From the Bookshelf of Philip K Dick…

Dr. Bloodmoney or How We Got Along after the Bomb

Philip K. Dick,

Jack Gaughan (Illustrator)

Start date: May 1, 2014

Finish date: May 20, 2014

Discussion: Group Reads

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Jul 15, 2012 Chloe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-fantasy, dystopian-fiction

And so I've made it through the second of the Library of America's Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s none the worse for wear. Dr. Bloodmoney is a classic piece of 60s-style nuclear agitprop. While nearly every Philip K. Dick book that I've yet read can readily be classed as dystopian fiction, I think Dr. Bloodmoney is the work of his that comes closest to living up to the classic post-nuclear armageddon scenario envisioned in Earth Abides or A Canticle For Leibowitz. Still, this is Dick, so there a And so I've made it through the second of the Library of America's Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s none the worse for wear. Dr. Bloodmoney is a classic piece of 60s-style nuclear agitprop. While nearly every Philip K. Dick book that I've yet read can readily be classed as dystopian fiction, I think Dr. Bloodmoney is the work of his that comes closest to living up to the classic post-nuclear armageddon scenario envisioned in Earth Abides or A Canticle For Leibowitz. Still, this is Dick, so there are your super-powered invalids and your paranoid scientists convinced that they telepathically set off all the bombs, but when stood side by side with Dick's paranoid epics like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, this is a very normal-seeming piece of science fiction.

Through a typical swirling cast of characters, Dick has crafted another captivating world in which the reader is again left wondering whether events actually occurred or whether we were all subjected to intense fever dreams and hallucinations. As the bombs drop on Berkeley we are introduced to Hoppy Harrington- a phocomelus (born with no arms or legs) repairman with telekinetic powers and a big ax to grind with humanity, Dr. Bluthgeld/Jack Tree- the nuclear physicist who may or may not have accidentally set off all the world's nuclear armaments with his mental powers (or he's just batshit), Bonny Keller- a housewife with a predilection for extramarital amblings, and her daughter Edie whose young form also carries her brother Bill, a sentient teratoma whose own telekinetic powers may hold the key to saving humanity from Hoppy Harrington's plans for domination. Above them all flies poor lonely Walter Dangerfield, an astronaut who had been set to fly to Mars until the war left him trapped in orbit, circling the globe again and again and beaming down messages and music to the remnants of humanity.

There is very little that is new in this book. The destruction and rebuilding of civilization had been done hundreds of times before Dick made his effort and thousands of times afterward, yet I find myself loving this book in spite of it. I find myself relating to an almost unpleasant degree with a good hunk of the characters, from the cheerily optimistic Stuart McConchie who just wants the world to go back to normal to the power-obsessed Hoppy, who is determined to have the world finally give him his due.

Far and away though, my favorite character is Walter Dangerfield, circling the Earth and beaming down his messages to an audience that assembles in meeting halls in a religious silence and whose very presence provides humankind with hope for a better tomorrow. The religious allegory runs thick through his scenes, but becomes very satisfying when Dangerfield falls ill and humanity is left to wonder what will unite them when his broadcasts finally fall silent in a fine nod to Nietzschean ideas.

As fast a read as every other Dick book, Dr. Bloodmoney would be an exquisite place for a neophyte to test out the author's special brand of paranoia and hallucination, as well as a required read for those completists seeking to make their way through the entirety of Dick's oeuvre. It clearly belongs in the Library of America's collection, which was refreshing after my near miss with Martian Time-Slip, and makes me excited to see what comes next in this thick book. ...more

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Feb 16, 2008 Gabriel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I love this book. I suggested it for the summer reading at my school and read it at least three times before our discussion. Yes, there is the one chapter that makes no sense (what I have decided is that it takes place beyond the events of the book, but how far beyond is never clear), but the rest of it is so much fun. A great post-apocalyptic piece!

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