Everything else about Mercer is a mystery, but the State Department suspects he is an extraterrestrial connected somehow to jazz harpist Ray Meritan. In cahoots with the Chinese Communists they send Meritan’s mistress Joan Hiashi to Cuba under a ruse hoping she will connect Meritan to Mercer. 

While performing on a live TV broadcast Meritan exposes himself as a follower of Mercer, Joan is arrested in Cuba as a political agitator and all empathy boxes are rounded up and destroyed. Meritan avoids getting captured and finds one last remaining empathy box. When he grabs the handles he is connected telepathically to Bogart Crofts of the State Department who had been holding onto the empathy box at the same time. The state department knows then that Meritan is not Mercer but intend to arrest him anyway. Mercerism is illegal and with all the empathy boxes destroyed they are confident the religion will be eradicated. 

The state department releases Joan as bait to find out where Meritan is. When Meritan meets up with Joan they expect a hard time staying one step in front of the government, but help comes from a strange peddler who surreptitiously passes them instructions on how to assemble an empathy box out of ordinary household objects. 

The Mercerism religion makes an appearance later in Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Cast of characters

• Bogart Crofts – works for the State Department
• Joan Hiashi – Asian scholar in Zen Buddhism. Joan Hiashi is also in The Ganymede Takeover
• Ray Meritan – a telepath and jazz harpist suspected by the State Department to be Wilbur Mercer
• Douglas Herrick – Secretary of State
• Mr. Lee – a Chinese telepath

The post The Little Black Box appeared first on the world Dick made.

They go to meet Senator Waldo, the author of the Anti-Immunity Bill, to try to convince him to kill the legislation, but it turns out Waldo has been a teep all along. Cutter then spills his secret: the teeps aren’t the next step in human evolution as everyone believes, but rather they are just freaks from a radiation blast who are unable to reproduce. Cutter is more than willing to be scanned by the teeps at that point so that this news can be disseminated to everyone.

“The Hood Maker” was adapted for the first season of Electric Dreams. They tweaked the story to be more about the conflict between the non-telepaths and the oppressed teeps, only one of whom has just started working with the government to scan the citizens. Unlike a lot of the other chintzy episodes in the series this one visually looks great. All the telepaths have a facial birth mark of sorts to identify them, and the ‘hoods’ are actual creepy-looking hoods instead of some silly metal band.

Cast of characters

• Clearance Director Ross
• Peters – works for Director Ross in Clearance
• Ernest Abbud – a telepath employed by Clearance
• Walter Franklin – Director of the Federal Resources Commission
• James Cutter – the titular Hood Maker
• Senator Waldo – author of the Anti-Immunity Bill in Congress

The post The Hood Maker 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.

On an expedition rounding up Martian animals Captain Franco encounters the wub, a pig-like creature he intends to eat even after it turns out to be an intelligent form of life with a tendency toward philosophical discussion.

Cast of characters

• The wub – a pig-like telepathic extra terrestrial
• Captain Franco – a wrangler of alien lifeforms
• Peterson, Jones, French – crew members aboard Franco’s ship

The post Beyond Lies the Wub appeared first on the world Dick made.

In 2203 a Quizmaster, chosen randomly from over six billion people, rules the solar system. This Quizmaster has to fend off assassins, and even with the protection of a telepathic corps, it’s rare for a Quizmaster to stay in power very long. Reese Verrick though manages to hold onto the position for ten years until lowly electronics repairman Leon Cartwright figures out how to game the system.

The main story is entertaining in the pulpy style of the 50s even if it does get bogged down in a lot of jargon (bottle twitching, Minimax M-game theory) that isn’t very well explained. It has one too many things going on with a side story about a mythical tenth planet, supposedly discovered by some crackpot, whose followers travel to the far reaches of the solar system to try to find it.

Dick said that he borrowed from the other sci-fi greats of the era when writing this one, like A.E. Van Vogt (I assume that’s where the wooden characterization comes from) and Alfred Bester whose The Demolished Man directly inspires the telepathic corps that protects the Quizmaster. The speechifying Ted Benteley has a lot in common with the angry and idealistic Stuart Hadley from Voices From the Street which Dick wrote just before writing Solar Lottery.

Cast of characters

• Ted Benteley – pledges allegiance to Verrick without knowing Cartwright is the new Quizmaster
• Reese Verrick – the former Quizmaster
• Eleanor Stevens – Verrick’s secretary. A former telepath who gives up her ability to stay on with Verrick
• Peter Wakeman – one of the Quizmaster’s teeps
• Leon Cartwright – the new Quizmaster
• John Preston – deceased figurehead of the Prestonites. Preached of a undiscovered tenth planet called the Flame Disc
• Rita O’neill – a Prestonite. Cartwright’s niece
• Major Shaeffer – part of the Quizmaster’s teep Corps
• Herbert Moore – a biochemist working for Verrick
• Al and Laura Davis – Ted Benteley’s longtime friends
• Keith Pellig – the assassin chosen by the Convention
• Bill Konklin & Mary Uzich – Prestonites on board the ship to the Flame Disc
• Captain Groves – the pilot of the ship on the way to the Flame Disc
• Judge Waring – the judge who decides whether Benteley broke his oath to Verrick

The post Solar Lottery appeared first on the world Dick made.

Our Friends from Frolix 8 is about as middle of the road as you can get with Dick’s minor works. I remembered almost nothing about it before I reread it. It’s redeemed by the oddball telepath and supreme leader of Earth Willis Gram, but only somewhat, and if you replaced sad-sack Nick Appleton with the protagonist from a dozen of Dick’s other stories you probably wouldn’t notice a difference.

Cast of characters

• Nick Appleton – our protag. He’s employed as a tire regroover, an odd profession since the squibs in the book are flying vehicles
• Bobby Appleton – Nick’s son
• Kleo Appleton – Nick’s wife
• Thors Provoni – left Earth to look for help in the far reaches of outer space
• Willis Gram – Council Chairman of the Extraordinary Committee for Public Safety (Unusual)
• Lloyd Barnes – the police director (New Man)
• Eric Cordon – Under Man organizer and propaganda writer
• Earl Zeta – Nick’s boss (Under Man)
• Charlotte Boyer – a sixteen-year-old Under Man girl who gets involved with Nick
• Denny – Charlotte’s boyfriend (Under Man)
• Morgo Rahn Wilc – the Frolixan friend who accompanies Thors Provoni back to Earth
• Amos Ild – one of the world’s smartest New Men

The post Our Friends from Frolix 8 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.