Time Waits for no Woman
Not having read any works by Philip K. Dick for many a year, I really didn’t know what to expect. Had my tastes changed? Were the charges of Dick’s sexism and racism justified? Would a book set in the “future” of 1996 even make any sense?

It so happened that Dickwas able to hold my interest, and though the plot was all over the place and full of holes, there’s something about this writer’s story-telling that kept me reading.

Martian Time-Slip is set on a Mars that hasn’t been terraformed. There’s oxygen, water (though limited), and humans live normal lives. They are grouped into “colonies” that reflect the geopolitical Earth of the 1960s, overly stereotyped.

So much so that for a while I thought I was reading a Johnathan Swift-like satire. There is the New Israel colony full of wealthy Jews, the corrupt trade union colony where member union fees are spent by the union bosses on their own earthly pleasures. And then there are the indigenous people, the Bleekmen, lazy noble savages, pushed back into the inhospitable FDR mountain range that has no obvious value. The UN has bureaucratic control over movement between the colonies and the FDR wilderness, as well as transport to and from earth.

I had an audio version from the Talking Books library. It was recorded in 1986. Hopefully the use of the N-word has been edited out. I found it disturbing. It was used in a matter-of-fact way, by the writer in his description of the Bleekmen, and not by any character in the story, so there was no excuse and its use was either due to racism or ignorance.

The story centers around the idea that schizophrenics are able to move through time. This is not realised by the Earth immigrants, but the indigenous Bleekmen seem to be aware; unaware until the villain of the piece goes back in time and decides to buy land in the FDR mountains, knowing that the price will rise as the government will open it up for industrial development.

No need to say any more. It was readable enough not to throw away. The stereotyping is even-handed and apart from the use of the N-word there’s no overt racism. There are the usual prejudices common in the sixties. No excuse but it is what it is.

The moral of this story is that Dick-heads have been around for a while and there’s no likelihood that they will vanish with time. ( )

Published in 1964 Martian Time Slip is one of the many Philip K Dick novels in the masterwork series and I find Dick at the top of his game with this one.
It is set on the planet Mars, which has been colonised for some years, however despite the advertising life is tough. Water is strictly rationed, colonists cannot be self sufficient and so rely on expensive imports from earth. The earlier enthusiasm for a new life on a new planet is faltering despite issues of overcrowding on earth. Jack Bohlen is a repair man flying around the desolate planet patching up faltering machinery. Arnie Knott has become a powerful man in the colony and lures Jack to work for him. Jack has suffered from schizophrenia in the past and contact with a neighbours ten year old son who is currently totally uncomunicative is drawing Jack back to another bout of illness. Mars has an indigenous population (Bleekmen) something like the aborigines in Australia and the colonists confine them to the desert, however they have a latent power and can communicate with those children whose mental illness is severe in nature. There is a rumour that important mineral deposits have been discovered in the desert and speculators from earth are arriving to buy up the land. Arnie Knott believes that he can make use of the Bleekmen and the schizophrenics to beat the speculators to the land grab.

The time slip in the title of the book refers to the idea that the schizophrenics live outside of time and may have the power, when harnessed with the Bleekmen to slip backwards in time. Philip K Dick slowly reveals this narrative as he concentrates on setting out the lives of a few of the inhabitants. I enjoyed his portrayal of most of the characters especially Arnie Knott and Jack Bohlen, however it was his experiments with the narrative drive that was most eye catching. He repeats certain scenes from different points of view as though there has been a slippage of time not quite flashbacks but interruptions in the linear narrative. They are not intrusive and easy enough to follow when the reader understands what is happening. Three major themes emerge; the ravages of time on people and buildings, the colonists failure to understand or adapt to their environment and the treatment of people with severe mental illnesses.

The world building of the earlier chapters is effective enough and the characters that populate the book are believable. There is the mystery of the Bleekmen and the machinations of Arnie Knott leading to the narrative climax, this was more than enough to keep me reading as well as some interesting comments on education, loneliness and the sex lives of people living in harsh conditions. 4 stars. ( )

For me this is a classic example of a book being less than the sum of its parts. Just didn't live up to the promise of its blurb.

It's also very typical of Dick's work: the women characters, well, have no character. And there are these odd caricatures of Aboriginal people who are the mystical Natives of Mars... just depicted in a super racist way... I'm surprised that that's possible for a race that doesn't actually exist. ( )

Great book, but uncomfortable bigoted language in parts mainly at beginning and end. Without that it would get a full additional star. ( )

Por um lado, um retrato aterrorizante de um processo contagioso de esquizofrenia, com um manejo genial da noção de realidade, dado que esta, por não ser tampouco estanque, também ter de se modular às confusões temporais oníricas e paralelismos esquizos (outros mundos que espirram no nosso). Mas mesmo que esse efeito seja obtido, em especial ao final, na incursão de Arnie ao passado, o livro sofre por ser um retrato fiel da sociedade de sua época, sob os olhos machistas de Dick. De modo que boa parte das caracterizações tornam-se testemunho datado dos anos 60 estadunidenses, mas não de modo sutil. ( )