396 pages, Paperback
Published: 2015 by Wide Books
In the early days of the Dickheads podcast I found Evan Lampe’s solo podcast covering PKD. Many of the episodes shared the same research DNA as this book, and I suspect if I were to go back and listen, you could hear Evan forming his ideas. It is a treat of these types of podcasts, our first episodes of Dickheads I knew hardly anything. Evan’s journey on the podcast is more than a decade ago, but here is where he is now…
This book is in the limited sub-category of non-fiction titles about Philip K. Dick by folks who have read the entire canon. It compares nicely to Palmer’s PKD Exhilaration and Terror, Rossi’s Twisted Worlds of PKD, and most recently Lapoujade’s Worlds Built to Fall Apart.
There are several reasons you can accuse me of bias. Evan was a long-time guest on my podcast, but more importantly, I share much of his negative view of Capitalism. One person told me they were afraid that the book was all Marxist politics, but it is actually more Kropotkin than old Karl. He is a trained labor historian, so it is going to happen. I love a PKD book that quotes from The Conquest of Bread. It was also interesting timing because Ray Nayler’s Palaces of the Crow (my favorite new release) also quoted the old anarchist theorist.
The gist of the skepticism is that a radical left narrative based on PKD’s canon might seem off. After Thomas Disch called Phil a Marxist, he was mad and often pointed to the Man Who Japed as supercritical of Chinese communism. Lampe’s argument for anti-capitalist leanings might have gotten the same reaction out of Phil that Disch got, but it is well-sourced. Just as PKD’s fiction presented animal rights ideals he didn’t live up to, tons of political and social concepts came out of the 44 novels and 120 short stories, and no one has done a more top-to-bottom look at the ouvre that Lampe has here.
So what was the intention…
“What I hope to do in this book is offer Dick as a potential guide to currently existing late capitalism. My hope is that this may make Philip K Dick less of a prophet and more of a companion as we face the increasingly bleak and horrifying future that goes beyond just the condition of the postmodern and the posthuman that seems to sap our very freedoms.”
I found every chapter meaningful and helpful, but let's go a little deeper.
The first chapter, which is about the end of work, becomes even more interesting considering how much we are debating the loss of work. It was fine when the lower classes were losing hard labor jobs, but now that the middle class and even some upper class are losing wages to computers, the debate is becoming important. A decade ahead, Lampe wisely points to when PKD jumped into this debate in the 50’s. There is a sub-chapter devoted a story written in 1953. For the morality of technological post-scarcity, “To Serve the Master.” Lampe highlights how PKD weighs into the ethics of scarcity and machine workforces. This post-war tale is set after a conflict between Leisurists (who want computers to do everything) and moralists.
That chapter, combined with The Tragedy of Post Scarcity: A Detailed Look at the Crack in Space are great examples of the strength of the book. Deep cut stories and a novel that is admittedly not a high point in PKD’s career get as much attention as the masterpieces. He highlights not just the messages and themes, but PKD’s growth, for example, how the expanded Penultimate Truth develops a smarter and more thoughtful political stance over the source short story The Defenders, a decade earlier. The early version seems to show the robots deciding on their own to keep humans underground, but the novel shows a ruling elite of tech oligarchs who control the robots. (Sound familiar?)
Another chapter I thought was one of the best, The Empire Never Died: The search for order, political power, and global capitalism. Stretching from Stability written when he was a teenager to High Castle and The Zap Gun this chapter looks at the forces of political power in PKD’s fiction. It is worth the book alone.
One of the best and most in-depth chapters is Window Shopping at the Commissary: Consumerism, Conformity, and Power. Here, Lampe veers into something that affected me because I just read Christopher Palmer’s book. One of the new Ideas for me in that book is how PKD writes about consumption. Lampe expands on this and ties to left-leaning political takes on deep cut stories.
A subchapter on war and consumption, for example, looks closely at a deep cut short story, Some Kinds of Life, Autofac, and Foster You're dead in just one subchapter. Even deeper cut stories like Service Call and the Little Movement are mentioned alongside novels like Now Wait for Last Year, that's a lot of titles, but it shows you how deep cut this book goes
One of the directions of Lampe’s ideas I have not seen elsewhere is in chapter The Significance of the Frontier in Martian history Philip K Dick meets Frederick Jackson Turner. On the podcast for years, whenever I brought up the frontier, I always referenced Lampe. I think his writings here are something no one has really dived into as deeply.
A few of Evan’s appearances on DHP:
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