Galactic Pot-Healer in Philip K Dick

Oct 26, 2008 Erich Franz Linner-Guzmann rated it really liked it

Shelves: speculative-fiction, dystopian, fantasy, fiktion, klassiker, 1960s, philip-k-dick, science-fiction

As with all of the PKD books that I have read, there always seems to be underlying messages. The protagonist is Joe Fernwright and he is a pot healer that lives in a time on earth when ceramics are no longer used and is replaced by plastic. He passes his time by playing a meaningless word game with his co-workers in a struggling economy and that is something I can relate to.

The meaning of life is one of the underlying messages that stood out to me the most. Joe is contacted by Glimmung a flawed ...more

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Sep 18, 2015 Dee rated it it was amazing

I hesitate to give five stars to any book, but if I factor in my subjective pleasure of reading this book, there is no way I cannot give it five stars. Were there more, I would grant them.

Galactic Pot-Healer is one of the less mentioned books of Philip K. Dick, and one of his best.

In it we find one of his best dystopian societies, just sketched in a few lines and colors. Readers of dystopian fiction should almost immediately grok the feel for that world and readers naive to dystopian fiction, bu I hesitate to give five stars to any book, but if I factor in my subjective pleasure of reading this book, there is no way I cannot give it five stars. Were there more, I would grant them.

Galactic Pot-Healer is one of the less mentioned books of Philip K. Dick, and one of his best.

In it we find one of his best dystopian societies, just sketched in a few lines and colors. Readers of dystopian fiction should almost immediately grok the feel for that world and readers naive to dystopian fiction, but who simply pay attention to how shitty the real world can be in it's absurdities will see it echoed in Dick's amusing, sad grotesqueries.

But the point of the novel is not dystopias, it is religion, fate, and broken heterosexual romance. So in a way it is almost every Philip K. Dick novel.

The action is this: A vast and god-like entity called the Glimmung wishes to engage the services of a pot-healer, an expert at the restoration of ceramics. He can rejoin the shattered pieces of any ceramic, make new pieces to replace lost chips, and match the glazes, to produce a seemingly unscathed pot from a shattered one. Rather than discard the broken vessel, he heals it. On Earth, ceramics are no longer made and all the broken stuff has been fixed, and is too precious to allow to break, so he's out of a job.

This god-like entity wants to raise and restore an ancient, sunken temple, called Heldscalla, a titanic undertaking which it cannot do by itself, so it recruits individuals who don't fit in where they are, who have great talents to put to work.

On the planet where this is to occur, there is only one book, continuously in print, and it tells the future. And it suggests strongly that the attempt will fail.

Joe, our antihero, naturally, falls in love with an alien woman who is also recruited by the Glimmung. Of course it is a doomed relationship; this is a Philip K. Dick novel. Why it fails has to do with Joe's attitude, as is proper for Dick's writing, but it's a little different from the usual bleakness.

The temple has an anti-temple and the Glimmung an anti-Glimmung, and we find Dick's themes of decay, fate, loss, and striving very nicely, very nicely put to work as the Glimmung and Nick and his peers attempt this mythic, impossible task, foretold to fail.

It isn't clear at all that it ends in failure. Not at all clear.

This book is as good or better than "The Martian Time Slip" or "Divine Invasion" and a better read the "Ubik." Or so say I.

If I could enjoy writing a book as much as I enjoyed reading this one, I'd be profligate. ...more

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Jun 24, 2008 Themistocles rated it liked it

Shelves: p-k-dick, scifi

According to Dick's biographer Sutin, Galactic Pot Healer was not one of Dick's favorite children. Probably one of his gotta-make-ends-meet works. And it kinda shows - the story arc is not that finely tuned, the characters are not that well fleshed out and the rest of the cast is largely in the background.

Not to say it's not an interesting, entertaining book. It's also got lots of Dick's trademarks:

-anti-hero: check
-oppressive female: check
-theology: check
-reality concerns: check.

(view spoiler) ...more

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Apr 25, 2016 Irwan rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: finished, 2016

The story is okay. Funny bits here and there. Many things that probably would sound futuristic if you read this book before email, google (search engine), wikipedia, etc. Mind you, this book was published in 1969!

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Jun 02, 2009 James rated it liked it

More sciency-fictiony than I wanted. Not enough psychological destruction. Still the suffocating vision of the future is appeallllllllling.

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Dec 15, 2012 Charles Baudelaire rated it it was amazing

top three pkd book. really cool!

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Dec 16, 2009 Mrowe73 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There is a lot of Jungian stuff going on in this one that went over my head. It seemed towards the middle that the story was meandering and not really sure of itself. But at the same time it seems that the author really does have an idea of what he's doing and that helps you go along with the ride. ...more

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