The Zap Gun eventually won me over with its loopy charm. In 2004 Wes-bloc and Peep-East are locked in a cold war, but they only pretend to build the weapons that keep the other countries at bay.

Weapons fashion designers on both sides create sketches while in a trance-like state. The public believes these sketches are used to construct lethal weapons, but in reality the designs are just turned into consumer gadgets and toys. When aliens attack, the two sides must join together to find a real weapon that can save Earth.

Dick wrote The Zap Gun while he was also writing The Penultimate Truth. In that one he identified with the Yance-man speechwriter hacks, and in this one he writes about Lars Powderdry who has a deep-seated fear he will enter one of his drug-induced trances, return without anything to show for it and be discovered as a fraud.

A lot of the Vintage paperbacks feature the Village Voice blurb that calls Dick the poor man’s Thomas Pynchon. I’d say this is Dick at his most Pynchony with all the goofy names (Surely G. Febbs, Lars Powderdry, Dr. Todt aka Dr. Dead in German) and a plot with an off-kilter sense of humor that takes a while to sort out.

Cast of characters

• Lars Powderdry – our protagonist. A weapons fashion designer for Wes-bloc
• Lilo Topchev – Peep-East’s weapons fashion designer
• Dr. Todt and Elvira Funt – Lars’s medical team
• Maren Faine – Lars’s mistress
• General Nitz – the Commander in Chief on Natsec’s board
• Marshal Paponovich – Soviet Marshal and head of SeRKeb
• Don Packard – a KACH-man
• Surely G. Febbs – the newest concomody on the UN-W Natsec Board
• Pete Freid – ranking engineer at Lanferman Associates
• Aksel Kaminsky – a Soviet official
• Jack Lanferman – owner of Lanferman Associates
• Vincent Klug – toymaker who tries to convince Lanferman to partner with him on  prototypes
• Major Geschenko – head of the Soviet KVB surveillance team
• Ricardo Hastings – a so-called war veteran who traveled back in time from 2068

Other things to know

• Wes-bloc – the Western nations
• Peep-East – the Sino-Soviet bloc of countries
• KACH – a planet-wide private police agency
• SeRKeb – Peep-East’s governing body
• UN-W Natsec – the governing board of Wes-bloc
• Lanferman Associates – the firm that produces prototypes from Lars’s trance sketches
• pursaps – pure saps or poor saps. The majority of the public
• cogs – the cognoscenti. The ruling class who know the truth about the “weapons”

Dr. Futurity (not to be confused with the much better Dr. Bloodmoney) tells the story of Dr. Jim Parsons who is snatched away from 2012 and brought to the year 2405. The world of the future has no need for doctors as they have embraced death and eugenics. Their society is organized into tribes represented by animal totems. These tribes compete in contests to determine future generations as the winning tribes are able to contribute a greater number of zygotes to the Soul Cube. I feel stupid writing this down.

The Wolf Tribe has access to a time travel device, and they need the medical know-how of Parsons to save the life of Corith who was shot by an arrow in 1579 during a botched attempt to travel back in time to kill Sir Francis Drake. His plan was to erase the next 500 years of white supremacy by preventing England from taking North America from the Native Americans. Anyway… at least he wasn’t trying to stop Hitler.

The whole thing is full of plot holes, time travel and otherwise. Dick tries to explain away some of these issues, but the poorly-written story remains muddled and not very interesting.

Cast of characters

• Dr. Jim Parsons – our protagonist
• Wade and Icara – members of an illegal political group advocating women’s rights
• Al Stenog – the Director of the Fountain
• Loris – Mother superior of the Wolf Tribe
• Helmar – Loris’s brother
• Corith – Loris’s father. He travels back to 1579 in an attempt to kill Sir Francis Drake.
• Jepthe – Loris’s mother
• Nixina – mother of Jepthe and Corith

Other things to know

• Shupos – delinquent children who work as government enforcers
• Soul Cube – contains all the zygotes of the human race
• The Fountain – government building where the Soul Cube is kept
• Nova Albion – Northern California landing spot of Sir Francis Drake in 1579

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is the last book Dick wrote, published just after he died in 1982. I thought it was terrific, although I’m someone who enjoys the exploration of theology that makes up most of the plot.

Our narrator, a woman named Angel Archer, tells about her father-in-law Bishop Tim Archer who has a crisis of faith after the discovery of an ancient document casts a doubt on Jesus’s divinity. It opens on the day of John Lennon’s murder in 1980, but the majority of the story is flashbacks.

This one is considered one of Dick’s “mainstream” novels, and I wish he had been given a chance to write more books like this. It’s funny and smart and grounded in the real world of Berkeley, California.

Cast of characters

• Timothy Archer – Episcopalian Bishop of California
• Jeff Archer – Timothy’s son
• Angel Archer – our narrator. Jeff’s wife and Timothy’s daughter-in-law
• Kristen Lundborg – Angel’s best friend and Timothy’s mistress
• Bill Lundborg – Kristen’s schizophrenic son
• Edgar Barefoot – hosts a radio show about mysticism on KPFA in Berkeley
• Fred Hill – owner of the Bad Luck restaurant. Possible KGB agent
• Dr. Rachel Garret – the elderly medium they use in an attempt to talk to Jeff from beyond the grave

Other things to know

• The Zadokites – an obscure Jewish sect
• The Zadokite documents – fictional documents that predate Jesus by 200 years.
  Supposedly they contain “Q” which is the basis for the synoptic gospels in the Bible. The Zadokite fragments, part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, are a real thing, but the rest was invented by Dick

I picked up this copy at the library. The author photo on the back, credited to Nicole Panter, shows Dick wearing a Rozz Tox t-shirt, a reference to Gary Panter’s Rozz Tox Manifesto that argues artists should embrace capitalism. Nicole Panter was the manager for The Germs, and Gary won three Emmys for his set designs for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

Some Rozz Tox quotes:

• Capitalism for good or ill is the river in which we sink or swim.
• Waiting for art talent scouts? There are no art talent scouts. Face it, no one will seek you out. No one gives a shit.
• Law: If you want better media, go make it.

The setup of The Cosmic Puppets wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of The Twilight Zone. It’s set in 1953. Ted Barton returns to the small Virginia town where he grew up and finds that everything—the buildings, people and even his own past—has changed.

This one is short, coming in at under 150 pages. It has a great hook, although Dick never really explains what the showdown between the two cosmic entities of good and evil ultimately has to do with the sleepy town of Millgate.

Cast of characters

• Ted Barton – our protagonist
• Peggy Barton – Ted’s wife
• Peter Trilling – the antagonist. A young boy from Millgate
• Mary Meade – a young girl from Millgate
• Mabel Trilling – Peter’s mother and owner of a Millgate boarding house
• Dr. Ernest Meade – Mary’s father. Operates a private hospital in Millgate called Shady House
• William Christopher – a town drunk and the first person Ted comes across who is aware of the change to Millgate

Other things to know

• Ahriman – the destroyer
• Ormazd – the builder. Better known in Zoroastrianism as Ahura Mazda

Set in 2055… at least before the drug-induced time travel kicks in.

Once again we have an old man kept alive by artiforgs, although the description of 130-year-old Virgil Ackerman as a slight, hermaphroditic creature is almost the exact opposite of how Stanton Brose is described in The Penultimate Truth. Rich men like Ackerman build simulated worlds on Mars to recreate their childhoods down to the smallest detail. It doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the story, but it’s still hilarious as Dick calls them regressive babylands.

Dick is airing out some issues with women with this book. His scheming, mentally unbalanced Kathy Sweetscent is one of the most caustic depictions of a wife that I can recall in any of his novels. The whole thing is ultimately about whether our protagonist, the unfortunately named Eric Sweetscent, will stay with his wife or not, even though he knows she is destined for the psychiatric hospital.

At one point it seems we will have yet another simulacrum of an authority figure just like in The Penultimate Truth and The Simulacra, (in this case one of the UN Secretary General), but that turns out not to be the case.

Some unexpected twists and a well-rounded world leader in Gino Molinari make this one worth the read.

Cast of characters

• Virgil Ackerman – founder of Tijuana Fur & Dye Corp
• Dr. Eric Sweetscent – artiforg surgeon who works for Virgil Ackerman
• Katherine Sweetscent – Eric’s wife who works for TF&D as an antique collector
• Bruce Himmel – quality control inspector at TF&D
• Jonas Ackerman – Virgil’s great-grandnephew
• Phyllis Ackerman – Virgil’s great-grandniece. On TF&D’s board of directors
• Gino Molinari – aka “the Mole”. Terra’s supreme elected leader and commander of its armed forces in the war against the reegs
• Minister Freneksy – Prime Minister of Lilistar
• Christian Plout – host of the JJ-180 drug party
• Marm Hastings – a San Francisco Taoist
• Harry Teagarden – chief of the Mole’s medical staff
• Mary Reineke – the Mole’s eighteen-year-old mistress
• Roger Corning – a ‘Starman
• Don Festenburg – advisor/speechwriter for Molinari
• Bert Hazeltine – representative of the Hazeltine corporation where JJ-180 is made

Other things to know

• Lilistar – dominant military power in the galaxy. Terra is their ally in their war against the reegs
• Reegs – creatures from Proxima at war with the ‘Starmen from Lilistar

Set in 2041. I never realized, before I started reading a lot of PKD books back to back to back, how fascinated he is with Nazis and World War II Germany.

Dick threw nearly everything he could think of into this one. The main storyline has an concept similar to The Penultimate Truth involving a simulacrum of the President, although the rest is stuffed with multiple subplots that include psionics, Neanderthals and an attempt to cure Hitler by sending a psychoanalyst back in time.

This novel has a million characters to keep track of, but the anxiety-causing commercials that buzz around like flies, used-car salesman who sell jalopies that travel to Mars and primitive alien life forms used on Earth as components in recording devices are all great.

The conclusion focuses on the least interesting subplot as a group of Neanderthals called chuppers from some different branch of the evolutionary tree gather around a television and watch as Homo sapiens destroy themselves in a war. The few Homo sapiens in the room with them have the grim realization this is the moment the chuppers have been waiting for. Just short of a classic as it doesn’t all come together in the end.

Cast of characters

• Richard Kongrosian – a Soviet pianist who plays Brahms and Schumann with his mind
• Dr. Egon Superb – a psychoanalyst
• Bertold Goltz – head of the Neo-nazi group Sons of Job
• Wilder Pembroke – commissioner of the National Police
• Rudolf Kalbfleisch – the current der Alte. A simulacrum
• Nicole Thibodeaux– the First Lady. Has a stature greater than the president in their matriarchal society
• Emil Stark – Prime Minister of Israel
• Janet Raimer – Chief White House talent scout
• Garth McRae – Assistant State Secretary
• Harold Slezak – White House A & R secretary
• Hermann Göring – founder of the Gestapo, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe and Hitler’s successor in World War II
• Vince Strikerock – works for Karp u. Sohnen
• Chic Strikerock – brother of Vince. Works for Frauenzimmer Associates.
• Julia Applequist– ex-wife of Vince Strikerock
• Maury Frauenzimmer – Chic’s boss. Owner of Frauenzimmer Associates
• Felix and Anton Karp – father and son owners of Karp u. Sohnen
• Ian Duncan – aimless member of the Abraham Lincoln apartment building
• Al Miller – Ian Duncan’s former friend and jug band partner. Works for Loony Luke’s jalopy business
• Patrick Doyle – skypilot for the Abraham Lincoln apartments
• Edgar Stone – scheming member of the Abraham Lincoln apartment building
• Nat Flieger – works at Electronic Musical Enterprise
• Jim Planck – employee of EME
• Leo Dondoldo – owner of EME
• Molly Dondoldo – Leo’s daughter

Other things to know

• USEA – United States of Europe and America
• McPhearson Act – outlaws the practice of psychoanalysis in favor of drug therapy
• der Alte – German for “the old man.” The president. Has been a simulacrum for the last fifty years
• Karp und Sohnen Werke – German for Karp and Sons. Built the Kalbfleisch simulacrum
• the Ges – Geheimnisträger. The upper social class. Possessors of the secret that der Alte is a simulacrum
• the Bes – Befehlträger. The lower social class
• Frauenzimmer Associates – simulacra construction company
• von Lessinger equipment – used for time travel