Sat 3 Jul 2021
Diary Review: PHILIP K. DICK – The Unteleported Man.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[8] Comments
PHILIP K. DICK – The Unteleported Man. Ace Double G-602, paperback original, 1966. Cover art by Kelly Freas. First published as a novella in Fantastic Stories, December 1964. Expanded to novel length form under the same title by Berkley, paperback, 1983. First full edition reprinted in the US as Lies, Inc., by Vintage, trade paperback, 2004 (previously by Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1984, but with two missing manuscript pages of the Berkley edition replaced by ones written by John Sladek).
The gateway to the colony at Whale’s Mouth in the Fermalhaut system is controlled by Trails of Hoffmn, who developed a teleportation system which put the ordinary spaceship line of Rachmael ben Applebaum near bankruptcy. The only drawback to emigration is the fact that the trip is (said to be) one-way, but Rachamel with the help of an inter-planetary police agency is determined to find out the true story while proving at the same time that spacecraft could have successfully made the 24-lightyear journey.
With the help of the suspect UN, the plan for the conquest of Earth – for of course it is one – is broken up. The story is enhanced considerably by the inclusion of Dick’s usual small details of the world of the future, while the characters move through a fairly ordinary plot.
Rating: ***
July 3rd, 2021 at 8:03 pm
Dick had a gift for going off track in fairly ordinary plots in interesting ways. It’s often the more offbeat tracks his characters and what happens to them take than what is going on around them that are fun to read.
July 3rd, 2021 at 8:42 pm
Back in the late 50s and through most of the 60s, Dick was probably my favorite SF authors. He had a sense of reality (or unreality) that no other writer seemed to have. I don’t think this one was one of his better ones, but I have to wonder what I might have thought about the longer version, if I’d been able to read it at the time. I had no idea there was one, till I did some research before posted this old review tonight.
July 3rd, 2021 at 8:42 pm
I read THE UNTELEPORTED MAN when it was first published. As you point out, the plot is fairly ordinary. I found Philip K. Dick to be an uneven writer. He could write a stunning novel like MARTIAN TIME-SLIP and then write something like THE ZAP GUN. In general, I prefer the early PKD to the later PKD.
July 3rd, 2021 at 8:46 pm
I’m with you on that, George. I stopped reading his books in the mid-60s, around the time of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
The Man in the High Castle, though, which came before that — that was something else. Nothing could ever top that, or so I thought at the time. I’ve never read it since. Perhaps I’m afraid that it won’t hold up for me now.
July 4th, 2021 at 5:10 pm
I read THE UNTELEPORTED MAN in its shorter form (only one available) in the 1970’s. Thought it was somewhere at mid-rank in Dick’s work. Have never read the expanded version.
Later Dick novels that impressed, years ago:
Ubik (1969)
A Maze of Death (1970) (A mystery – science fiction hybrid)
Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1970)
“Yes friends! We’re throwing away the blue book, on our used Ubiks!”
July 4th, 2021 at 6:01 pm
Agree!
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is an extraordinary achievement.
July 4th, 2021 at 11:25 pm
PKD was probably my favorite sf writer in the sixties and early seventies. On the strengths of The Man in the High Castle, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and Ubik, I kept reading successive works. Even the weak books contained enough PKDian elements to keep me reading. That ended with Radio Free Albemuth and VALIS. Somewhere in the literature about PKD, I recall reading read that at least one of his sf novels was a rewritten version of a novel that failed to sell as a “mainstream” work. My weak memory suggests that two such titles were Martian Timeslip and A. Lincoln, Simulcra. The Unteleported Man was another one of the lesser works that I read with enjoyment mainly of the PKDian element – when the nature of reality came slightly unhinged, but life goes on.
July 16th, 2021 at 4:49 pm
[…] original, 1966. Published back-to-back with The Unteleported Man, by Philip K. Dick (reviewed here […]