From the Bookshelf of Philip K Dick…

Dr. Bloodmoney or How We Got Along after the Bomb

Philip K. Dick,

Jack Gaughan (Illustrator)

Start date: May 1, 2014

Finish date: May 20, 2014

Discussion: Group Reads

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Group Reads

Now Wait For Last Year - final thoughts (spoilers)
By Byron 'Giggs… · 9 posts · 61 views

last updated Jan 08, 2024 10:11PM

VALIS Group Read (Spoilers)
By Michael · 38 posts · 134 views

last updated Jul 25, 2018 08:24PM

What Members Thought

Dec 08, 2023 Nathan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is the first of PKD’s published novels to reach 300 pages (prior works hover around 200). The extended length allows for more character development which as it turns out, works out well for Dick. Perhaps he was going through a good spell when he wrote it, as the drug use/abuse is missing and paranoid delusions of simulated realities are absent from the main theme. In fact, maybe Dick was on some good meds that also stunted his libido (as certain drugs tend to do) because also gone are super This is the first of PKD’s published novels to reach 300 pages (prior works hover around 200). The extended length allows for more character development which as it turns out, works out well for Dick. Perhaps he was going through a good spell when he wrote it, as the drug use/abuse is missing and paranoid delusions of simulated realities are absent from the main theme. In fact, maybe Dick was on some good meds that also stunted his libido (as certain drugs tend to do) because also gone are superfluous descriptions of busty women. Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of paranoid characters and Bonnie, the primary female character, is promiscuous, but it feels more like PKD is observing all of this instead of living/fantasizing it. As a matter of fact, in his original afterward, he identifies with the character who is a young black tv repairman, who is flawed with prejudices but mostly a well-rounded decent kid who is looking to better himself. The story centers around this kid and an armless/legless wheelchair bound victim of radiation who has gained certain mental powers via his disability. Nuclear war hits and civilization is reduced to pre-industrial times. Dr. Bloodmoney (a nickname as well as a literal translation from the German) is a paranoid egomaniac with delusions of grandeur who thinks that he has mystical powers and has somehow caused the war (he did not, though he was part of the team that previously accidentally released radiation, resulting in an uptick of mutant children). He becomes part of a farming community where Hoppy (the wheelchair guy) also ends up. They both work as contributing members of a farm (animals have grown mutated as a result of the war and most have some capacity for speech now). Meanwhile, a married astronaut couple become stranded in satellite orbit during the war, the wife dies, and the man becomes essentially a dj in the sky, spinning records while the rest of the largely electricity deprived world cannot, reading to his audiences, and telling weather that he observes from space. He is a celebrity to the world who listens in as his ship passes over nightly and the only thing that makes earthlings feel connected to each other. You know. True blue Dick-ian insanity. Anyway, there is a mystery involving power plots, shifts in moral allegiances, and a couple of genuinely scary scenes. In the end, it’s an essay on people, how hopeful they can be, how resilient, and also how greedy or power hungry they can be, even in the end of times. It’s a beautiful book, dated of course by incorrect technological predictions, but as PK says in the afterward (paraphrasing), it’s not really the job of sci fi writers to predict. The people he writes about live in his time, they are the same people behaving the same way across all times. And this novel, so far, puts that at the forefront the best. Can’t wait to read the next one (Going through in publication order. This is #17!)
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Apr 29, 2018 Richard rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It’s Frank Kafka meets Mad Max!
I did a re-read during Coronavirus lockdown. I’d call this book similar to a Harry Potter book in that it involves three main characters who are plainly magic users. Plus, the young girl Edie has within her a magic twin brother which is eventually extracted by the evil, magical phocemelus and the result is a wretched thing (a homuculus) which has some powerful mojo.

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