Thirteen ways of looking at a superhuman mutant

Well, I'm back in NYC, and already back at school. We don't have any kids until after Labor Day, but administrators like to eat vacation time, so what can you do?

I'm reading Richard K. Morgan's Thirteen (known in Britain as Black Man, but not here for some reason). What's interesting about the book is that it has exactly the same plot as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick (that's Blade Runner to non-readers). As in DADES, an enhanced humanoid has escpaped from outer space to Earth, and a bounty hunter is hired to kill him. There's only one, rather than eight in the Dick book, but Alan Merrin, the escaped "thirteen," is meaner than Roy Baty, Max Polokov and Pris Stratton all mixed up. For example, stuck out in space without enough to eat, he wakes up the cryogenically frozen passengers, surgically removes a limb for dinner, then sticks them back in the freezer for the next meal. "Wake up, time to [wish you could] die!" There is even a Roy Isidore-like sucker, a Jesusland (i.e. Confederated red-state) illegal immigrant to Pacific Rim named Scott. Scott isn't quite a "chickenhead," but he's equally susceptible to manipulation through his devotion, to Jesus instead of Mercer.

The difference, besides the tone, is that in the Dick novel it was only hinted that Deckard might be an replicant, whereas in 13 the bounty hunter Carl Marsalis definitely is a "twist," or thirteen, the same kind of mutant as the prey. Marsalis is not a psychotic serial killer like Merrin, but he does not have the same morals or point of view as unmodified humans, and he suffers prejudice accordingly. In fact, he's one of the only thirteens legally allowed to live on Earth.

Both books explore what it means to be human. Androids explores it from the point of view of someone who (probably) is human, whereas 13 explores it from the point of view of someone who, de jure, isn't. Empathy is central to both books. Replicants, of course, can be detected by their lack of it in the Voigt-Kampf test. In the Morgan book, thirteens are a throwback to an earlier Hobbesian tough guy, untroubled by the moral restraints that keep regular humans from kicking ass and chewing bubble gum. The Dick book makes the bad guys a little more sympathetic, but they don't have a "good" replicant to earn our sympathies (unless you count Racheal Deckard). 13 also explores racial prejudice far more deeply, because as if being a feared and despised mutant isn't hard enough, Marsalis also has the skin and body type of an African-American.

Central to both books is the human need to have an "other" that it is justified to kill and destroy. In both cases, this other is, in many circumstances, truly dangerous. Then again in both books the other is our own creation. More importantly, no one is going to try to figure out if there is a safe way of cohabiting when it's just as easy to kill them.

Ronald Reagan, in one of his spacier pronouncements, said we could have world peace if we could just get attacked by aliens. He literally could not imagine people cooperating without having someone else to kill. Sadly, neither can most people. Which gives me an idea...

Get the troops out of Iraq! We need them to fight the thirteens and replicants!

Phil Dick, formulaist?

This is a few days old, but I've been wanting to link to it. Total Dick-Head quotes PKD reciting his "formula" for a novel in a letter to a friend. This is amazing, because most people out there (myself included), would call PKD the least "formulaic" writer you could read.

I like this, though, because it showed the professional side of the author. PKD is the Samuel Coleridge of the science fiction world, his great ideas and brilliant writing overshadowed by stories of his drug abuse. But he was a pro, and like anyone who gets the job done, he had a system. He didn't just pop back a handful of reds and let otherworldly genius flow through his typewriter.

It's yet another example of how working within certain boundaries can expand rather than limit an artist's freedom.

My favorite (phillip k) dick-head

For anyone who is wondering what I am talking about that blogs can do that a reviewer can't, here is an example.

What David is doing here is criticism, as much as anything you'll see in the Harvard Review. He's digging deeper with PKD's work, connecting it to other literature, speculative or not. But where else but a blog would you see something like this?

He's going to blog Three Stigmata chapter by chapter until the end. Bookmark it now. I just might read the book again.

Library of America* acknowledges Phillip K. Dick existed!

This morning Jen said, "Hey, they have a science fiction book in the New York Times Book Review today!"

I said, "Oh, I bet it's either Ian McDonald's Brasyl or Charles Stross' Glasshouse. Those are the two big scifi releases everyone's talking about."

Nope. It was a review of the Library of America* anthology of PKD stories from the '60s. It was a good review, I'm not complaining about that. And PKD is one of my favorite authors of all time, scifi or not.

But first of all, when they review a scifi writer it would have to be somebody who's safely dead & buried. Yes, they review contemporary scifi, but rarely.

Worse, three of the stories that are in the LOA* anthology ("The Four Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and "Ubik") were already in print in an anthology. I know, because I have it. (Actually, it's not mine. Sorry Royal!). The other, "The Man in the High Castle," is also in print.

What the NYTBR is acknowledging is that the LOA* opened the pearly gates to literary recognition for the speed-addled old ghost of Phil. "He's ours now! You genre punks get your hands off."

Notice Jonathan Lethem compiled it**. I am about to read an early Lethem book I bought at our favorite GP bookstore, Word, the other day. But from what I've seen, Lethem is a scifi writer the way that Basquiat was a graffiti artist. He toyed with the style until he was able to get into the Real Artists' Club, and we won't even get a postcard from now on.

At least Lethem got it while he's still alive. PKD never saw the outside of a pulp cover before he died (let alone the bazillions of dollars brought in by all the movies loosely derived from his work).

* Correction: Originally, I wrote Modern Library. Corrected by Anonymous.
** Correction: Originally, I said he wrote the introduction, but Andrew Wheeler pointed out the LOA works don't have intros. Thanks Andrew!