Book Review: The Secret Ascension; or, Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas by Michael Bishop

The Secret Ascension; or, Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas by Michael Bishop

Mass Market Paperback, 341 pages

Published June 1989 by Tor Books (first published 1987)

I am not entirely what I was expecting when I read this but being the co-host of a Philip K Dick makes you somewhat of an expert. I thought a good time to read this was on the heels of re-reading Lawrence Sutin's amazing biography of Philip K Dick. I admit somehow over the years I missed reading Bishop before. He is an award-winning author and teacher of the genre. He has over thirty novels published but honestly, I can't comment on those.

The Secret Ascension is a delightfully weird book that is about an alternate reality that is kinda the prose version of the PKD robot. I mean in many ways this is a loving tribute to PKD and it is more meaningful that it happened in 1986 when his genius was far less recognized. It is clear to this Dickhead that Bishop loved and knew deeply the work of Philip K Dick. It is not just the moments when PKD appears as a character but it is the story about an alternate reality where Nixon won the Vietnam war and is in his fourth term. Bishop is ticking all the boxes for a PKD concept.

The world in this novel is just like ours only slightly different. For the Dickheads, the major difference is that PKD's career is flipped. He is a literary figure whose mainstream fiction like Mary and the Giant and Voices From the Street were published and it was his science fiction that was largely unpublished. Not because it was bad because it was considered crazy and subversive. All his mainstream titles here are from Bishop's research but the science fiction besides Valis and Flow my Tears are slightly changed titles like The Doctor in the High Dudgeon and They Scan us Darkly, Don't They. The boldest step of Bishop's was to create a PKD novel conceived entirely in this world. This fictional PKD is a reaction to Nixon's fiction four-term called The Dream Impeachment of Harper Mocton.

The Dream impeachment was super interesting to me, partly because as I read this in 2020 in this strange timeline a president who thinks he is a king who lost the popular vote is managing to avoid being impeached. In the PKD novel of Bishop's imagination, the deeply entrenched but unpopular president is impeached in the collective unconscious of the public. This makes Nixon and PKD adversaries in a strange way. PKD who recently died in the events of the novel has his subversive Sci-fi novels traded on the underground.

The story that involves moon bases, King Richard Nixon, pets and domestic travel bans and most interesting Vietnamese refugees who are brought to American for Americanization training after losing the war. All this feels like PKD pastiche. I have the feeling that this book dives into themes from Valis and Radio Free Albemuth books we have yet to cover although I read them back in the day. This is mostly expressed in the character of Philip Kai Dick. Who is not as dead as he was thought to be believed. It gets even weirder from there.

The first question I think I need to address is the aspect of this novel paying tribute to PKD. Is it a good tribute? I would say yes. I think it takes a fair amount of hubris to invent novel that PKD never actually wrote. It is one thing for Bishop to write that in this reality there is a slightly different Scanner Darkly, the Dream Impeachment, however, is something altogether different. It takes brass ones to say this is a book that PKD would have written in this reality, but I have to hand it to Bishop and his research. I can live with all those aspects of this book. It is a fun thought exercise and i think Phil would have been amused by this. The man clearly enjoyed messing with people. How much of his alternate reality stuff he really believed is hard to say but he loved to ponder it.

How is this as a science fiction novel? I don't know if I can separate myself as a PKD podcaster from this reading experience. So I enjoyed it but I don't know how much of that is my personal connection to the material. I think being a serious Dickhead is kinda required here or you are going to end up being disappointed. The non-PKD moments are interesting but not enough to really carry this novel. The good news it doesn't have to as this book is a pure tribute to PKD. So yeah serious Dickheads will have fun I am not sure I think anyone else needs to spend the time.