272 pages, Hardcover
Published January 7, 2003 by Liverpool University Press
I recently asked a PKD fan who has been into his work for decades if they read this book, and she responded, "It is on my shelf, and I started it.” I laughed because I understood. This is some dense academic language. In fairness, I believe Chris Palmer wrote this as a PH.D paper, and it is not for mass readership. I pushed through, but there were a few times when I laughed at how academically intense the language sounded. This is how the cover flap explains it.
“Christopher Palmer analyses the puzzling and dazzling effects of Dick's fiction, and argues that at its heart is a clash between exhilarating possibilities of transformation and a frightening lack of ethical certainties. Dick's work is seen as the inscription of his own historical predicament, the clash between humanism and postmodernism being played out in the complex forms of the fiction.”
So yeah, not lightweight stuff. First off, I feel postmodern is like a term that a percentage of people use without really understanding what they are saying. Philip K. Dick fits the definition of postmodern science fiction because of the political and philosophical questions his books consistently raise.
Palmer’s book is a deep dive into the PKD megatext and how PKD’s inherent desires to express empathy and humanity come into conflict with postmodern questions. The end result is 44 novels and 123 short stories that express that conflict. Palmer knows the megatext from classic novels to the underappreciated early novels, and importantly, even devoting a chapter to the realist novels.
Every chapter is interesting, and I gave my yellow highlighter a workout. Much like Evan Lampe’s Philip K. Dick and the World We Live In, or Lapoujade’s Worlds Built to Fall Apart, each of these books highlights different aspects that make their analysis one of a kind. Lampe’s focus on Capitalism, labor, and the Frontier separates his book.
The two chapters that felt the most unique to me were “The Man in the HighCastle: The Reasonableness and Madness of History” and “Eating and Being Eaten: Dangerous Deities and Depleted Consumers.”
Lets start with the High Castle chapter. Palmer makes a point to look at the various malleable histories in PKD novels that show the marsh of time as another lost reality we should question. High Castle is obvious, but many short stories, Eye in the Sky, and Dr. Futurity are all examples of the past as a narrative tool. Of course, Phil believed in his futures as much as our past, so there is that. I always try to remind folks that High Castle is not as much about scary Nazis as it is about history being another squishy reality. Palmer’s chapter makes many excellent points about this. “If it is true that the element of humanism in the Man in the High Castle depends on its engagement with history. Then that engagement cannot be straightforward. History in the second-half of the 20th century is complex and daunting. It's open to reasoned analysis, it is a product of instrumental rationalization, and it is seemingly irrational or insane.”
The Nazis are a part of it, but High Castle is a postmodern novel that questions all history, and Palmer makes the point that it cannot be done rationally. “But the side of the novel which concerns the Nazis sets limits to this coherent space. The Nazis dominate history, but they are not of history in the sense in which history has a local rationality that can be reacted to or built on.”
We get into very unique material in the chapter “Eating and Being Eaten: Dangerous Deities and Depleted Consumers.” One of the most important points here is that despite the sources of paranoia many of Dick’s characters experience the shaky reality, the artificial origins often end up with the characters ( and the readers with the feeling of being consumed) “And those of his fictions that are concerned with being merged with or consumed by a deity, Dick's strong valuation of individuality, in people as in things. Battles against his sense that the ordinary people need help and need to join in a fellowship or common purpose, such as the superior being may offer, but at the risk of their individuality.” This is not only something I have considered but something backed by stories across PKD’s canon. UBIK, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Maze of Death might be the strongest examples, but it is everywhere across the megatext.
Christopher Palmer’s Exhilaration and Postmodern Terror might not be for everyone, as the words are big and the ideas even bigger. It is a deep and thoughtful look at the PKD. I felt daunted a few times reading it, but thumbing through it again, I realized how much of it stuck with me.
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