From: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Subject: PKD's Time out of Joint **Spoilers!!** Re: Science Fiction?
Reply-To: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 05:30:09 GMT

In article <1992Nov11.033331.19796@ringer.cs.utsa.edu> sbooth@lonestar.utsa.edu (Simon E. Booth) writes:
>In article <rabjab.250.721359951@golem.ucsd.edu> rabjab@golem.ucsd.edu (Jeff Bytof) writes:
>>   "The store had during the afternoon become almost deserted. Usually
>>a flow of customers passed through the check-out stands, but not today.
>>The recession, Vic decided.  Five million unemployed as of February of
>>this year.  It's getting at our business.  Going to the front doors he
>>stood watching the sidewalk traffic.  No doubt about it. Fewer people than
>>usual.  All home counting their savings.
>>   "We're in for a bad business year," he said to Liz.
>>   "Oh what do you care?", Liz said. "You don't own the store; you just
>>work here like the rest of us.  Means not so much work."  A woman customer
>>had begun unloading items of food onto the counter; Liz rang them up, still
>>talking over her shoulder to Vic. "Anyhow I don't think there's going to be
>>any depression; that's just Democratic talk. I'm so tired of those old
>>Democrats trying to make out like the economy's going to bust or
>>something.""
>>                 ---Philip K. Dick, "Time out of Joint", p.9, 1959
>
>This is interesting.  Tell us a little more about this story., if possible.
>Simon

If I recall, the story starts off in a somewhat depressed small town
(as described above).  There's a kind of puzzle game that's printed in
daily newspapers called "find the martian," or somesuch.  It involves
some really sophisticated computations, intuition and insight to get
the right solution.  The protagonist is a whiz at solving these things
(he's unemployed, I think, and has nothing better to do), and has won
many, many prizes through this seemingly useless skill.  He also
thinks he's going insane: for the past few weeks, things have been
"disappearing on him."  For example, he was buying ice cream at one of
those sidewalk vendors.  As he's putting the money down, the ice cream
stand vanishes, leaving a little type-written note: "ICE CREAM STAND."
He has a fair collection of such notes after a while.  After much
goings-on, he discovers that the entire town is a government
plot/project.  The Authorities had been using him to figure out the
trajectories of nuclear missiles from a rebelling moon colony through
the newspaper game.  They had created this artificial environment,
because he was a sympathsizer with the rebels, I think, or at least
wouldn't cooperate.  They had brainwashed him into thinking that the
town was the real world.

This was actually a fairly neat PKD story.  The "ice cream stand"
thing is a very good PKD twist: a theme found in many of his stories
concerns our perceptions of reality.  What is real?  How can we tell?
(He's written an alternate history story, _The Man in the High
Castle_, where the Axis powers had won WW2, in which the question of
authenticity is extended to entire universes.  Which history is
"authentic?"  PKD's _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_ was made
into the movie _Blade Runner_, and explores the question, what makes
us human.  _Total Recall_ is also based on a short story of his (I
haven't read it yet.), and the film, of course, is supposed to have
ambiguities on what is real and what is dream (in between the scenes
of Ahnold blowing people away).)  The ending of _Time Out of Joint_,
that it was all some government conspiracy, is lame, IMHO, since
reality isn't called into question as sternly as in his later works.
Fun while it lasts, though.

Oh, given that space weapons are involved, I'd say it was a GOP
administration plotting against the protagonist. :-)



And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speak
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.	   [Henry V, 4.3]