but anyone who has read Dick's work carefully knows that he came to be less concerned with action-adventure and more with very human issues. In Martian Time Slip, teaching androids are used in schools, one character is suspected of being able to see into the future, and, of course, the backdrop is Mars. Dick, though, uses this science fiction setting to explore aspects of the human condition, such as isolation, suffering, greed, hopelessness and cruelty, through the eyes of a number of characters who are all rendered with compassion despite their obvious shortcomings.

The basic plot revolves around the efforts of Arnie Kott, a bullish big fish in a small pond, to determine if an autistic child named Manfred Steiner can see the future. It is then Kott's intention to use that knowledge to further his own self interests. Drawn into this story are several others that Kott needs to carry out his plan, and it is through their perspectives, their personal struggles that may not even peripherally relate to Kott's scheme, that the novel derives its impact. One section of the book, in fact, recounts a single evening from four different points of view. It's an amazing display of technique that seems a natural development in the telling of the story and manages to challenge the reader's own opinions about the characters involved.

The novel's background detail is convincing as well, from the way Mars' relatively few surviving aboriginal inhabitants are portrayed as a race doomed long before humanity arrived, now lingering until probable eventual extinction, to the desolate nature of Mars itself and the attitudes and practices that have been transplanted from Earth. Much like the excellent Dr. Bloodmoney, which would appear the following year (1965), Martian Time-Slip is an ensemble story in a landscape that offers little hope aside from the comfort and love of other living beings which, I would like to believe, is what Dick is saying is the only hope of any consequence.

intriguing
Martian Time-Slip takes place on a Mars which has been rather poorly colonized by a desperate race of humans. Water is scarce on mars, and what few settlements exist are very close to one of the few canals. Plumbers, waterworkers, and repairmen are very valuable and in demand, since getting replacement equipment from Earth is very expensive.

Jack Bohlen is a repairman, and a "recovered" schizophrenic. Jack is contacted by Arnie Kott, a businessman who is involved in land speculation. He seems to believe that a schizophrenic boy can somehow see into the future (slip in and out of TIME) on Mars, and Jack can help Arnie communicate with the boy, by building a machine that will translate the boy's gibberish speech into something Arnie can understand. Arnie would like to make a killing in land speculation, with Jack's help.

Add to this: there is an aboriginal race of humans on Mars called the Bleekmen, who resemble Africans of very materially primitive societies. They wander the vast deserts of Mars, impoverished and disenfranchised, but hold the mystical keys to this time travel.

It's a strange and beautiful novel. Action Sci-Fi fans beware. This novel takes a long time to get going. The first 80 or 100 pages are taken up with that stuffy writing goal called "character development," and you won't get many shoot-em-up scenes with spaceships etc. This novel is pretty typical of Philip K. Dick in that it's more cerebral than it is visceral. I found the first half of the novel fascinating but slow going, myself. After I was halfway through, I spent all of my spare time reading it until I was done.

If you like Philip K. Dick, you ought to read Martian Time-Slip.

profound, dreamy, wonderful
For me, the questions the novel asks (and leaves for readers to answer) are: what is archetypal memory? Does the world have its own memory? We are the aboriginal people of Earth, do we therefore have a memory of it encoded into our souls? Did the Native Americans have a memory/dream/spirit-connection to North America that we somehow psychically grafted onto our own souls when our ancestors migrated here? (why IS America so different from other counties?--all of the collective archetypal memories augmenting our individual selves?) The dream-time/touchstone of this incredible novel are the native Martians, to whom Dick continually returns as a narrative device, after describing the strange autistic children. The Martians are the indigenous people, the first inhabitants, who have such strange, distant ways. The autistic children, then, are the first generation of "martians", they are being "assimilated" into the spirit-connection, the soul, the archetypal memory of the planet. (Much as we say we want immigrants to "assimilate" and learn English.) The children literally experience time and space differently than Earth-born humans! They are not "autistic", they are "becoming Martians"! That is why the last chapters are so extraordianry.

The basic question: If we went to another planet, or moon, or galaxy, and stayed, what would happen to our minds?

I have read most of Dick's work; I mourn his passing and that we will never see his like again.