“I am made out of water. You wouldn’t know it, because I have it bound in. My friends are made out of water, too. All of them. The problem for us is that not only do we have to walk around without being absorbed by the ground but we also have to earn our livings.”

Confessions of a Crap Artist is the best of PKD’s mainstream novels and the only one to make it to market while he was still alive. He wrote it in late 1959, but it wasn’t finally published until 1975.

Jack Isidore moves to Marin County, California to live with his sister Fay. He gets involved with a local UFO group that believes the world will soon end while Fay cheats on her husband Charley with Nat Anteil who recently arrived in town.

The book deals with the same familiar themes as Dick’s other mainstream works (unhappy marriages and infidelity in Northern California) but manages to rise above the glumness of those other novels by weaving together Jack’s first-person point of view with Fay’s first-person POV and a third-person narrative dealing with Charley and Nat.

Cast of characters

• Jack Isidore – the titular crap artist
• Fay – Jack’s sister
• Charley Hume – Fay’s husband
• Nat and Gwen Anteil – a newlywed couple who recently moved to Point Reyes
• Claudia Hambro – head of the Drake’s Landing UFO group

The Ganymede Takeover is a forgettable collaboration Dick wrote with Ray Nelson in the mid-60s.

Worm-like, telepathic Ganymedeans have invaded Earth, and one of the few groups of humans still putting up a fight are the stupidly-named Neeg-parts, led by Percy X, in the hills of Tennessee. These Neeg-parts get ahold of some mind-warping technology designed for the U.N. and they finally fight off the Ganymedeans in the end.

Cast of characters

• Mekkis – a Ganymedean civilian administrator who takes control of the bale of Tennessee
• Koli – Military Administrator for the Ganymedeans. In control of the bale of Tennessee until Mekkis takes over
• The Oracle – a precog Ganymedean creech
• Percy X – leader of the Neeg-parts on Earth. A telepath
• Lincoln Shaw – Percy X’s second-in-command
• Joan Hiashi – intends to infiltrate the Neeg-parts on behalf of the Ganymedeans
• Paul Rivers – a psychiatrist with the World Psychiatric Association
• Gus Swenesgard – feudal baron of a plantation area in Tennessee
• Rudolph Balkani – Chief of the Bureau of Psychedelic Research

Nick and the Glimmung is Philip K. Dick’s lone children’s book. He wrote it in the late ‘60s, but it wasn’t published until 1988. After reading so many of his dour mainstream novels I forgot how deadpan and funny he can be.

Because there isn’t enough food to go around on Earth, it is illegal to own pets after 1992. Young Nick Graham owns a cat named Horace, but after it slips outside and gets exposed, Graham’s family decides to emigrate to Plowman’s Planet with the cat rather than let the cat be taken away.

Once on Plowman’s Planet the Grahams have to deal with the various local creatures who are fighting a war amongst themselves spurred on by the evil Glimmung. Horace gets snatched up several times by werjes and trobes, but in the end, Nick fends off Glimmung and is reunited with his cat.

Plowman’s Planet, with a similar group of alien creatures, is also the setting for Galactic Pot-Healer written shortly after this one.

Cast of characters

• Nick Graham– our protagonist
• Peter Graham – Nick’s father
• Helen Graham – Nick’s mother
• Horace – Nick’s cat
• Miss Juth – Nick’s teacher on Earth
• Mr. Deverest – a newspaper reporter on Earth writing about Nick and Horace
• Reg Frankis – a human colonist/scavenger on Plowman’s Planet
• Jack and Doris McKenna – neighbors on Plowman’s Planet

Other things to know

• One Summer Day –  Glimmung’s book that lists the weaknesses of every creature on Plowman’s Planet and can also predict the future. A similar book shows up in Lies, Inc.
• The Last and Final War – Glimmung’s book of propaganda
• wubs – a different sort of creature than the one in Dick’s short story “Beyond Lies the Wub.” This one can’t speak and communicates through the use of pre-printed cards
• The Grand Four – the printers, nunks, spiddles and humans united in a war against the trobes, father-things and werjes who fight on the side of Glimmung

Roger and Virginia Lindahl, a generally unhappy couple living in Los Angeles, decide to send their son Gregg to a boarding school several hours away. Roger meets one of the other mothers at the school and ends up having an affair. Like most of Dick’s mainstream novels that weren’t published until after he died, this one is cynical and downbeat. It’s likely the best of the bunch, although the bar is low… don’t get too excited.

Dick often borrowed from his other mainstream books, probably raiding them for ideas since they had remained unpublished. Modern TV Sales & Service (with a repairman named Olsen) first appeared in Voices from the Street and was again repurposed in Dr. Bloodmoney.

Cast of characters

• Roger Lindahl – owner of Modern TV Sales & Service in Los Angeles
• Virginia Lindahl – Roger’s wife
• Gregg – Roger and Virginia’s seven-year-old son
• Edna Alt – owner of Los Padres Valley School
• Liz Bonner – mother of two boys who attend Los Padres
• Chic Bonner – Liz’s husband
• Pete Bacciagalupi – salesman at Modern TV Sales & Service
• Olsen – repairman at Modern TV Sales & Service
• Teddy – Roger’s ex-wife
• Van Ecke – the math teacher at Los Padres
• Mrs. McGivern – the science teacher at Los Padres
• Marion Watson – Virginia’s mother
• Jules Neame – owner of the garden supply store next door to Modern TV
• Herb Tomford – floor manager of L & B Appliance Mart

Gather Yourselves Together is Dick’s first novel, written in the early 1950s but not published until 1994. An American metals company located in China is bought by the Chinese and three employees stay behind on the company’s premises in order to facilitate the transfer to the new owners.

Through flashbacks we find out Verne had a prior relationship with Barbara back in the U.S., and we learn that Carl is socially immature. He’s twenty-three but characterized more like someone closer to sixteen. It feels like a book written by someone only guessing how adult relationships work.

Cast of characters

• Carl Fitter, Barbara Mahler and Verne Tildon– our three protagonists
• Penny and Felix – Barbara’s friends in Castle
• Don Field – Verne’s acquaintance… Teddy’s boyfriend before she jumps ship to Verne
• Teddy – Verne’s girlfriend
• Bill Herndon – Verne’s other passenger on the way back to NY from Castle
• Jimmy Petio – Carl’s friend from summer camp when he was twelve
• Harry Liu – the Chinese man who arrives to make sure everything is in order before the changeover to the new owners

Other things to know

• The American Metals Development Company – aka ‘the Company’
• Castle – a resort town up the coast from Boston
• The Walker Club – a jazz club in NY

Milton Lumky was great. I don’t mean the book was great, because it wasn’t, but the character of Milton Lumky was terrific. It’s too bad he is only in his eponymous book for about forty pages.

Twenty-four-year-old Bruce Stevens passes through his small hometown near Boise, Idaho. At a party there he meets Susan Faine. Turns out she was his fifth grade teacher, but they get married even though she’s eleven years older than him. Bruce quits his job at a discount department store in Reno, and he helps her run her mimeograph shop in Boise.

On a tip from the traveling salesman Milton Lumky, Bruce picks up a load of imported typewriters in Seattle to sell in their store, but he neglects to notice they have a Spanish keyboard. First he tries to unload them to his old discount shop without telling them about the keyboards, but when Susan alerts his old boss, Bruce tries to change the keyboards over to a standard keyboard himself so he and Susan can still sell them for a profit. Behind Bruce’s back Susan arranges for his old boss to buy the typewriters from them, and even though they would break even, Bruce gets angry and leaves. The story wraps up on Bruce’s daydream where he imagines he and Susan open a shop in Denver after the success of their Boise store.

According to Dick’s foreword: ‘The ending is a happy one. What more can an author say? What more can he give?’

Cast of characters

• Bruce ‘Skip’ Stevens – our protagonist
• Susan Faine – owns a mimeograph shop in Boise. Bruce’s former fifth grade teacher
• Peg Googer – Bruce’s old girlfriend
• Ed von Scharf – Bruce’s boss at the C.B.B. discount department store in Reno
• Zoe de Lima – Susan’s business parter at R & J Mimeographing Service
• Taffy – Susan’s seven-year-old daughter
• Milton Lumky – a traveling salesmen in the western U.S.
• Cathy Hermes – Lumky’s friend in Pocatello, Idaho