Dr. Futurity download ebook

Considered by many the slightest of PKD's SF novels, "Dr. Futurity" (1960) brims with ideas Dick develops more fully and consistently in better works. "Dr. Futurity" was prompted by Ace editor Don Wollheim, who wanted an expansion of Dick's 1953 novelette "Time Pawn" (published for the first and only time in the Summer 1954 issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES). Wollheim likely knew an expanded version would be a perfect Ace Double fit (which it was, twice, in 1960 with John Brunner's "Slavers of Space" and again in 1972 with Dick's own "The Unteleported Man").

Usually classified as time travel yarn, the novel improves considerably after the first five chapters, which are almost verbatim from "Time Pawn." From this point "Dr. Futurity" becomes more interesting as a crackpot revenge fantasy in which the descendants of the Native American Iroquois plot to get the Europeans before the Europeans can get them--via time travel, which the Iroquois have mastered. For this reason Dr. Jim Parsons is snatched from his present in 2012 to the year 2405 to heal tribal leader Corith, who has failed in his attempt to assassinate Sr. Francis Drake in the year 1579--so a resurrected Corinth can try again.

Although lightly developed here, the novel contains many characteristic Dickian concerns. "Dr. Futurity" is one of several PKD "youth culture" dystopias, and perhaps the most extreme until "A Scanner Darkly" (1977). The average age in the world society of 2405 is fifteen, and the political police, the shupos, are psychotic children harnessed, trained, and encouraged by the government.

"Dr. Futurity" also contains an early showcasing of PKD's lifelong obsession with male/female twins, which has its first developed expression in 1965's "Dr. Bloodmoney" (Edie Keller carries unborn twin brother Bill as a tumor in her abdomen). In "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" (1974) twins Felix and Alys Buckman are lovers. Dick extensively explores the influence of his twin Jane on his life and work in the "Exegesis." "Dr. Futurity" hints that Corith and wife Jepthe are the twin siblings of matriarch Nixina, and strongly suggests their children, Loris and Helmar, are twins. Clearly twins Grace and Nathan are the result of the coupling of Loris and Jim Parsons. "The union of the opposites" Loris says in the novel's final chapter--the archetypal yin/yang interplay that calls all existence into being--resonates throughout Dick's work.

As a time-travel tale, "Dr. Futurity" addresses several paradoxes, including whether or not traveling into the past and killing your grandfather will negate your existence. More interestingly, Dick hints that many major history-altering events are the result of time travelers' intervention.

Rich in ideas, which are too many, too diverse, and too underdeveloped to jell in this short early novel, "Dr. Futurity" still offers enjoyable escapism to the contemporary reader.

The book starts with a "Logan's Run" premise; a world where youth prevails, and death is accepted and celebrated. Interesting enough, and Dick starts riffing on that premise nicely. But before long some other ideas and themes get thrown into the stew. I won't tell you what they are; it seems to me that part of the fun in going through a PKD book is being carried along for a creative ride. I count three major themes here, swirled together into the usual highly thoughtful, intricate, glorious mess that is a Philip Dick science fiction novel.

I know there's a critical consensus that "this isn't one of his best", but I don't accept that. It's an extremely good book and I find it better than others that are more celebrated. I see the natural human desires to categorize and to reduce in play here - to assert than for a given author, some particular handful of his books are really important or distinguished, and that the rest are less important. In point of fact Dick wrote about 20 great science fiction books in a style similar to this, and it's quite possible to like this one or any of those others as much as "Palmer Eldridge" or "Ubik". They're all cut from the same wild imaginative and deliberately sloppy cloth.

This short PKD novel is not at the top of the list in execution but for Dick completists, it is an interesting time travel/paradox story. Many of us are now searching out more obscure stories by PKD, having read all his "classsics," and this novel certainly deserves a reading to compare it to his more fleshed-out novels.

PKD can't really be compared to anyone else. He creates normality that frays at the edges then dissolves. Reading PKD always puts me in a unique mindset. This was by his extimation not his best.

As I mentioned in my review of Philip K. Dick's 1960 novel "Vulcan's Hammer," by 1959, the future Hugo winner was feeling decidedly disenchanted with science fiction in general, despite having had published some 85 short stories and half a dozen novels in that genre. The author, it seems, was still pinning his hopes on becoming a more "respectable," mainstream writer, and had indeed already completed nine such novels: "Return to Lilliput," "Pilgrim on the Hill" and "A Time for George Stavros" are considered lost, probably never to see the light of day, whereas "Gather Yourselves Together," "Voices From the Street," "Mary and the Giant," "The Broken Bubble," "Puttering About in a Small Land" and "In Milton Lumky Territory" were only released years after Dick's premature death in 1982.

And yet, despite his interest in science fiction being at its lowest point ever in 1959, the author yet managed to work on two such novels, economic pressures being what they were. The two books were both expanded from earlier novellas: "Vulcan's Hammer" from a novella in a 1956 issue of "Future Science Fiction" magazine, and the book in question, the whimsically titled "Dr. Futurity," from the novella "Time Pawn," which initially appeared in the Summer '54 issue of the 25-cent pulp "Thrilling Wonder Stories." Like "Vulcan's Hammer," "Dr. Futurity" first saw the light of day in 1960, as one-half of one of those cute little 35-cent "Ace doubles" (D-421, for all you collectors out there), backed by John Brunner's "Slaves of Space." I was fortunate enough to lay my hands on this Ace double thanks to NYC bookstore extraordinaire The Strand, and was happy to discover that, despite its poor reputation, the book is still surprisingly fun and enjoyable, with a complex plot, several nice touches, and wonderful atmosphere. Yes, it's far from Dick at his best, and is a somewhat atypical outing for this most cultish of authors, but should still manage to please his many fans.

In "Dr. Futurity," the reader encounters a 32-year-old doctor named Jim Parsons (hmm, why does that name seem so familiar?), who lives in Northern California with his wife Mary in the futuristic year of, um, 2012. Driving to work one day, Parsons is suddenly dredged up by a time travel device and kerplopped into the year 2405! He learns that in this distant time, all men are forced to become sterilized after reaching puberty, and all human zygotes are stored in a repository called the "Soul Cube." Dr. Sheldon Cooper--I mean, Jim Parsons--makes the huge mistake of saving the life of a grievously injured female activist (her clique is actively protesting the fact that women in 2405 have been denied the right to vote!), in a society in which death is seen as a precursor to life (i.e., for every human death that occurs, another zygote in the Soul Cube is brought to term). Parsons is deemed a menace and is summarily shipped off to a prison on Mars, but not before the owners of that time machine--the life-worshipping Wolf Tribe, the full-blooded descendants of the Native American Iroquois--rescue him and ask him to resuscitate their 35-year-dead leader, Corith, who is being stored in "cold-pack" stasis after being pierced with an arrow, through the heart, while on a mission in the year 1579! Cooper--I mean, Parsons; geez, gotta stop doing that!--agrees, and before long is immersed in a plot to not only bring Corith back to life, but to assassinate the English explorer Francis Drake and thus alter future history in favor of the Amerindians!

I have said elsewhere that the inherent paradoxes contained in many time travel novels can sometimes induce a borderline migraine in me as I endeavor to unravel them, and Dick surely does deliver some doozies in "Dr. Futurity." Indeed, this is one of the most pleasingly mind-warping such tales I've ever read; one in which Parsons not only gets to travel to the far past and distant future, but also hops about in time attempting to alter history as well as his own future actions. Somehow, though, far-fetched as the proceedings often get, Dick manages to make it all hang together; he evidently gave a lot of thought to all the many plot intricacies here. Still, the book has been roundly denigrated, not only by Scottish critic David Pringle, in his "Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction" (an "exceedingly minor novel by one of sf's greatest writers," he calls it), but also by Dick biographer Lawrence Sutin, in his "Divine Invasions," as well ("a potboiler that barely bubbles," he sniffs). Personally, I would agree with Pringle that the book is a minor one for Dick, but feel that Sutin is being a tad too harsh, as "Dr. Futurity" does have any number of fine qualities to commend itself to the reader.

Besides being complexly plotted, the book is at times marvelously atmospheric, such as when Parsons is marooned by the Wolf Tribe, back in an unknown era, and walks the desolate shore of the Pacific Ocean, wondering how or if he will ever return. Then again, take the scene in which Parsons witnesses the dying Earth of untold millennia hence; a barren wasteland in which he finds nothing but an ancient plaque...with his name on it! Dick fills his book with unusual little grace notes and weird bits of business, such as passenger cars in the year 2012 that are controlled by long-distance beam; that rat brain-controlled prison ship; and the "shupos," maniacally violent children used by the government in 2405 as enforcers. The book is sexually frank for its time--Parsons has an affair with the Wolf clan's Mother Superior, Loris, and even fathers some 25th century children with her--and even advocates for a woman's freedom of choice (in this case, the freedom to either have a baby the old-fashioned way or via the Soul Cube, if she wishes). Most of the author's later pet concerns are not addressed in this book--those dealing with drugs, divorce, cars, the slippery nature of so-called "reality," the German language, cigars--although there is a passing reference to Beethoven's "Archduke Trio"; a reminder of Dick's passion for opera and classical music.

"Dr. Futurity," tightly plotted as it is, is hardly a perfect work, and Dick is guilty of an occasional slip here and there. He tells us that Drake was born in the "early sixteenth century," whereas the actual date was circa 1540. He describes those time-traveling ships as "pencil-shaped" when we first encounter them, and later as being a "metallic sphere." A sphere-shaped pencil? And then there is the little matter of Parsons learning the language of four centuries hence in a scant matter of minutes. Plus, that "Plate of Brasse" that Dick tells us was left by Drake on the California coast? Well, that relic was determined to be a fake, a hoax, back in the late 1970s...not that Dick had any way of knowing this in 1959, of course.

As you may have discerned, "Dr. Futurity," again like "Vulcan's Hammer," is something of a mixed bag, but yet, a highly readable and--for this reader, anyway--entertaining one. Sutin calls these books "Phil's two worst-ever SF novels," which, in a way, just goes to show how great Dick's later work became. And indeed, Dick did seem to rouse himself that very next year, when he worked on the 1962 Hugo winner "The Man In the High Castle"; the first of a string of highly imaginative sci-fi classics that Dick compulsively wrote over the course of the following decade. As it turns out, even a "minor" work from a great author can prove to be a rewarding experience....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the Fantasy Literature website ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Philip K. Dick....)