This next volume in the publication sequence of Dick’s work is a collection of five novellas, in which a range of different Dickian themes emerge and are developed. In The Variable Man, he has several balls juggling from the word go: war being planned and fought using the statistically calculated probability of winning it, and time travel just for starters; it’s a man brought back from another time that throws all the calculations of the warmongers awry because he is not part of the data… and it’s the sheer humanity of the man from the past, marooned in this horrific future world, which is particularly appealing: Dick in so many of his stories and novels, both SF and not, focuses on ordinary common decency and goodness as a contrast to the awfulness of so many of his futures.
The crazy science and insane weaponry, as well as a deus ex machina at the end, do not enhance the story’s credibility – if that’s the right word – but Dick’s ideas do demand our respect when human values win out against tyranny.
Second Variety is too close for comfort and quite simply chilling: autonomous, self-replicating weapons seek out and kill the last surviving humans, becoming ever more devious and complex, and ultimately developing the ability to go to war with each other, cutting out the human middle-man. A prophecy from sixty years ago.
Minority Report looks at another of Dick’s favourite ideas, mental deviants this time in the form of precogs who can foresee who will commit a crime in the future, enabling a tyrannical future state to take those people into preventive detention. Works wonders for the crime rate, but at what cost? Already Dick is out to make us think, but then he makes it more complicated: how accurate might precognition be, and if someone knew what was foreseen about them, might it affect their actions? In which case… you see where he’s leading you? This is a thing I’m realising about Dick as I work through his books: some writers will take one idea and work through it well and thoroughly, whereas Dick throws in the metaphorical kitchen sink. You’re in a whirlwind; you may be able to follow all the plot complexities; the story may work or it may not, but you have to admire the sheer verve.
Autofac: how can humans outwit the intelligent machines they once devised? In a post-war world society strives painfully and slowly to rebuild itself, constantly thwarted by vast underground factories programmed to provide their every need but obviously impeding self-sufficiency. When humans succeed in confusing and thwarting the automated factories, these end up going to war with each other for the scarce resources they need to kep functioning. Dick is years ahead of his time in exploring some of the questions that a few intelligent minds are currently starting to consider in the light of new technology: are we too late?
In the end, I decided that the final story, World of Talent, just had too much going on to be comprehensible: masterly maybe, but the all the different mental talents – psi, precog, telepathy and I don’t know what else, and time-travel too, was just a bit much. Bizarre.