Ph.K.Dick, Our friends from Frolix 8

Backlog of my writing here shows that I was educating myself regarding PKD since years. My wish to go through VALIS trilogy was the reason for my revisiting PKD, and as usual, I do things thoroughly. The most recent entry, which I report here, I found in the 2nd-hand book store Vibes and Scribes in Cork, Ireland, where I went for the annual European Astronomical Meeting. It is a good, well equipped store, actually two stores in adjacent buildings, one with new, and other with used books, a very good concept, see pic, the two entrances marked with the same name plate. This text is a less known work of PKD, but I think it should be more widely known.

It was first published in 1970, so in his pre-revelation (March 1974) phase, but I find all the signs of VALIS there. The world is in complete turmoil, here because the ruling castes, New Men and Unusuals, who are Huxleyan Alphas and Betas, fail to prevent the uprise of the under-caste group, the Old Men. Intellectual supremacy is not the requisite ensuring ability to prevail in ruling position. It is, still, dependent on subordinates to work effectively.

PKD ingeniously follows the rebel fraction and shows the ultimate failure of such a system, and its succumbing, when challenged, to Alien supremacy. Aliens are presented by a slimy (literally) intelligence, which burns the New Men's brains, effectively leaving them in a post-lobotomic, childish state before their ultimate demise.

In the description of society before those events, PKD follows Huxley and Orwell and, in addition, delineates the deception, which he later formulated more in detail in VALIS. The deception of freedom is here just alluded to-the ultimate motivation of the Alien being is left uncovered. It could be really positive, but equally well it could be that it is just tricking the Humanity for its alien purpose.

I think this novel shows that the birth of his "vision" was much in advance to tooth extraction episode. It is his brain, not a conspicous mixture of medication, which brings him to "Revelation". I find it hillarious that in "Our friends..." he describes the drug bars, in a world where alcochole is stricly forbidden as harmful substance. Very prophetic, I think!

Weird, out of its time story, even for a PKD. Strongly suggested, not so much for its literary value, as for its...prophetic charge. Life in the Universe might be much, much more intricate and dangerous than we can fathom.

After I wrote the above text, I read the Wikipedia entry on the novel and it says that yes, it is not the best but rather the worst of his works from that period, and that the themes were already started in some of his earlier novels. This only strenghtens my feeling that what became the VALIS later was already in his head.