It is characteristic of Philip K Dick's rather peculiar approach to narrative incident that he chooses to focus his story of Martian time-travel on the man in charge of the local Water Workers Union. You can be sure that if he'd ever written a book about the fateful Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole, it would have concentrated on the travel agent that had arranged Scott's boat out of Southampton.This one begins, then, a little slowly, and also has a few awkward traces of outdated sexual an...

I usually like, no, love PKD stories, but this one made me shake my head so many times. I admit to being pretty disappointed. I have loved nearly everything I’ve read by PKD, but not this one. I find it unbelievably dated. Especially when it concerned mental health or what we now call neurodiversity and even racism and cultural bias. And why didn’t any SF writers from the 50s and 60s anticipate digital?!? I don’t normally fault authors for that, because it’s so widespread. I didn’t hate it, mind...

Working my way back into reading all Dick's novels again. Here is some classic Dick (ew!): the clunky exposition, the complexity of reality. This one begins and ends by concerning itself with a bevy of topics and characters: unions, autism, the education system, family life, marital infidelity, gentrification, small-time businessmen, racism, aborigines, mental illness in children, and etcetera. Martian Time-Slip begins and ends as a story about modern suburban life, and the fact that it takes pl...

SF Masterworks #13: A fractured tale of a far future dystopia; it is set on a sparsely populated Mars, with serious water shortages and a dying native aboriginal race of near-humanoid Martians. Mars has been divided into zones ruled by the Unions and some nation states such as Israel and Italy. The most dominant statutory body is the Water Workers Union run by the despotic and forever wheeling and dealing Artie Kotts whose aim is for global Martian dominance, which he attempts to gain by investi...

I rank it as one of the most far-fetched books from the writer, and a fine one at that! You can't help feeling immersed in the odd visions of worldwide decay and get involved with these tripping psychedelic tribes!Matching Soundtrack :Risingson - Massive Attack

CRITIQUE:Capitalism and Schizophrenia*The novel's protagonist, Jack Bohlen, is described as "young, dark-haired, slender, glasses, and with a nervous manner. Our finest repairman." He's married to Silvia and has a young son, David. It's arguable that he bears some resemblance to Dick himself, apart from the fact that he lives on the red planet. In the 1970's, human beings started to colonise Mars. The original motive was to escape the pollution and smog that was poisoning civilisation on Earth.

A great read and, so far, one of the most accessible PKD novels I've read. It only gets weird and tripy late in the story, but when it happens you'd better buckle your seatbelt because it is WEIRD.

“Everything wears out eventually; nothing is permanent. Change is the one constant of life.” ― Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip Martian Time-Slip may not be one of Dick's BEST novels, but it is almost my favorite. There is a huge energy and vitality in it. Dick is painting with his usual themes (loneliness, madness, drugs, pre-cognition, time, artificial intelligence, the other, corporatism, love, etc), but there is nothing usual about what he extracts. The only thing missing from this book is

Dick's prose and character development is as poor as ever here, but the metaphysical ideas and social commentary as well as the storyline itself are so genius that I simply don't care. I first read this when I was in my twenties and devouring all the Dick I could find. I enjoyed it even more this time around. Short, strange and surreal and pretty perfect for what it is: Classic American Science Speculative Fiction.

I thought I was finished with Philip K Dick, but it was either this or Maze of Death at the used bookstore and I had some store credit to abuse. Good thing, too. You read the wrong PKD novel, you feel as if they're all the same and you've got it covered. Martian Time-Slip taught me that its still worth it to find all the gems among such a massive output. Most of his novels do an incredible job of replicating the feeling of an acid or mushroom trip. This one applies those techinques towards anxie...

The gubbish ran down the walls as I sat,as I sat the gubble gubble.I looked down at the gubbish where my fingers used to be, as I sat finger bones shiny with gubbish click clacked on a rusty metal framework,coloured wires slithering in and out of it like lustful worms.As I sat down to write my gubbish reviewI gubbled, I saw the wet bones click clacking on dirty metal.We're all gubbish in the end...-One of the more surreal books I've read by PKD - Awesome :)

So at this point I need to admit that this is the first of this author's books that I've been able to make my way through. I've attempted a few others, but have always DNFed because of a writing style that I really haven't enjoyed. This one I did with a buddy read group who had interesting comments which spurred me on to finish it.This is a conception of Mars from 1964, with a breathable atmosphere, local aliens, canals and human colonists. We follow many interesting characters, including applia...

Martian Time Slip by Philip K. Dick, published in 1964, is one of PKDs better books. Set on Mars, this is largely about Terran colonists taking care of business. Dick provides a snapshot of social, political and economic life on Mars. “Bleekmen” are the long suffering indigenous extra-terrestrial native Martians, cast aside like Native Americans and called the N word by a fat cat union boss. Carrying on the tradition set by Robert A. Heinlein in Red Planet and Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicl...

Paranoia, schizophrenia, greed, exploitation, suburban ennui, adultery, real estate scams, small-time businessmen, robot educators, colonization of Mars, distortions of time and reality, gubble, gubble, gubble...Yep, this is another of PKD's brilliant explorations of the minds of his characters, themselves extensions of his own explorations of paranoia and reality. And this one takes it careful time establishing the inner lives of its fairly large caste of troubled characters. It doesn't kick in...

"Death upsets everyone, makes them do peculiar things; it sets a radiating process of action and emotion going that works its way out, farther and farther, to embrace more people and things."- Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-SlipDickheads of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your minds! Go ahead, read Martian Time-Slip and push yourself to the limit - you are on Mars in the near future among colonies under the umbrella of the United Nations, colonies formed by citizens from such countri...

“Gubble me more, she said. Gubble gubble me, put your gubbish into me, into my gubbish, you Gubbler. Gubble gubble, I like gubble! Don't stop. Gubble, gubble gubble gubble, gubble!”That there is some beautiful dialogue from PKD’s wacky 1964 novel Martian Time-Slip. I remember reading this in the 80s but I have practically no memory of the plot. However, I do remember all this “Gubble gubble” business very vividly. There is a surreal hallucinatory feeling to it that I will never forget.The title

The action opens on mars, but the circumstances are purely prosaic: colonization has been mostly successful, but on the arid martian surface humanity is eking out an existence with rationed water, failing equipment with replacements from Earth costly to ship out, bills to pay, power to hunger after, petty business conflict, domestic boredom, etc. As the main plotline emerges from the stories of a handful of initially disparate characters, it resolves into one of real estate speculation. Circumst...

Mister, they take a brave journey. They turn away from mere things, which one may handle and turn to practical use; they turn inward to meaning. There, the black-night-without-bottom lies, the pit. Who can say if they will return? And if so, what will they be like, having glimpsed meaning? I admire them.I truly hated the first 70-80 pages, it read like too much of the other Dick I've encountered: paranoia, despair, the disabled. Martian Time-Slip then took a few flips and I admit I was dazzled.

I'm writing this review to say that this rating is given in the strictest sense of the Goodreads "it was OK" and should not be taken to mean that I think this book is in any way "fair" or "poor." Because it's not. In fact, if Goodreads had the half star, the "almost liked it!" this one would definitely get it. It would get the three-quarters star even. This review is one of the few that I'm approaching in an entirely opinionated way, because as far as books go, the part of me that is not biased

One of the many, many things I love about Philip K. Dick is how he can make fantastic science fictional scenarios into studies of utter human banality (and yes, despair) but still make me want to live in them. Martian Time-Slip, for instance, also feels like it could, and likely would, be marketed nowadays under a title like Real Housewives of Mars. Except they're mid 20th century type housewives, so they actually, you know, fix lunch for their children and whatnot.* So maybe it's really more li...