Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (29 page)

A vision in the sky, Barbie dolls, memories of Edgar and the teachings of the Episcopal Church-all forming into a novel that Phil would start just after Christmas, in early 1964.

The final touch was provided by the world-toppling theories of Gnosticism, a body of religious thought that has persisted through the centuries despite vehement persecution by the Catholic Church. Phil and Anne were taking confirmation classes at this time, and Phil grew fascinated with the doctrines of the Episcopal Mass and, most especially, of the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. This fascination led him to read, quite independently, Jung's essay on "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass." In it, Jung speculates that underlying the Christian view of Christ dying for our sins lies a Gnostic sense of the punishment fitting the crime-a divine being rightly punished for creating a flawed world. Jung concludes: "For reasons that can be readily understood, a satisfactory answer is not to be expected from orthodox Christianity. [... ] And from certain Gnostic systems it is clear that the auctor rerum [world creator] was a lower archon who falsely imagined that he had created a perfect world, whereas in fact it was woefully imperfect."

For Phil, the Gnostic view that our world is an illusory reality created by an evil, lesser deity was utterly compelling. It could account for the suffering of humankind, as well as for startling phenomena such as a vision of "absolute evil" (the Gnostic god's true visage!) in the sky. Not that Phil would have labeled himself with conviction as a Gnostic. But as a fiction writer, Phil naturally gravitated to theories that spurred his imagination and provided a useful framework for his experiences-and Gnosticism fit the bill most excellently.

Phil, Anne, and the kids were all duly baptized together in January 1964. But Anne recalls: "As we drove home Phil told me cheerfully, 'At the moment of my baptism I saw, slinking out of the baptistry, his tail between his legs, a small red devil, the classic type, with horns and a spiked tail.' "

Palmer Eldritch, which Phil mailed off to the Meredith Agency in March 1964, came in the middle of an amphetamine-fueled writing streak that was torrid even by Phil's standards. In the twelve months that preceded Palmer Eldritch, Phil had written six SF novels: Dr. Bloodmoney, The Game-Players of Titan, The Simulacra, Now Wait for Last Year, Clans of the Alphane Moon, The Crack in Space. In the five months that followed it, he wrote three more: The Zap Gun, The Penultimate Truth, and the novelette-length The Unteleported Man. (See Chronological Survey.)

Sure, he felt under the gun to provide for the family and wrote at the warp speed required of writers who sought a living from SF back then. But Phil was also at the height of his powers. Never again would he produce at this white-hot pace, even though the pitifully low advances for his novels-and the amphetamines-continued through the early seventies. Hell, the low advances never really changed.

But with Palmer Eldritch the dam burst. Phil was through with playing to the mainstream. High Castle had won the Hugo. There were SF readers who gave a damn. And they let you have fun so long as you astonished them. Nothing easier than that.

Phil's plots didn't require much in the way of fancy space-exploration gear. For the most part he plops his characters on the nearby Martian colonies or a post-nuclear holocaust Earth. His future technology consists largely of flying "flapples" and other talking homeostatic devices that try futilely to straighten out their hapless human owners' lives. When Phil really wants to shake things up, he introduces psi talents such as telepaths ("teeps") and precognitives ("precogs"), or aliens of sinister and saintly persuasion, or brand-new drugs that, regardless of what they promise, always make things ever so much weirder and worse. The characters confronting all this tend to be-as who wouldn't?-frantic, confused, fierce, broken, and sometimes even full of faith in human goodness. Voild! The Phildickian world.

Palmer Eldritch is Phil's first SF novel to take the genre, shake it by the throat, and make it work his way. John Lennon read it, admired it, and expressed interest in making a film of it. It was the book that, Phil said more than once, had the best chance of enduring out of all of his work. Valis (1981) is its superior in metaphysical and psychological brilliance; Ubik (1969) outdoes it in sheer pataphysical slapstick; A Scanner Darkly (1977) explores more convincingly hell's domains. But if you want to read a breathtaking page-turner about Earth being secretly invaded by alien forces beyond our comprehension while Barney Mayerson passes through numberless alternate realities trying to win back his exwife in one of them, just one, and desperate Martian colonists yearn for the bright, shiny world of Perky Pat, and Leo Bulero turns to the highly suspect Dr. Smile to help him escape the giant rat, and Palmer Eldritch proves to be everyone, at least for a while, and have it all add up-while you're not paying attention-into a moving parable on the nature of reality and the struggle for our eternal souls, then you'll have to read Palmer Eldritch.

The novel takes place in the early twenty-first century. Earth is parched-the temperature in New York in May is 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Precog Barney Mayerson wakes up in a strange bed with a woman he doesn't recognize and immediately switches on his suitcase psychiatrist-Dr. Smile-that Barney hopes will help drive him crazy, thereby precluding his being drafted by the world government to live in the Martian colonies, where things are even worse. Dr. Smile explains to Barney that the woman is Rondinella Fugate, Barney's new assistant at Perky Pat Layouts, and that she wants his job.

Perky Pat Layouts (PPL) is officially in the business of producing ideal miniaturized ("minned") "layouts"-penthouse apartments, sleek convertibles, glorious resorts-to which Martian colonist users of the illegal drug "Can-D" are "translated," during their all-too-brief intoxication, into the perfect bodies of Walt (for the guys) and Perky Pat (for the gals). When three couples sit together in a "hovel"-Phil named their bleak living quarters after his own writing "Hovel"-all three guys can be in Walt at once, and all three gals in Perky Pat. It's a mystery as unyielding as that of the triune God who is One. Here's a day at the beach Can-D layout style:

The waves of the ocean lapped at the two of them [Walt and Perky Pat] as they silently reclined together. [. . .]

Rising to her feet Perky Pat said, "Well, I can see I might just as well go for a swim; nothing's doing here." She padded into the water, splashed away from them as they sat in their body, watching her go.

"We missed our chance," Tod Morris thought wryly.

"My fault," Sam admitted. By joining, he and Tod managed to stand; they walked a few steps after the girl and then, ankle-deep in the water, halted.

Already Sam Regan could feel the power of the drug wearing off; he felt weak and afraid and bitterly sickened at the realization. So goddam soon, he said to himself. [. ..]

And, by the layout, a plain brown wrapper that had contained Can-D; the five of them had chewed it out of existence, and even now as he lookedagainst his will-he saw a thin trickle of shiny brown syrup emerge from each of their slack, will-less mouths.

Barney Mayerson's precog powers enable him to predict-at least most of the time-which "minned" fashions will go over with the fantasycraving colonists. Mayerson's boss, the owner of PPL, is Leo Bulero, who is not your standard hero. He's the big-time Can-D pusher, and while the colonists treat the "translation" experience as a religion, Bulero knows better even as he justifies himself by the solace Can-D brings to their wretched lives. But it's Leo Bulero who winds up saving Earth and us all.

The threat is po:,ed by the return of Palmer Eldritch, a renegade industrialist who has been away in the Prox solar system for ten years and mysteriously crash-landed on Pluto on the way back. Eldritch has survived, though in just what form no one knows, as Eldritch is keeping himself in seclusion. But he has brought back with him a new drugChew-Z-which threatens to drive Can-D off the market. As any Mar tian colonist will tell you, Can-D dumps you back in your hovel far too quickly, and it requires expensive "minned" accessories to seem real. But Chew-Z lasts and lasts and leaves you with no doubts whatsoever as to the reality of what you experience in its domain. The Chew-Z marketing slogan: "GOD PROMISES ETERNAL LIFE. WE CAN DELIVER IT."

Eldritch doses Bulero with Chew-Z, which proves to be horrific. To escape, Bulero builds a staircase that ascends through a luminous hoop in the sky and descends into New York, the home of PPL. Having made it back to his office, he tries, as a good leader should, to reassure Barney and Roni Fugate:

"I've now got an idea of what this new Chew-Z substance is like. It's definitely inferior to Can-D. I have no qualms in saying that emphatically. You can tell without doubt that it's merely a hallucinogenic experience you're undergoing. Now let's get down to business. Eldritch has sold Chew-Z to the UN by claiming that it induces genuine reincarnation [. . .] It's a fraud, because Chew-Z doesn't do that. But the worst aspect of Chew-Z is the solipsistic quality. With Can-D you undergo a valid interpersonal experience, in that the others in your hovel are-" He paused irritably. "What is it, Miss Fugate? What are you staring at?"

Roni Fugate murmured, "I'm sorry, Mr. Bulero, but there's a creature under your desk."

Bending, Leo peered under the desk.

A thing had squeezed itself between the base of the desk and the floor; its eyes regarded him greenly, unwinking. [...]

Leo said, "Well, that's that. I'm sorry, Miss Fugate, but you might as well return to your office; there's no point in our discussing what actions to take toward the imminent appearance of Chew-Z on the market. Because I'm not talking to anyone; I'm sitting here blabbing away to myself."

Slowly but surely everyone (whether or not they themselves have taken Chew-Z, and who are "they" anyway?) takes on the Palmer Eldritch "stigmata," based upon Phil's vision in the West Marin sky: stainless-steel teeth, slotted artificial eyes, and a black mechanical arm. In the novel, these are explained as prosthetics supplied to the wealthy Eldritch after his crash on Pluto. But they become the signs of a pervasive hallucinatory reality controlled by Eldritch. Mayerson sees the truth behind the evil visage:

... it's all the same, it's all him, the creator. That's who and what he is, he realized. The owner of these worlds. The rest of us just inhabit them and when he wants to he can inhabit them, too. Can kick over the scenery, manifest himself, push things in any direction he chooses. Even be any of us he cares to. All of us, in fact, if he desires. Eternal, outside of time and spliced-together segments of all other dimensions . . . he can even enter a world in which he's dead.

Palmer Eldritch had gone to Prox a man and returned a god.

If Eldritch is a god, he is a mirthless one. However many realms he inhabits, Eldritch remains alone. To Mayerson, who wonders how he will bear the eternities of Chew-Z, Eldritch suggests (with something as close to kindness as a figure of absolute evil can get) that he turn himself into a rock.

But the novel ends-or rather, begins-with a business-memo epigram that assures the reader that Leo Bulero, grasping entrepreneur and ultimate human hero, will win the day. Dated after the hellish events of the narrative to come, the memo acknowledges that humankind is "only made out of dust," which is "a sort of bad beginning," but concludes brusquely: "So I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we can make it. You get me?" Bulero's resemblance to Phil's first boss, Herb Hollis, is discussed in Chapter 3. But there is a deeper influence here, one that first showed itself in the fifties story "The Father-thing":