Counter-Clock World

How much do I love Philip K. Dick? A lot, okay? I love him a lot. For which I mostly blame my father, but not in a bad way. It's just one of those things that are clearly attributable to a single source, like my love of novelty songs, or my compulsion to catalog and create checklists.

So of course when I heard about the publication of his Exegesis I was excited. (Dick's that is. Not my father's.)

But then reading about it made me strangely paranoid. It's not that reading about his theology/philosophy was in any way surprising -- I mean, I've read the V.A.L.I.S. trilogy. But reading about it as a theology/philosophy made me suspicious that each Dick novel I read was progressively programming my brain -- rewiring it along his own beliefs. show more Still, I was delighted to arrive at the bookstore and discover an entire Dick display, centered around The Exegesis. I picked it up and flipped through it, but in the end decided I was just not read for that much crazy, and set it back down.

Happily, though, it was surrounded by a collection of handsome new editions of his novels by Mariner. I could not resist them, and so I picked up a copy of Counter-Clock World, which I read mostly in transit on my D.C. trip the next week.

The central concept of the book is The Hobart Phase -- a reversal of time's (or entropy's) arrow, for the most part localized to the Earth. Long buried bodies reassemble themselves and come back to life in their coffins, from where they must be rescued before they run out of air and expire again. People disgorge their food, put it back in the fridge to take to the store later. With interesting ramifications -- disgorging is something to be done in private -- embarrassing, "food!" is an expletive, and "mouthhole!" a perjorative. But the central problem of the plot is religious in nature. What if you were the leader of a major religion, and you knew that the major prophet of your faith was shortly to rise again from the grave?

Counter-Clock World is an expansion of a short story, and in retrospect that seems obvious. While there were interesting ideas and brilliant moments, in places the plot seemed threadbare, predictions of future fall-out of Dick's contemporary social upheavals not fully thought out, and the ending anti-climactic. Of course, a lot of Dick's stories end with a sucker-punch to the gut, but this one seemed to miss some of the impact.

For Dick fanatics like me, still plenty diverting and compelling. Probably wouldn't recommend to anyone who hadn't read five of the great ones first. show less

Definitely not one of his better ones. The attempt to have time run backwards is not in any way convincing, only rarely interesting, and merely serves as a device to explore some religious themes, and that is done poorly. But maybe "explore" is too strong a word. As an example of a strange question arising from this scenario: When does a soul re-enter a body that is reforming, rejuvenating as time is turned back? What sort of answer would be meaningful, outside of the book? None that I can think of. Inside, it has next to no plot significance, and the spiritual issues are only dealt with in the presence of robot lawyers. If you time-reverse the fact that a soul enters the body a few days before it's reformed enough to start breathing, show more it seems to indicate a stance that the soul lingers around the body for a few days after death. But that idea can't connect to anything else in the book, so it just dangles, like so many other things. Religion gets a bad rap, mysticism and violence seem to go hand in hand. Neo-Platonism is briefly outlined, but nearly just as quickly brushed off as being so much hokum. The big reveal is ambiguous and uneventful. The ending suggests that living in the past eradicates hope and meaning from the present, but you'd have to read it to see if you agree.
At only one point did the content cause me to stop and ponder, and that was the relationship between consciousness and time. If time is an illusion, and everything exists in some sort of eternal Now, from some vantage point, then the movement from point to point in your thinking is also an illusion. The feeling you have of time flowing takes place at a moment, and is composed of memories, firings of the brain at that moment. The feeling of flow is an illusion. And your whole life is like that. Maybe I'm not explaining myself well, but this is tricksy stuff. When I first started thinking on this sort of thing, I would occasionally feel a bit of despair. Somewhat like the main character, who frequently feels despair over his seemingly ineffectual attempts to assert himself and affect the flow of events.
It is a quick, light read though, and is never boring or hard to understand. The men all seem to be the same character, and the women, though more varied (note: not nuanced), are rarely portrayed in a good light. So, it's a toss up on whether I'd suggest someone read it. It'd be a weird place for someone to begin reading PKD, but maybe that's just the thing to really appreciate his weirdness.
2.5 stars on oc show less

In this world, time, or parts of it, are running backward. Dead people wake up in their graves, are pulled out of them, and grow younger until they return to a womb. People ingest "sogum" through their behinds and excrete foodstuffs through their mouths. People also inhale cigarettes from ashtrays and put the fresh ones in packages (cleaning up the air). People say "goodbye" when meeting others, and "hello" when departing. In this world, vitaria are small businesses that pull people from their graves, and sell them to the highest bidder (though they are now alive). One such small business is lucky enough to find the Anarch Peak, a religious leader (based apparently on Bishop Pike who was the main character in Dick's last novel), who was show more pretty powerful before he died (before the time change), and multiple churches and governments are after him. The story revolves around him, the people who find him, and the Library, whose purpose is to destroy books and ideas as their creators grow younger and die.

A fascinating concept, this has been much better executed by Martin Amis in Time's Arrow. Dick seems very selective about what is effected by time, and gets too caught up in the story of the Anarch and the people after him. I was alternately confused and a bit bored by the actual story, and didn't feel the concept was handled very well. There was little or no connection to the world as it is now (normal time), and it felt like a lot of the changes were taken for granted by the characters, when really it must not have been too far in the past for them.

So, so-so Dick, disappointing to me, though being Dick, it's worth the rather quick read. show less

Not the best Dick. Hobart Phase idea was weird and grotesque, as in his best works, but he usually comes up with one or more twists in his plots. Women characters poorly drawn, he is displaying his pulpy roots. Ending seemed unfinished, as if he wasn't getting paid for any more words.

3.5 stars. Originally posted at www.fantasyliterature.com

It�??s 1998 and time has started running backward. Aging has reversed so that people are gradually getting younger, and dead people are awakening in their graves and begging to be let out. The excavating companies have the rights to sell the people they unbury to the highest bidder. When Sebastian Hermesƒ??s small excavating company realizes that Thomas Peak, a famous religious prophet, is about to come back to life, they know that getting to him first could be a huge boon to their business. The problem is that there are other organizations that prefer for Thomas Peak to stay dead, especially when they realize he may have information about the afterlife.

Philip K. Dick is in a show more class of his own and itƒ??s hard to compare his novels to anyoneƒ??s but his own. Maybe itƒ??s not fair, but there are certain expectations we have for other novelists that donƒ??t apply when we read PKD. Most importantly, we canƒ??t expect the plot to always make sense. This is most true, I think, when Dick shows us a future United States of America which we know could never happen. For example, in Counter-Clock World, we canƒ??t let it bother us that an excavating company has the rights to sell people it digs up and that nobody, including the resurrected people and their relatives, question this. Or that the public library system has the authority to eradicate important works of arts and literature. Or that some things work backwards (people disgorge their food instead of eating it, they say ƒ??goodbyeƒ? when they answer the phone and ƒ??helloƒ? when they hang up, and cigarettes get longer when theyƒ??re smoked) ƒ?? but most things (like walking, driving, and talking) donƒ??t. None of it makes sense, but you just have to go with it and, if you canƒ??t, you shouldnƒ??t be reading Philip K. Dick.

So, compared to some of his other novels, Counter-Clock World, published in 1967, does pretty well. Itƒ??s got the usual wacky premise, annoying abbreviations (ƒ??papeƒ? for newspaper, ƒ??pilgƒ? for pilgrimage, etc), bad marriages, robots, drug trips (only one short one this time), and plenty of paranoia, but the plot holds together well (once you agree to the premise), itƒ??s fast-paced, amusing, and, most importantly, not confusing.

Thereƒ??s usually a religious theme in PKDƒ??s work, but itƒ??s a particular focus in Counter-Clock World. He has some interesting thoughts about death, resurrection, pride, and humility. As usual, I find it disappointing, and somewhat sad, that Dick imagined all sorts of sophisticated technology for 1998 but assumed that we would not have progressed in the areas of civil rights for blacks and women. We have further to go in these areas, but itƒ??s disturbing that Dick did not foresee our social progress. In fact, most of his work, like much science fiction from the 1960s, assumes a degradation of American culture that, fortunately, we have not seen.

Patrick Lawlor did an absolutely perfect job with the narration of Brilliance Audioƒ??s production which has just been released. His clear strong voice is attractive, his male and female voices were spot-on, and he managed to get the paranoia and frenzy across without annoying me. I canƒ??t wait to listen to more of Patrick Lawlor. show less

This 1967 novel from Philip K Dick is a bit of a car crash, even for a science fiction novel. It starts off well enough with people coming alive again in their coffins and calling out for help. The Hobart Phrase has caused time to run backwards and so people are coming alive again and regressing to childhood and then back into the womb. An enterprising group led by Sebastian Hermes are touring the local graveyard looking for signs of life and when they hear something, they dig up the coffin give medical aid to the old-born before auctioning them off to family members. Once the opening phase of the novel moves to a story of the rebirth of a cultist religious leader of a negro sect then the story starts running into trouble.

It was show more originally a short story expanded to novel length and the gaps in the story telling are far too obvious. Time moving backwards only seems to affect certain aspects of the lives of those who have been reborn and so the author can be selective in what happens to them. In the case of the religious leader Anarch Peake; it is his experiences of being dead for fifteen years that makes him a prize amongst those being reborn. His welfare is the subject of a fight between, the catholic church, his cult followers and the Library which is embarked on a project of removing from the world all those inventions, books and works of the old-born as they move backwards through time. All that Sebastien Hermes is interested in is making a profit and holding his marriage together and he gets caught in the middle.

The action and the characters become so preposterous that I was not sure whether this was just an elaborate satire, an action story with too many plot holes, or an outline onto which Dick could come up with even more fantastic ideas. This didn't work for me on any level, I just got bored 2.5 stars show less

Meh, I'm rounding down because even tho Bishop Pike is a big deal in this one as he was in the Transmigration of Timothy Archer (through a mirror darkly), the basic premise behind THIS book is pretty strong and should have been explored more fully.

I mean, look, PKD had a great thing going here now that newly dead peeps are coming back alive in their graves and clawing their way out, living full lives before they find a womb to crawl back into. This is a THING now. Long dead peeps are coming back, too, and now that time has done a little flip-flop in individuals, everyone still remembers when it worked the way we know now. :)

We've got some intrigue and rights issues going on here and a huge religious undertone that's focused more on the show more aftermath of religious movements rather than the content, and while that might have made a pretty good novel if not a particularly strong one, I found myself wishing that the main storyline had the limelight. Alas. show less