Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb by Philip K. Dick
222 pages
Published 1965
Read from December 14 to December 19
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
I like Philip K. Dick, kinda. I like postapocalyptic fiction, kinda. I never thought I'd be this bored when the two came together.
Dick, as I've said somewhere before, had his thematic fixations: What is reality? How do we perceive reality? How do we know what's real and what isn't -- and how does it matter? It's all very interesting in small doses, I suppose, but seemingly every one of his novels is like PHI 101, watered down with an extra helping of reductive psychology and Jungian analysis. I like him for the imaginative touches and twists he builds up from that thematic substratum, such as Walt Dangerfield, stranded in an orbiting capsule after World War III, a DJ marooned in space and humanity's last radio-broadcast link to civilization and each other, but in this case, the clever furnishings of the story were overshadowed by the reductive elephant in the room.
I didn't mind so much about the titular character -- Dick churns out paranoid schizophrenics like it's his job or something, and gifting Dr. Bluthgeld with the psychocreative and telekinetic faculties to amplify his own delusional worldview (and instigate nuclear warfare), while kind of a retread of Eye in the Sky, was not actively off-putting. No, what pulled and shoved and kicked me out of the story was Hoppy Harrington: villainous cliche, evil cripple, psychologically simplistic overcompensator with the psychic wherewithal to make real his need for recognition and power. And that was before we met Bill Keller, absorbed parasitic twin with powerful psychic abilities and a direct line to the hereafter. The novel has an overcrowded and undercooked feel, as if Dick scraped together leavings that weren't enough by themselves to make a cohesive story and threw them all in the pot to simmer for a few minutes. Which is a shame -- I gladly would have read two hundred pages of Walt Dangerfield passing on the news and horticulture tips between different parts of the post-nuclear wasteland.
No comments:
Post a Comment