The Broken Bubble in Philip K Dick

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

Shelves: romane, mystery, fiktion, klassiker, 1950s, philip-k-dick

This was a very interesting book. I loved part of the book that has a story within this story about questioning reality, god and the purpose of life thrown in there. PKD just couldn’t help himself I think and just had to include that science-fiction story in the book.

I still don’t know what to think about the Thisbe Holt parts in the book, ha. It was crazy and loved it!

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Jun 17, 2012 Jack Stovold rated it really liked it

My Philip K. Dick Project, #12

Well, here is the third of Dick’s mainstream novels to feature people wrecking their lives in the San Francisco bay area. This time the action takes place in San Francisco itself, and when I say action, I do mean it, in a way. More than Voices From The Street or Mary and the Giant, The Broken Bubble is a marriage of Dick’s mainstream prose-style and his sci-fi storytelling. As if alluding to this, Bubble has as a minor character a nerdy president of a sci-fi fan clu My Philip K. Dick Project, #12

Well, here is the third of Dick’s mainstream novels to feature people wrecking their lives in the San Francisco bay area. This time the action takes place in San Francisco itself, and when I say action, I do mean it, in a way. More than Voices From The Street or Mary and the Giant, The Broken Bubble is a marriage of Dick’s mainstream prose-style and his sci-fi storytelling. As if alluding to this, Bubble has as a minor character a nerdy president of a sci-fi fan club, and his poorly written 500 word story is included in its entirety here, as Dick good-heartedly mocks cookie-cutter sci-fi.
As with the two aforementioned mainstream novels, there are some subplots in here that aren’t really fleshed out enough and just kind of fizzle out. This book also has some more out there elements in it compared to Dick’s other mainstream books, namely the eponymous bubble and the remote controlled Horch “Nazi car”. How these kids could possibly make a working remotely controlled car is beyond me. In fact, the Horch car and the whole Gimmerman subplot give the book the pacing and feel of Dick’s sci-fi works at time, as does the foreboding sense of mystery, which makes it all the more disappointing that Gimmerman and all his plans are not better explained. I don’t mind a mystery, but as it stands it all seems a little pointless.
As for the main plot, Jim Briskin is a likable and grounded protagonist, a popular radio DJ who gets suspended for a month for refusing to do an obnoxious ad for Looney Luke’s used car lot on the air. He works with his ex-wife Pat, who left him because Jim is sterile and she wanted children. She, and the other main female character, Rachael Emmanual, are both sexy dark-haired girls who are a little bit nuts. I’m starting to see a pattern emerging in Dick’s work here. Rachael is only seventeen, but pregnant and married to Art, an awkward and inexperienced kid just out of high school and a big fan of Briskin’s who goes to see him at the station from time to time. Unfortunately, Art and his friends are mixed up with Gimmerman, a sort of paranoid revolutionary and owner of the Horch, although his ultimate goals remain frustratingly underexplained.
Jim and Pat get over-involved in Art and Rachael’s life, which begins a torturous week for all involved when things start to spiral out of control. There’s a lot of surprises and heartfelt emotion and yearning. Pat is actually very similar to Stuart Hadley from Voices From the Street. She does incredibly impulsive things with great capacity for interpersonal destruction, all the while rationalizing and constructing a whole new paradigm for life, only to change her mind and return to normalcy in a feverish craze hours later. Meanwhile, Jim, like Hadley’s wife, is left to pick up the pieces. Some of the character actions are unbelievable, but Dick somehow brings a certain internal logic to it. Again, the ending feels rushed, but it ends on a better and more appropriately ambiguous note than Mary and the Giant did. Recommended.

-Stray thoughts

- A great look at San Francisco in the 50s.

- Art is pretty dumb, even for an eighteen year old.

- Dick sometimes reused character names throughout his stories. I was surprised when this book opened with Luke Sharpstein “Looney Luke”, pitching his car. Looney Luke sold one-way rocket ships to Mars in Dick’s short “Novelty Act”. And of course, Jim Briskin himself, appeared as James “Jim-Jam” Briskin, the world’s top-ranking TV news clown, in “Stand-by” and its sequel. It would be fun to read this novel imagining Jim as a news clown in his flaming red wig. (See The Collected Stories, Vol. 4: The Minority Report). Man, I love news clowns.

My edition: Arbor House, William Morrow, Hardcover, 1988

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