Scratch Pad 1 Contents 12 THE NON-SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS OF PHILIP K. DICK (1928–82) by Bruce Gillespie The Non-Science Fiction Novels of Philip K. Dick (1928–82) A talk written by Bruce Gillespie for the October 1990 meeting of the Nova Mob. First published in *brg* No. 1, October 1990, for ANZAPA (Australia and New Zealand Amateur Publishing Assocation) I counted as non-sf novels. A Scanner Darkly is the most obvious example. Set slightly in the future of the year in which Dick was writing it, and containing only one sf device, it tells in a What are the non-sf novels of Philip Dick? As happens often almost documentary way the story of the young drug addicts when discussing Dick’s life and career, it is not easy to give who shared Phil’s house during the late 1960s and early a simple answer. 1970s. The books that I want to concentrate on during this talk In the Bibliography I also mention four novels as ‘closely comprise a series of novels that Philip Dick wrote during the related to the 1950s non-sf novels’. These novels, which are 1950s with the aim of launching a career into the main- Time out of Joint, The Man in the High Castle, Martian Time-Slip stream of American literature. For this reason, they might and We Can Build You, begin with highly realistic settings and truly be called ‘mainstream’ novels, much as I dislike the characters that might just as well have been lifted from any term. None of these novels was published during the 1950s one of the 1950s non-sf novels. or 1960s, and only one, Confessions of a Crap Artist, appeared during the author’s lifetime. In his biography of Philip Dick, Strange Invasions, Lawrence Sutin shows that this lack of II success was a constant, inconsolable disappointment to Dick until he died. In 1960 he wrote that he was willing to ‘take Philip Dick, born in 1928, died in 1982 of a massive stroke. twenty to thirty years to succeed as a literary writer’. This He spent most of his life in southern California, especially dream had virtually died by January 1963 when the Scott around Berkeley and San Francisco. He appears to have held Meredith Literary Agency ‘returned all of Phil’s unsold only two regular jobs in his life, and by 1950 was doing his mainstream novels in one big package that was dumped on best to become a full-time writer, especially as he was no good his doorstep . These rejections coupled with the ray of at anything else. He had an early success in marketing hope of the Hugo [for The Man in the High Castle], made it science fiction short stories, and began to succeed with sf official. After seven years, Phil’s mainstream breakthrough novels during the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1963 he won the effort was formally at an end.’ These 1950s manuscripts were Hugo award for The Man in the High Castle. This boosted his later stored at the library of the University of California at reputation, which had grown slowly during the 1960s, and Fullerton, and remained largely unread, except by scholars slowly he gained fame, both within and without the sf field, like Kim Stanley Robinson, until after Dick’s death in 1982. during the 1970s. Helped immensely by several film options But Phil Dick’s dream of mainstream success never left and the completion of Blade Runner, loosely based on his him. He had fond hopes that The Man in the High Castle would novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, he was just beginning be a general literary success as well as a Hugo winner. This to gain his first real financial rewards when died in 1982. has not happened. In his last years, he begged Dave Hartwell Philip Dick didn’t do as well from sf as Isaac Asimov or at Timescape Books to market The Divine Invasion and The Arthur Clarke, but he did better than most of his contempo- Transmigration of Timothy Archer as general novels. This hap- raries. Given that Dick enjoyed an sf career that produced pened, but removing these books from the science fiction about 40 novels and about 80 short stories, why was he not category seems merely to have deprived them of sales within content with success within the science fiction genre? Why the genre. was he so absolutely determined to become a mainstream Other novels of the 1970s and 1980s are so much based literary writer, and why was this the one ambition of his life on Phil Dick’s day-to-day experience that they might also be that was denied him absolutely? 1 The answers to these questions lie partly in the Sutin be discovered and published, or that one of his new novels biography (I haven’t seen the Rickmann biography yet) and would be recognised by critics for The New York Review of other recent memoirs of the man, but much more obviously Books. in the texts themselves. IV III So much for why Phil wanted to write his non-sf books. Why Part of the answer is undoubtedly that it was very easy for should any of us read them? This is a difficult question, one Philip Dick to write successful science fiction. He turned to I can’t answer to my own satisfaction, let alone yours. it a bit too naturally. Like many of us, he began to read During the early 1980s, Kim Stanley Robinson read them science fiction when he was twelve years old. Unlike many in manuscript, well before Dick had died or anybody had young sf readers, he was at the same time reading his way shown an interest in publishing them. Robinson’s verdict, in through the rest of world literature. By the time he began his otherwise excellent book The Novels of Philip K. Dick, is glimpsing a career for himself as a writer, his ambition was uncompromising. Robinson’s charges are that: to become an American Maupassant or Balzac. His tech- 1 ‘All of the realist novels are prolix in a way that is utterly nique of interleaving chapters, each chapter based on a unlike Dick’s mature work. Every scene, no matter how different set of characters, was based more from the great important to the novel, is dramatized at equal length, nineteenth-century European novelists than the works of in a profusion of unnecessary detail.’ anyone in science fiction. But before he could have any 2 They are humourless: ‘A uniform tone of deadly seri- success in literary fiction, he met Anthony Boucher, editor ousness is only occasionally replaced by attempts at of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, who published black comedy that go awry.’ his first story — a science fiction story — in 1951. Phil Dick 3 There is ‘an uneasy mix of realism and the fantastic. had just been married for the second time, had no job, was Despite making a very serious commitment to writing highly ambitious as a writer, and found himself with the need realist works, Dick’s interest in the arcane and the to find money fast. Between that sale and the end of 1954 he peculiar crops up everywhere in these works, without wrote and sold 63 science fiction short stories, and wrote two being fully integrated into them.’ sf novels and sold one of them (Solar Lottery). 4 ‘They are dull.’ But, as I’ve mentioned, during all this activity Dick did The result, as Robinson summarises his own argu- not see himself as an sf writer, except under protest. For a ment, is ‘an artistic personality split down the middle. long time he ignored the sf fans entirely, and met very few On the one hand were long, serious, turgid realist other sf writers. At parties he would find ways of avoiding novels, not one of which sold; on the other hand were telling people that he wrote science fiction for a living. As short satirical stories, which were very successful — the bibliography shows, he still put a lot of time into writing within the bounds of the science fiction community.’ non-sf novels, even while continuing to churn out torrents These are strong words, guaranteed to raise the hack- of sf short stories. les of any true fan of all the works of Philip Dick. Also, they did not square with my impression of the few One fellow Berkeley SF writer with whom Phil formed non-sf novels that I had read before this year. I volun- a close bond was Poul Anderson . Together, they teered to give this talk so that I could refute these foul could talk over the facts of SF life: editors chopping accusations, and persuade you to read the recently stories, lousy royalties, no recognition outside of fan- published lost masterpieces. In doing the research for dom. Recalls Anderson: this talk, I destroyed my own thesis. Philip Dick’s 1950s non-sf novels are certainly nowhere near as interesting I bitched, and so did everyone else. You have to as his best sf novels, but not for the reasons given by remember that in those days a science fiction Kim Stanley Robinson. writer — unless he was Robert Heinlein — was really at the bottom of the totempole. If you V wanted to work in the field you had to make the best of what there was. But we didn’t feel put Robinson’s needling comments were not the only reason for upon .