The Unteleported Man in Philip K Dick

Nov 14, 2012 Jack Stovold rated it really liked it

My Philip K. Dick Project

Entry #35 - The Unteleported Man / Lies, Inc. (written Nov. 1964-Mar. 1965, published Sep. 1964)

Wow! Now this is a MESS. A glorious mess, yes, but still a mess.
In fact, I'd been kind of dreading dealing with the whole The Unteleported Man / Lies, Inc. problem. (See, I don't even know what to call it.).
Actually, scratch that. For the rest of the review, I'll be using Lies, Inc. as that was what Dick titled it during his final rewrite. For PKD fans who are interested i My Philip K. Dick Project

Entry #35 - The Unteleported Man / Lies, Inc. (written Nov. 1964-Mar. 1965, published Sep. 1964)

Wow! Now this is a MESS. A glorious mess, yes, but still a mess.
In fact, I'd been kind of dreading dealing with the whole The Unteleported Man / Lies, Inc. problem. (See, I don't even know what to call it.).
Actually, scratch that. For the rest of the review, I'll be using Lies, Inc. as that was what Dick titled it during his final rewrite. For PKD fans who are interested in reading this, as I was, but unsure what to do, let me try and clear it up for you as best I can.
There is no definitive version of this story, although I think the newer Mariner edition is the closest. Dick originally wrote "The Unteleported Man" as a short story, or novellette. This was published in a Fantastic Stories magazine, and Dick's editor at Ace Books suggested to Dick that he nearly double the length (by adding to the ending) and they would publish it as a novel. Dick did so, but the editor didn't approve of the material, and so it was published as one half of an Ace Double Novel as it was in the magazine. I believe to read this original version, you would either have to get the original magazine, or the Ace Double, both of which would probably be expensive and hard to track down. Then ten or so years later, when the Ace copyright expired, Dick sought to have the book republished in the longer version, which he had written. However, there were two problems. Dick couldn't figure out how to unite the two halves of the book, and there were four pages missing from his 1965 expansion. Dick set about rewriting and expanding, so he wrote a new opening and rejiggered some of the material in the original novella. Unfortunately, Dick died before he could complete his rewrite, so the Berkeley edition published in 1983 was the original novelette, and the expansion material with three gaps indicated in the text from the missing pages. A later edition found the revisions Dick was making for the Berkeley edition, and another writer filled in the gaps. However, after that, the original missing pages were also found. The most definitive edition now is the Mariner edition, which includes the novel and the expansion with Dick's intended revisions and the missing pages. Dick's revisions also include some minor deletions here and there, so there is no one version that contains every word, however. Whew.
My solution was to buy both the Berkeley edition and the newest revision, which fortunately turned out to be the Mariner edition. In trying to unravel this whole mess, I consulted the internet, but most of the sites I found described the situation before the Mariner edition was published. Fortunately, the afterword in the Mariner version made the situation clear. If you're only going to get one version, I would recommend the Mariner edition. However, I had the interesting experience of reading both side by side, simultaneously, a chapter or two from each at a time.
First of all, they start differently. Dick's new beginning introduces us immediately to Lies, Inc. and the rats, one of my favorite conceits from the beginning of the book. The entire rat subplot (in which protagonist Rachmael ben Applebaum lives a mysterious double life as a rat in some alternate reality) adds a lot of spooky, mystical atmosphere to the beginning of the book but suffers as it disappears completely with no warning about a third of the way through. This is a weakness of the book, probably part of the rewrite Dick never got to finish, disappointingly. It's interesting to compare scenes played straight in the older version, where in the new version, poor Applebaum finds his rat reality superimposing itself over his life.
The rat example is just the most glaring example of a larger problem of this book. It's all over the place, and the tortured publication history is only partially to blame. It can be fairly difficult to follow at times. It's insanely complicated and packed with bizarre ideas, even for a Dick book. I enjoyed it a great deal, but after finishing it and reflecting on it a bit, I started to remember all the dropped plot threads I had been looking forward to more of, and felt some disappointment.
But man, this book is insane. Up to a certain point (anyone who has read this will know exactly what point I mean), it's actually relatively straight-forward for mid-period Dick, but once we go down the rabbit-hole here, you might find yourself needing some air. The expansion here was written not long after Dick's experience with LSD, and Dick did not have nice trips. He had terrifying trips, and he was nice enough to give you a little taste of what that's like here. To me, what it is most frightening here is the fact that time loses its meaning. Applebaum experiences in a short time what to him seems like thousands of years. And he is conscious of his reason and rationality disintegrating, but completely powerless to stop it. Reading this, it was almost viscerally panic-inducing.
After his initial freak-out, Applebaum and others find themselves trapped in para-worlds, a series of terrifying realities, where the rules are written by mysterious forces, and everyone seems to be vaguely malevolent, multi-ocular, self-cannibalizing, sea creatures with obscure motives in disguise, eager to push on you a book that seems to write the future. Did I mention it was weird?
How this all ties into Newcolonizedland on Whale's Mouth, and the Trails of Hoffman company and New Whole Germany's secret war on the UN and Lies, Inc. is unclear. I haven't even mentioned tons of things going on with Dr. Einem von Sepp and his disturbing experiments, the colony itself, Al Dosker and a million other things. There's a lot going on, and I'm not going to lie and say Dick really all brings it all together. But the book has a strange, entrancing logic of its own, and it seems that the various mysteries here might be more satisfying left unsolved, all though it would have been nice to have a little more light shone on them. Or maybe I'm really missing something big here.
Anyway, if you want a confounding, endearing, maddening completely Phildickian ride, you don't need to look much farther than this. The fact that there isn't even one definitive version, or even narrative that can be agreed on, seems to put a suitably meta spin on the whole thing.

My edition: The Unteleported Man: Berkley Books paperback, 1983
Lies, Inc: Mariner Paperback, 2004

Up next: "Counter-Clock World"!

December 4th, 2012

Note: This review is mainly based on the 2004 Mariner edition. ...more

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Jul 18, 2013 Stuart Jewkes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Just read this in a day or so, after buying it at the same time as Lies Inc which apparently expands upon it greatly. Even by PKD standards the writing here is sketchy, but the central conceit is very entertaining and the twists and turn make it exhilarating. It ends rather abruptly too so I assume that the additional material will grow from there.

Overall, decidedly mid tier Dick but worth an hour or two of anyone's time considering even his disasters are interesting. ...more

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