Time Out of Joint
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 Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | Philip K. Dick |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publisher | J. B. Lippincott Company |
| Released | 1959 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 221 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
Time Out of Joint is a novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in novel form in the United States in 1959. It was also serialised in the British science fiction magazine New Worlds Science Fiction in several installments from December 1959 to February 1960.
The novel epitomises many of Dick's themes, with its concern about the nature of reality, and ordinary people in ordinary lives having the world unravel around them. The title is a reference to what Hamlet says to Horatio after being visited by his father's ghost, and learning that his uncle Claudius murdered his father; in short, a shocking supernatural event that fundamentally alters the way Hamlet perceives the state and the universe ("The time is out of joint; O cursed spite!/That ever I was born to set it right!" [I.V.211-2]).
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[edit] Plot summary
As the novel opens, its hero Ragle Gumm believes that he lives in the year 1959 in a quiet American suburb. His unusual occupation consists of repeatedly winning the cash prize in a local newspaper competition, "Where will the little green man be next?" However, he has a problem: every now and then, some object around him, like a hot dog stand in the local park, fades away into nothingness, leaving behind only a small slip of paper with the name of the object printed on it. There are other mysterious aspects: children exploring the basement of an old, ruined house nearby find a pile of magazines. One features an actress, apparently well-known, who Gumm has never heard of, named Marilyn Monroe.
Confusion gradually mounts for Gumm, and the plot then moves to one of his neighbours observing this, who starts worrying: "What if Gumm were becoming sane?" In fact, Gumm does become sane, and the deception around him (erected to both protect and exploit him) begins to unravel.
Gumm eventually learns that the idyllic neighborhood he lives in is a construct designed to protect him from the terrible fact that he lives on a then-future Earth (c. 1998) that is embroiled in a colonial war of independence with the Moon. Amazingly, Gumm is the only consistently accurate method for predicting where nuclear strikes will be aimed at, and his newspaper puzzle solving skills have saved untold thousands of lives over the years through enabling antimissile deflection. The town provides a psychological safety blanket that allows him to perform this task without understanding his dire responsibility. Once he does so, Gumm defects to the Lunar colonists, and there is an indication that the war might end.
[edit] Allusions/references in other works
- In the film "Virtual Nightmare" objects are really just cardboard with the name of the object on it.
[edit] Trivia
Immanuel Kant's concept of the Ding an sich or "Thing in Itself" is mentioned.
