[Book Review]: Time Out Of Joint by Philip K. Dick

Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia

Release date: 22th April 1959 (first edition)

Ragle Gumm is an ordinary man leading an ordinary life, except that he makes his living by entering a newspaper contest every day – and winning, every day. But he gradually begins to suspect that his life – indeed his whole world – is an illusion, constructed around him for the express purpose of keeping him docile and happy.

But if that is the case, what is his real world like, and what is he actually doing every day when he thinks he is guessing ‘Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?’

About the Author

Over a writing career that spanned three decades, Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned toward deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film; notably: Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and in 2007 the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

My Review

4* stars

From sunglasses and black leather coats of Matrix to misty mountains and the black lodge of Twin Peaks—over the last fifty years authors, scriptwriters, and filmmakers have been trying to find an answer to the question: “What is reality?” But hey… Philip K. Dick was one of the first pioneers who’ve brought the (and all of us) to this point.

Written in the late ‘50s, Time out of Joint was Dick’s first attempt to break free from the “normality” and “traditions” of classical sci-fi and create something completely different, something which didn’t fit perfectly in any genre.

Ragle Gumm lives in a small American town (he doesn’t even remember its name) with his sister, brother-in-law, and their teenage son. After World War II, which Gumm spent on one of the remote atolls in the Pacific, he struggles to find a job and settle down. His sole source of income is a newspaper contest “Where Will the Little Green Man Appear Next?”. Gumm enters it every day and wins every day for the last three years or so. Soon, a bizarre succession of random events and hallucinations makes Gumm think that his reality may be completely different from the rest of the world.

With the help of his brother-in-law, Gumm finally manages to escape the town to discover that it’s the year 1998, humans have colonised the solar system, and the civil war is waging between Earth and a colony on the moon. Gumm and his contest is the key to peace on Earth.

 Slow at the beginning, Time out of Joint reflects perfectly the lazy suburban life of an ordinary American town. The description of the plastic reality of society’s consumerism and inertia can make any reader paranoid. The late ‘50s or late ‘90s—in such a place it doesn’t matter. The time seems like it stays still there.

The noveldoesn’t have a streamlined, fast-paced plot as in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or such grand world-building as in The Man in the High Castle. This is Dick’s first attempt to describe simulated, multi-layered realities, asking the question: “What is real?” and where is the thin line between sanity and psychosis. The same question he asks again and again in his later works, making a reader search for their own answers.

Choppy dialogues, spiced by a huge amount of unnecessary adjectives, and rational explanations at the end of the story made me feel a bit disappointed. I wish the author left some room for a reader to speculate, to come out with their own theory about the plot.

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