Our Friends From Frolix 8 in Philip K Dick

Apr 14, 2012 Gregory Sadler rated it really liked it

Shelves: speculative-fiction

This is what I'd call a decent, respectable Phillip K. Dick book -- nowhere near the level of some of his novels, where he plays with, or rather puts to work tricky, paradoxical, or deep ideas from metaphysics, epistemology, psychoanalysis, ethics, or religion, binding them into the interwoven lives, desires, and transactions of ordinary and extraordinary people (e.g. The Man In the High Castle, Ubik, The Martian Time-Slip)-- but even Dick's coasting, writing one of the sorts of story that seeme This is what I'd call a decent, respectable Phillip K. Dick book -- nowhere near the level of some of his novels, where he plays with, or rather puts to work tricky, paradoxical, or deep ideas from metaphysics, epistemology, psychoanalysis, ethics, or religion, binding them into the interwoven lives, desires, and transactions of ordinary and extraordinary people (e.g. The Man In the High Castle, Ubik, The Martian Time-Slip)-- but even Dick's coasting, writing one of the sorts of story that seemed to be his forte (he also wrote some excellent "realistic" novels), is engaging, an entertaining read to go along with for the ride.

This novel sees some of the same themes that structure other Dickesian explorations -- a dystopic future state in which solving some problems faced by humanity has done little to fix the truly perennial ones seemingly inherent to the human condition, the paranoiac plots and fractures along lines just as often personal as ideological, moral and speculative introspection advancing the narrative like a kind of action all of its own, the clash of intellectual perspectives played out existentially. . . even a worn-through purported savior figure who turns out to be different from what he's expected to be.

The conflict coming to a head in this book stems from a stasis between two advanced kind-of superhuman groups -- the New Men and the Unusuals -- recently emerged from the mass of humanity, the Old Men. The New Men and Unusuals alternate holding and exercising elective power (and actually do distrust, sometimes despise, each other), but their real enemies are the Under Men -- those of the Old Men, ordinary human beings, who resent the putatively superior classes' stranglehold over politics, the all-present and influential civil service (which only New Mane and Unusuals can get into), the policed and surveilled society they've imposed. The Under Men distribute, read, reproduce, and live by hopes raised by tracts of the political prisoner, physics professor turned political theorist Eric Cordon.

Cordon's thoughts are continually transmitted to the underground movement, edited, and assembled into new tracts, the product of choice in a black marketplace of ideas -- pushed, analogously to illegal drugs (and most drugs are legal in this world, save alcohol), by unsavory types motivated more by wealth, power and rebelliousness than any ethical or political commitment. Cordon is just the thinker of the Old Men's revolt and resistance, however -- Thors Povoni is the actor, the agent, the doer.

Povoni left Earth's system ten years previous to the story's start, declaring his purpose to seek help out there, amongst the stars, for the Old Men, something, some ally, some new technology, anything that would even the otherwise impossibly stacked odds. As the story unfolds, it turns out that he has indeed found something, and that he is traveling back to Earth. This sets -- well, not events in motion, for they already are -- but new vectors of motion, impressing a new urgency to the powerful but also weary ruling decision-makers, bureaucracy, and police-state apparatus.

Arguably the most central character is Nick Armstrong, an Old Man working as a tire-regroover who, in the first chapter, brings his son to take the aptitude test which determines his classification, and thereby his fate, his possibilities in life -- not knowing that the test is actually rigged, even though other, more sour or cynical characters suggest it. Nick is an Everyman, in the most specific sense, picked out as a representative case by a supercomputer involved in the multilayered surveillance surreptitiously penetrating so many aspects of citizens' lives, and used to calculate likely outcomes and events from its analyzed data. Two of the most powerful members of the ruling body, the head of Police, Lloyd Barnes (a New Man), and the rather Churchillian Chairman, Willis Gram (an Unusual, possessing the gift of telepathy) -- whose lives end up intersecting with Armstrong, also view him as an augur of the average person.

That's probably enough glimpses of the characters and plot -- which are, again, done as well enough as they need to be in a Phillip K. Dick novel. One last thing I'd mention is that Dick employs his usual device of telling the story from multiple intersecting perspectives, those of his characters -- often at odds or counterpurposes with each other -- whose thoughts, motivations, choices, and realizations are integral to the unfolding of the tale. Dick provides much of the background, the world-constructing, through the interior reflections, and the dialogue -- often argumentative, even mistaken, or only partly worked out -- of his characters. That's a knack I've often admired in his greater novels, and it's just as well done in "Our Friends" -- there's just perhaps a bit less placed on the table in terms of grand philosophical ideas, even in terms of personal relationships and character development -- than in those other tales. ...more

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