Max Fischer has somehow figured out a way to once again disable the supercomputer Unicephalon 40-D, regain the Presidency and imprison the news clown Jim Briskin. Media mogul Sebastian Hada wants Briskin to prop up the failing CULTURE programming on his network which is of course difficult with Briskin in jail. 

While plotting how to get Briskin out and airing nonstop editorials on his network about how Briskin must be released Hada pursues a folksinger named Ragland Park for CULTURE. Hada soon realizes that Rags has a latent ability to seemingly predict (or create) the future through his ballads and with the help of his psychoanalyst gets Rags to write a ballad where Fischer frees Briskin. 

Fischer does release Briskin from prison, and after Rags performs his ballad on CULTURE everyone, including Fischer, seems to have a grasp on what Ragland Park can do. Everyone that is except Rags himself who remains clueless of his abilities. He writes a ballad about the FBI killing him and then that’s what happens, although Fischer thinks it’s his own psionic talents that affected the outcome.

Cast of characters

• Jim Briskin – a news clown imprisoned by the FBI after what happened in “Stand-by.” Briskin shows up later in Dick’s novel The Crack in Space
• Sebastian Hada – a media mogul 
• Dr. Yasumi – Hada’s psychoanalyst
• Nat Kaminsky – Hada’s production chief
• Maximilian Fischer – the President of the United States
• Leon Lait – Fischer’s cousin and Attorney General

The post What’ll We Do with Ragland Park appeared first on the world Dick made.

The few who have psionic powers live outside the communes and struggle with how to guide normal humans toward a working society when the humans don’t want their help. Jack repeatedly travels back in time and tries to warn the U.S. chief of staff of the armed forces about the outcome of the war, but he doesn’t have any luck preventing what will happen. The other psionics in present day are more concerned with how to sustain peace going forward. 

In the end the communes stop the free flow of civilians to the village where the psionics live. Anyone who leaves the shelter of the commune won’t be able to return, and only time will tell if the humans will accept the help of the psionics to rebuild civilization. 

Cast of characters

• Ed and Barbara Garby – a couple with a sick child in the commune
• Porter – a precog
• Jack – a time traveler
• Thelma – a healer
• Doris – a parakineticist
• Stephen – a telepath
• General Earnest Butterford – chief of staff of the U.S. armed forces before the war

The post Psi-man, Heal My Child! appeared first on the world Dick made.

Somehow the precog Curt locates the first known Anti-Psi Pat on the underdeveloped Proxima VI and with the help of the parakinetic Big Noodle brings her to Proxima III. The head of the telepathic corps sees a threat from an Anti-Psi who could block their abilities, and he has Pat killed just as he had done with the Anti-Psis he had found out about in the past.

Curt has Big Noodle send him to Prox VI where he hopes to find a Psi who can reanimate Pat. There he runs into an old man who he encountered several times earlier and discovers it is his son Tim. They believed Tim didn’t have Psi powers, except it turns out the offspring of the two precogs is a new class of Psi who has the ability to travel in time. Tim, to wrap this up, somehow manipulates the timeline and brings Pat back to life.

Dick would reuse some of these ideas along with the Anti-Psi character Pat Connley/Conley in Ubik. 

Cast of characters

• Tim Purcell – an eight-year-old child of two precogs
• Julie Purcell – Tim’s mother and a precog 
• Curt Purcell– Tim’s father and a precog
• Fairchild – a Norm-class bureaucrat
• Reynolds – chief of the telepathic Corps
• Sally – a thirteen-year-old girl and advanced Psi
• Big Noodle – a parakinetic Psi with the mind of a three-year-old. Big Noodle is also the name of Earth’s vast artificial intelligence in The Divine Invasion
• Pat Connley – an Anti-Psi with a counter talent against the telepaths. Pat Conley is also the name of the Anti-Precog in Ubik

The post A World of Talent appeared first on the world Dick made.

This published version is too novelistic, at least by modern screenplay standards, but if it wasn’t there wouldn’t be much of a draw in reading a screenplay for an unproduced movie. It seems to exist only for the curiosity seekers and completists among us, since the story and characters are nearly the same as in the book, except for some additional scenes at the end where Ella Runciter is reborn.

Ubik does appear destined though to make it to the screen in some way or another. The producer of the film adaptation of A Scanner Darkly had optioned Ubik in the early 2000s, Michel Gondry was in the beginning stages of developing a movie in 2011, and in 2018 yet another screenplay was being developed with a new writer and producers.

Cast of characters

• Glen Runciter – owner of Runciter Associates, an anti-psi prudence organization
• Ella Runciter – Glen’s dead wife in half-life
• Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang – owner of Beloved Brethren Moratorium.
• Jory Miller – a dead fifteen-year-old boy in half-life cold-pac storage
• Raymond Hollis – employs telepaths. Runciter’s opposition
• G. G. Ashwood – one of Runciter’s telepaths
• Joe Chip – Runciter’s electrical tester
• Pat Conley– an anti-precog
• Stanton Mick – reclusive speculator and financier
• Zoe Wirt – Stanton Mick’s assistant
• Tippy Jackson, Edie Dorn, Al Hammond, John Ild, Francesca Spanish, Tito Apostos, Don Denny, Sammy Mundo, Wendy Wright, Fred Zafsky – Runciter’s inertials

The post Ubik: The Screenplay appeared first on the world Dick made.

After being swindled by one of these carnivals and losing most of their crops, members of a Martian settlement vow to get back at the next carnival that drops in. When another traveling sideshow visits they put their plan into action. A boy with psychokinetic powers cheats to help them snag a big prize, but the tiny figurines they win turn out to be an army of robots that soon take over their land like a plague.

The UN assumes the robots were meant for something else and that the Martian colonists thwarted some grand nefarious carny plan by winning that game. But then the next traveling carnival arrives with more rigged games, including one with a prize of homeostatic traps that would capture the robots previously let loose, and Fred and the others just can’t seem to grasp the cycle of loss they are caught up in.

Cast of characters

• Bob Turk – member of the Martian settlement
• Hoagland Rae – the Martian settlement’s leader
• Fred Costner – a young boy from the Martian settlement with psychokinetic abilities
• Tony Costner – Fred’s dad
• General Mozart, General Wolff  – UN officers

The post A Game of Unchance appeared first on the world Dick made.

On Earth Chuck Rittersdorf is drawn into a plot involving the Alphanes and their quest to regain control of the moon. Mary Rittersdorf, a psychologist and Chuck’s estranged wife, travels to the moon to evaluate the inhabitants. Meanwhile Chuck gets involved with Bunny Hentman, a former criminal with ties to the Alphane government, who is currently working on Earth as a TV comic. He hires Chuck as a writer (apparently the scripts Chuck writes for CIA simulacra are gut-bustingly funny), but in reality Bunny is only using Chuck because of the connection to his wife.

Chuck eventually ends up on the Alphane moon, and the story wraps up with Chuck helping to convince the clans to accept Alphane rule as long as they aren’t put back into a mental hospital. Mary and Chuck tentatively resume their relationship (I forgot to mention Chuck was trying to kill Mary all this time with the use of a CIA simulacrum) and they both have mental evaluations. Turns out Mary is a Dep, but Chuck, who has a clean bill of mental health, decides to start a new clan on the moon called the Norms.

Clans of the Alphane Moon is filled with some of Dick’s most unique characters like the Heeb mystics and the telepathic Ganymedean slime Lord Running Clam, so it’s too bad we spend most of the book with Chuck, a typically bland PKD protagonist dealing with suicidal impulses and marital problems.

Cast of characters

• Gabriel Baines – the Pare delegate
• Howard Straw – the Mans delegate
• Jacob Simion – the Heeb delegate
• Annette Golding – the Poly delegate
• Ingrid Hibbler – the Ob Com delegate
• Omar Diamond – the Skitz delegate
• Dino Waters – the Dep delegate
• Chuck Rittersdorf – our protagonist. Programs simulacra for the CIA
• Mary Rittersdorf – Chuck’s estranged wife. A psychologist
• Bunny Hentman – a TV comedian
• Jerry Feld – producer of Bunny’s show
• Joan Triste – a psi capable of rewinding time
• Lord Running Clam – Chuck’s Ganymedean neighbor
• Jack Elwood – Chuck’s CIA boss
• Roger London – Jack Elwood’s boss
• Pete Petri – Chuck’s scriptwriting coworker at the CIA
• Daniel Mageboom – the simulacrum sent to the Alphane moon with Mary
• Ignatz Ledebur – a Heeb mystic
• Sarah Apostoles – another Heeb mystic
• Calv Dark and Thursday Jones – Bunny’s writers
• RBX 303 – an Alphane connected to the Alphane government
• Patty Weaver – Bunny’s mistress

The post Clans of the Alphane Moon appeared first on the world Dick made.

In The Game Players of Titan radiation from a nuclear war has wiped out much of Earth’s population. The remaining people, most of whom are unable to reproduce, gather together to play a Monopoly-like game where they win controlling deeds to American cities and pair off with spouses with the hope of finding the ‘luck’ to conceive children.

A race of aliens from the Saturn moon Titan has colonized Earth, but these telepathic vugs have problems of their own as a faction of moderates feuds with extremists with psionic powers who have infiltrated Earth disguised as humans. Pete Garden stumbles upon this secret one night during a drug-fueled bender celebrating the luck he found with his new wife. This leads to a showdown on Titan with the game-players of Earth and the vugs who play their own version of the game.

I have to make a note about the Rushmore Effect, because I love it. It’s a kind of limited A.I. given to all inanimate objects. Tea kettles and ice machines say ‘thank you’ and cars and elevators have polite and objective conversations with people, all except for Joe Schilling’s car which is cantankerous and seems to hate him.

Cast of characters

• Pete Garden – our protagonist. Member of Pretty Blue Fox and former Bindman of Berkeley, California
• Freya – Pete’s former wife and member of Pretty Blue Fox
• Jack Blau, Clem Gaines, Bill Calumine, Silvanus Angst, Stuart Marks– Bindmen who play with Pretty Blue Fox
• Jerome Luckman – Bindman of New York who purchases the title to Berkeley
• Walt Remington – Pretty Blue Fox member responsible for the Berkeley title ending up with Luckman
• Dotty Luckman – Luckman’s wife
• Joe Schilling – record store owner and former Bindman of New York. Lost to Luckman. Joseph Schilling is also the name of the record store owner in Mary and the Giant
• Dave Mutreaux – Luckman’s precog
• Sid Mosk – Luckman’s secretary
• Patricia McClain – former B barred from the game because she’s a telepath. Pete’s neighbor in San Rafael
• Allan McClain – Pat McClain’s husband
• Mary Anne McClain – Patricia’s 18-year-old daughter with powerful psionic powers. Her name was repurposed from Mary and the Giant (unpublished when this book came out) along with Joe Schilling
• Nats Katz – popular tv recording artist
• U.S. Cummings – the vug District Commissioner
• Carol Holt – Pete’s new wife
• E.B. Black – the vug police officer investigating Luckman’s death
• Wade Hawthorne – the Terran police officer investigating Luckman’s death
• Laird Sharp – Pete’s attorney
• E.R. Philipson – a psychiatrist
• Rothman – leader of the group of psis

The post The Game-Players of Titan appeared first on the world Dick made.

In 1992 Glen Runciter’s anti-psionic prudence organization duels with Raymond Hollis’s group of telepaths and precogs. Runciter’s employees end up stuck in the simulated reality of half-life storage after Hollis lures them to the moon and attempts to kill them. The group is tormented by a powerful fifteen-year-old half-lifer, and Runciter, still alive on the outside, tries to help them as time inside half-life regresses into the past (similar to the drug-induced time travel in Now Wait for Last Year).

It sounds absurd in summary, but the book is stuffed with some of Dick’s funniest and best ideas while dealing with his prevalent theme of the nature of reality.

Cast of characters

• Glen Runciter – owner of Runciter Associates, an anti-psi prudence organization
• Ella Runciter – Glen’s twenty-year-old dead wife in half-life
• Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang – owner of Beloved Brethren Moratorium.  Also the owner of Beloved Brethren Mortuary in “What the Dead Men Say”
• Jory Miller – a dead fifteen-year-old boy in half-life cold-pac storage
• Raymond Hollis – employs telepaths. Runciter’s opposition
• G. G. Ashwood – one of Runciter’s telepaths
• Joe Chip – Runciter’s electrical tester
• Pat Conley– an anti-precog
• Stanton Mick – reclusive speculator and financier
• Zoe Wirt – Stanton Mick’s assistant
• Tippy Jackson, Edie Dorn, Al Hammond, John Ild, Francesca Spanish, Tito Apostos, Don Denny, Sammy Mundo, Wendy Wright, Fred Zafsky – Runciter’s inertials who travel to Luna

The post Ubik appeared first on the world Dick made.

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”

The post The Zap Gun appeared first on the world Dick made.

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

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