num_pages: 226
description: One of the stand-out novels in Philip K. Dick's career of wildly reality-bending SF, Martian Time- Slip convinces by placing its insanities in a quiet, even domestic context. Here colonised Mars has a flavor of grubby, struggling fifties suburbia, where money (not to mention water) is in short supply, jobs are insecure, the humor's mostly black, &amp; small tragedies like one minor character's suicide cause far-ranging ripples. The good old human comedy of lies, power-play, real-estate deals &amp; extramarital naughtiness continues as ever--all distorted by the real SF factor, an autistic child's dislocated sense of time. In one memorable scene he sketches the glorious new Martian housing project just being planned...but as it will look a century later as a decayed slum. So powerful are this boy's visions of nightmare futures that they suck in other people &amp; infect them with sick images of the "gubbish worm", an appalling symbol of entropy. Gubbish devours beauty &amp; reduces language itself to meaningless gubble-gubble. The very human &amp; occasionally even likeable villain Arnie Kott plans to exploit this time-twisting ability, whereupon things become very tangled indeed.--David Langford (edited)
language: English
title: Martian Time-slip
titlecomplete: Martian Time-slip
characters: Jack Bohlen, Manfred Steiner, Norbert Steiner, Arnie Kott
genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, American, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Time Travel, Novels, Classics, Fantasy, Dystopia
ratings_count: 12665
places: Mars
publisher: Victor Gollancz