Acquired:
The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler
Galactic Pot-Healer, Philip K. Dick
A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations, Pico Iyer
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, Earl Mac Rauch
Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League, Et Al: A Compendium of Evils, The Reno Kid with E.M. Rauch
The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum, Stanley G. Weinbaum
Offloaded:
John Buchan, The Courts of the Morning
Blade Runner, Philip K. Dick
Progress Made:
The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler
We Can Build You, Philip K. Dick
Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
Finished:
Here Lies, Eric Ambler
The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, Kyle Arnold
Another Green World (33 1/3), Geeta Dayal
Deus Irae, Philip K. Dick & Roger Zelazny
Late one sunny, ennui-laden August afternoon, I decided to finally tackle the project of rereading Vineland. Ever since One Battle After Another came out last year, I’ve been mildly vexed by the question of what on Earth it had to do with Pynchon’s book, upon which it was supposedly based.
So far I see nothing, save maybe a vague resemblance between Leo DiCaprio’s burnout dad character and Zoyd Wheeler, Vineland’s hapless hippie protagonist. But it’s a fun read, definitely in the “Pynchon lite” category with Inherent Vice and Shadow Ticket. I don’t mean that as a knock on those books — in fact I prefer them to the doorstoppers. I’d read more of them; does 88-year-old TP have any left in him?
Here Lies did indeed pick up the pace with the advent of WWII. Most of Eric Ambler’s war stories involve moviemaking; he served in the Army Film and Photographic Unit. There are numerous entertaining tales with appearances by the likes of David Niven, Carol Reed, and John Huston (the latter was apparently a maniac who casually risked his own life as well as other people’s). After the war the book just kind of stops. Ambler lived another 50 years after that, but apparently he found none of those years worth writing about. (Here Lies was published in 1985.) Or maybe he was planning a second volume that never materialized?
In any case, I got through it and leapt right into The Dark Frontier, which is Ambler at his page-turning best.
All the classic Dickisms I identified in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said — “reality-bending, drugs, paranoia, showoffy classical allusions, an ending that leaves you scratching your head” — are there in Deus Irae too. (Whatever ideas Roger Zelazny brought to the collaboration fit hand-in-glove with Phil’s own.) It also reflects PKD’s love of creating jargon — DI is the story of an “inc” (“incomplete” person, born without arms and legs) who goes on a “pilg” (pilgrimage) to gather imagery for a “murch” (church mural).
Deus Irae is of course deeply weird and religiously obsessed and unpredictable. It’s funny, too; I loved this description of one character’s encounter with an automated factory installation that has lost its mind:
He drew near. He cleared his throat. How does one address an autofac?
“Uh — Your Fabricatorship?” he ventured.
Nothing.
“…Processor, Producer, Distributor, Maintainer,” he went on, a portion of the ritual not occurring to him, “Great Maker-Good on warranties, excluding labor and parts. I, a humble consumer, Pete Sands by name, beg leave to make representations before you.”
The lid of the autofac moved aside. A stalk rose from the uncovered shaft. It extended a bullhorn which turned in his direction.
“Which is it?” it bellowed. “The abortion or the lube?”
“Beg pardon?”
“You mean you haven’t made up your mind yet?” it roared. “I am going to electrocute you right now!”
“No! Wait! I—”
Pete felt a mild tingling in the soles of his feet. It lasted but a moment, and he began to back away from them, noting the dark wisps of smoke that now emerged from the cavity, smelling of ozone and fried insulation.
“Not so fast!” came a roar. “What is that thing behind you?“
“Oh—my bike,” he replied.
“I see the problem. Bring it here.”
“There is no problem with the bike. I came to ask you about an inc named Tibor McMasters and whether he had come to you—”
“The bicycle!” it shrieked. “The bicycle!”
With that, a long flexible grappel [sic] emerged from the pit and seized the vehicle’s frame just beneath the seat. It raised it from the ground and drew it toward the the shaft. Pete caught at the handlebars as it passed by, digging in with his heels and pulling back on it.
“Let go of my bike! Damn it! I just want some information!”
It wrenched it away from him and drew it down into the opening.
“Customer to stand by for maintenance and repairs!” it shouted.
The arm emerged again and deposited a red-vinyl-and-tube aluminum chair, a rack of Readers’ Digests, a stand ashtray, and a section of pale green partitioning on which was hung a Playboy calendar, a faded and fly-specked print of Crater Lake, and signs saying THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT; SMILE; THIMK; I DON’T GET ULCERS, I GIVE THEM; and ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES.
Sighing, Pete seated himself and began reading an article on the cure for cancer.
A couple quick notes on comings and goings:
- Only after seeing Buckaroo Banzai on the big screen this month and looking up the Wikipedia page did I learn that there is not only a novelization of the movie, but also a book of the promised but never-made sequel. Of course I had to have them; when they will be read is a trickier question, but summer isn’t technically over yet.
- Deus Irae was dedicated to Stanley G. Weinbaum, so of course one gets curious.
- In contrast to John Buchan’s drum-tight The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Courts of the Morning was a rambling mess. I gave it longer than I probably should have out of respect for Baron Tweedsmuir, but in the end it was abandoned and jettisoned.
- And finally, I decided to replace my dog-eared, movie-branded copy of Blade Runner with a proper edition of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, so into the free box it went.
And again I’ve gotten carried away… so over and out for now.