One of his neighbors points out that his boat has no sails or engine, something he hadn’t considered. Just as he is facing despair over wasting his time and energy building something so pointless it begins to rain. 

Cast of characters

• Ernest Elwood – the titular builder
• Liz – Elwood’s wife
• Bob and Toddy – Elwood’s sons
• Joe Hunt – Elwood’s neighbor
• Jack Fredericks, Charlie, Ann Pike – Elwood’s co-workers

The post The Builder appeared first on the world Dick made.

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

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Dick often borrowed from his other mainstream books, probably raiding them for ideas since they had remained unpublished.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

The post Puttering About in a Small Land appeared first on the world Dick made.

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

The post Gather Yourselves Together appeared first on the world Dick made.

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

The post In Milton Lumky Territory appeared first on the world Dick made.

Twenty-five-year-old Stuart Hadley drifts aimlessly through the summer of 1952 in Oakland. He works as a salesman at Modern TV Sales and Service, dabbles with a religious group, finds himself involved with a woman who publishes a political magazine and has a complete breakdown after he gets promoted to manager of the TV store.

I thought this one was interesting. I could identify with Hadley’s existential crisis, at least until he goes crazy and becomes a rage monster. In the end the world defeats Hadley. He survives but without the passion of his earlier dreams.

Cast of characters

• Jim Fergesson – owner of Modern TV Sales and Service. Jim Fergesson is also the owner of Modern TV Sales and Service in Dr. Bloodmoney and it’s the name of the mechanic in Humpty Dumpty in Oakland
• Alice Fergesson – Jim’s wife
• Stuart Hadley – salesman at Modern TV Sales and Service
• Ellen Hadley – Stuart’s wife
• Theodore Beckheim – speaker for the Society of the Watchmen of Jesus
• Olsen – serviceman at Modern TV Sales and Service
• Joe Tampini – salesman at Modern TV Sales and Service
• Dave Gold – Hadley’s Jewish left-wing college friend
• Laura Gold – Dave’s wife
• Marsha Frazier – editor of the political magazine Succubus
• Horace Wakefield – runs a flower shop near Modern TV Sales and Service
• Sally Sorrell – Stuart’s sister
• Bob Sorrell – Sally’s husband

The post Voices from the Street appeared first on the world Dick made.

Runcible and Dombrosio, neighbors in the small California town of Carquinez, don’t like each other. When Dombrosio invites his black mechanic over for dinner, it costs Runcible, the local realtor, a sale. Runcible retaliates by calling the police on Dombrosio when he sees him driving drunk, and Dombrosio loses his license. Dombrosio then plants a fake fossil of a Neanderthal skull on Runcible’s land which Runcible tries to exploit for the publicity until he realizes he’s been had. It turns out Dombrosio dug up the malformed skull from the unmarked grave of someone who lived in old Carquinez several generations ago. These chupper-jawed people resembled Neanderthals because of a deformity caused by poisoned water in the area. At the end of the story, Runcible invests everything he has in order to fix the tainted Carquinez water supply.

Dick filled this novel with thoroughly unlikable people. Dombrosio rapes his wife in order to get her pregnant so she can no longer work, because it insults his manhood or something to have her support him after he quits his job. He also throws a chair at her, but they stay together. The 1950s were messed up.

Dick wrote this one in 1960, and it was the first of his unpublished mainstream novels to be published after he died. He would reuse the idea of the Neanderthal chuppers in one of the many subplots of The Simulacra.

Cast of characters

• Leo Runcible – realtor in Carquinez
• Janet Runcible – Leo’s wife
• Walter Dombrosio – package designer at the Lausch Company
• Sherry Dombrosio – Walt’s wife
• Norm Lausch – owner of the Lausch Company
• Chuck Halpin – Walt’s black mechanic
• Michael Wharton – a fourth grade teacher and fossil enthusiast
• Seth Faulk – reporter for the Carquinez newspaper
• Tom Heyes – Carquinez veternarian
• Dr. Freitas, Jack Bowman & Dudley Sharp – University of California anthropologists investigating Runcible’s skull

The post The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike appeared first on the world Dick made.

In Mary and the Giant, twenty-year-old Mary Anne jumps from job to job and man to man trying to figure out her life in the small California town of Pacific Park. She first has a fling with the black singer Carleton Tweany before getting involved with recently-arrived Joseph Schilling who has decided to open a record shop.

It’s creepy for fifty-something Schilling to have an interest in Mary Anne, but she seems to be a willing participant in the relationship until she begins to act like he’s a monster, even though he’s the only somewhat sympathetic person in this otherwise dismal book.

By the end of the story Mary Anne decides to run off to San Francisco with the idiot piano player Paul Nitz, and in the last chapter we see they started a family.

Cast of characters

• Mary Anne Reynolds – our protagonist. A twenty-year-old girl
• Joseph Schilling – businessman who opens a record store in Pacific Park
• Max Figuera– Schilling’s business partner
• David Gordon – Mary’s fiancé
• Taft Eaton – owner of the Lazy Wren bar
• Paul Nitz – pianist at the Lazy Wren
• Carleton B. Tweany – black singer at the Lazy Wren
• Ed and Rose Reynolds – Mary’s parents
• Beth and Danny Coombs – a couple who follows Schilling to Pacific Park. Beth had a brief affair with Schilling in the past
• Chad Lemming – a local folk singer
• Leland Partridge – hosts a party for music wholesalers in San Francisco
• Sid Hethel – an obese composer at Partridge’s party

The post Mary and the Giant appeared first on the world Dick made.

Al Miller, a used car salesman on a lot next to Jim Fergesson’s auto repair garage, has to figure out what to do with his life when the old man decides to sell the shop and retire. Through the businessman Chris Harman, Jim finds out about an investment in an auto repair business in the expanding area around Marin County. Paranoid Al, convinced Harmon is a crook and a swindler, does all he can to sabotage Jim’s plans.

Dick has a tendency toward over description in these mainstream books. I prefer his sci-fi when he can get a trip done with something like ‘the flapple flew from San Francisco to New York in an hour’ instead of this where he spends five pages on the old man’s uninteresting drive on the highway out to Marin County.

The book picks up once it focuses more on down-on-his-luck Al rather than Jim Fergesson. It’s not bad, but just like The Broken Bubble, there isn’t a whole lot to recommend.

Cast of characters

• Jim Fergesson – owner of an auto repair garage
• Lydia Fergesson – Jim’s wife
• Al Miller – runs Al’s Auto Sales next to Jim’s garage
• Julie Miller – Al’s wife
• Mrs. Lane – a black realtor helping Al find a new spot for his auto lot
• Chris Harmon – runs Teach Records. Suggests that Jim invest in a new repair shop in Marin County
• Bob Ross – works for his father-in-law Chris Harmon
• Boris Tsarnas – Jim and Lydia’s lawyer
• The Dolittles – middle-class black family. Mrs. Dolittle rents to Al and Julie

The post Humpty Dumpty in Oakland appeared first on the world Dick made.

A San Francisco radio DJ and his ex-wife get involved with a teenaged married couple, and in a subplot, a woman lets herself get kicked around inside a plastic ball for the amusement of some drunk optometrists at a convention party.

It lacks a hook to get excited about, although the relationships felt real. Maybe a touch melodramatic at times but definitely not terrible like I kind of expected.

Cast of characters

• Jim Briskin – radio DJ for KOIF. Jim Briskin is also the name of the news-clown in The Crack In Space
• Patricia Gray – Jim’s ex-wife
• Bob Posin – salesman for KOIF
• Art Emmanual – eighteen-year-old married kid befriended by Jim
• Rachel – Art’s wife
• Ferde Heinke and Joe Mantila – Art’s friends
• Ludwig Grimmelman – mid-twenties. Head of some kind of revolutionary group that Art and his friends belong to
• Luke Sharpstein – owns Looney Luke’s Used Car Lot. This character was repurposed for The Simulacra
• Nat Emmanual – Art’s older brother. Owner of Nat’s Auto sales.
• Hugh Collins – wealthy San Francisco optometrist
• Tony Vacuhhi – Bob Posin’s acquaintance
• Thisbe Holt – the girl in the plastic bubble at Hugh Collin’s party

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