Am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts: Amerika ist ein Land der Huren, Junkies und Dealer geworden. Bob Arctor ist ein Geheimagent der Drogenüberwachung, doch mehr und mehr wird auch er ein Opfer des Rauschgifts.

„Es brach mir das Herz, den Roman zu schreiben, es brach mir das Herz, ihn zu lesen … Ich glaube, es ist ein Meisterwerk geworden. Ich glaube, daß es das einzige Meisterwerk ist, das ich jemals schreiben werde …

Die komischen Stellen sind die komischsten, die ich je geschrieben habe, und die traurigen sind die traurigsten, und sie sind beide in ein und demselben Buch!“

Philip K. Dick

„Einer der eigenständigsten amerikanischen Autoren … . der das meiste der europäischen Avantgarde wie Nabelschau in einer Sackgasse erscheinen läßt“

Sunday Times

© Copyright 1977 by Philip K. Dick

Originaltiel: A Scanner Darkly

HUMANS OR HEMNOIDS:

AN UNBEARABLE CHOICE

Planet Dilbia is in a crucial location for both humans and their adversaries, the Hemnoids. Therefore making friends with the Dilbians and establishing a human presence there is of the utmost importance, which may be a problem, since the bearlike Dilbians stand some nine feet tall, and have a high regard for physical prowess. They’re not impressed by human technology, either. A real man, er, bear doesn’t need machines to do his work for him.

But Dilbians “are” impressed by sharp thinking, and some have expressed a grudging admiration for the logical (and usually sneaky) mental maneuvers that the human “shorties” have used to get themselves out of desperate jams. Just maybe that old human craftiness will win over the Dilbians to the human side. If not, we lose a nexus, and the Dilbians will learn just how unbearable Hemnoids can be….

A master of science fiction examines what happens when powerful aliens meet puny humans—with results ranging from chilling to utterly hilarious. Getting along in the Universe can be tricky, but those monkey-boys and girls from Earth can get pretty feisty themselves when the situation calls for it. And if you bet on the side of the mighty alien armadas that have conquered half the galaxy, you might end up losing, as you've overlooked the winning human edge….

Warning: Although this the action of this book is set on Mars, it could just as easily have taken place in one of the desert communities around Los Angeles. The real action takes place inside the minds of the characters. If you're looking for all the external trappings of interplanetary Sci-Fi, you will be deeply disappointed. Approach it with an open mind, and you will be richly rewarded. What happens when one of the most powerful men on the planet Mars finds that real-estate speculators are intent on gobbling up the remote and seemingly worthless Franklin D Roosevelt mountains? Naturally he wants to find out why. A casual conversation with a psychologist followed by a chance encounter with a master repairman leads to one of those Dickian leaps: Since (1) autistic children do not respond to others because they are living in the future, (2) just build a machine to slow down time and (3) maybe even use it to go back in time and retroactively post a claim on the land before the speculators do. Well, the mechanism works, in a way. The speculators were proposing to build giant apartment blocks to help relieve overcrowding on polluted Earth. The autistic boy, Manfred Steiner, sees much further, however, to the time the apartment block would become a warehouse for the sick and dying, a "tomb world," of which he himself is a denizen. Manfred's visions have a way of bending the reality of those around him; he persistently retreats to a vision of reality as "gubble" -- entropy seen as large wormlike constructs that underlie reality, leading to pure "gubbish." MARTIAN TIME-SLIP is one of my favorite Philip K Dicks. (The problem is that I like all 15 or so I've read more or less equally.) Reading Philip K Dick tends to bend your sense of reality much as Manfred Steiner does. And one can't help looking over one's shoulder for a few hours after reading him. I see Dick as not so much a science fiction writer as a creator of disturbing and eerily plausible futures.