Martian Time-Slip

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Martian Time Slip
Cover of first edition (paperback)
Author	Philip K. Dick
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Ballantine Books
Publication date	1964
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	220 pp
ISBN	NA

Martian Time-Slip is a 1964 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The novel utilizes the common science fiction concept of a human colony on Mars. However, it also includes the themes of mental illness, the physics of time and the dangers of centralized authority.

The novel is expanded from Dick's original novella All We Marsmen, published in three parts in the August, October and December 1963 issues of Worlds of Tomorrow magazine.

The character of Manfred Steiner in this novel is very similar to Tim in Philip K. Dick's 1954 short story A World of Talent, first published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.

[edit] Plot introduction

The novel takes place several years after the first human colonies were established on Mars. Many colonies identify with certain nations - those of Israel and the United States are the largest - but are ultimately under the control of the United Nations. The U.N. seeks to establish a permanent, self-sufficient human presence on Mars because of concern that nuclear war will end human life on Earth.

Because water is rare on Mars most homes are built around canals and the use of water is tightly controlled. Arnie Kott, the head of the Water Worker’s Union, is perhaps Mars’ most politically powerful individual.

Mars’ native population is a humanoid, dark-skinned race called "Bleekmen." Because they live as simple hunters and gatherers and maintain odd and ancient religious beliefs, human colonizers see the Bleekmen as primitive.

Mars here is very much like Central Australia, being the arid home of an old race (the Bleekmen in the novel, Aborigines in Australia) with a deep sense of history, a rich mythology, and a sacred place ("Dirty Knobby") similar to Ayers Rock.

The characters in the novel are connected in ways of which they are often unaware, a Dick trademark which also features in The Man in the High Castle. Jack Bohlen's neighbors are the Steiner family. Norbert Steiner, the father of Manfred, is a dealer in local craft goods and exotic foods from Earth, smuggled because the UN has banned food imports in order to force the colonists to be self-sufficient. Manfred, his autistic son, is a resident at the home for "anomalous children", Camp Ben-Gurion, which is to be closed by the UN. Another resident is the son of Anne Esterhazy and her ex-husband, the union boss Arnie Kott. Anne and Arnie have a cordial but businesslike relationship, Anne dealing with the day to day issues of the children at "Camp B-G" while Arnie sees the existence of such places as a discouragement for new colonists, impeding his vision of a new Mars. Otto Zitte is Norbert Steiner's mechanic who services his smuggling ships, and attempts to take over the business after Steiner's suicide. Zitte, acting as his own traveling salesman, seduces Sylvia Bohlen, Jack's wife, while Jack is conducting an affair with Doreen Anderton, Arnie Kott's mistress. Manfred, though isolated from humans, connects with the indigenous Bleekmen, especially Heliogabalus, Kott's cook. He achieves his salvation through the Bleekmen, with Jack's unwitting help.

[edit] Plot summary

Jack Bohlen is a repairman who emigrated to Mars to flee from his bouts of schizophrenia. He lives with a wife and a young son. His father Leo visits Mars to stake a claim to the seemingly worthless Franklin D. Roosevelt mountain range after receiving an insider tip that the United Nations plans to build a huge apartment complex there. The complex will be called "AM-WEB", a contraction of the German phrase "Alle Menschen werden Brüder" (All men become brothers) from Schiller's An die Freude (Ode to Joy).

Bohlen has a chance encounter with Arnie Kott, the hard-nosed leader of the Water Worker’s Union, when both Bohlen’s and Kott’s helicopters are called to assist a group of Bleekmen who are suffering from thirst in the desert. Bohlen rebukes Kott for his hesitance to help the Bleekmen, an act that angers Kott.

After visiting with his ex-wife Anne Esterhazy about their own "anomalous" child, Kott hears of the theories of Dr. Milton Glaub, a psychotherapist at Camp Ben-Gurion, an institution for those afflicted with pervasive developmental disorders. Glaub believes that mental illnesses may be altered states of time perception. Kott becomes interested in Manfred Steiner, an autistic boy at Camp B-G in the hopes that the boy can predict the future - a skill Kott would find useful to his business ventures. Since Camp B-G is scheduled for closure, Kott offers to take Manfred off Glaub's hands. Manfred in turn is afraid of a future only he can see, in which Mars is derelict and the AM-WEB is a dumping ground for forgotten people like him, where he will eventually be confined to a bed on life-support.

Kott leases Bohlen’s contract from his current employers and hires him to build a video device that can help Manfred perceive time at a regular pace (Kott is also ultimately intent on getting revenge on Bohlen). Bohlen takes a liking to Manfred but the assignment stresses him because he fears that contact with the mentally ill may cause him to lapse. Bohlen also begins an affair with Kott’s mistress.

One of Bohlen's regular jobs is to service the simulacra at the International School, where lessons are taught by simulations of historical figures. These figures are deeply disturbing to Bohlen, as they remind him of his own schizoid episodes where he perceived people around him as mechanisms. When he takes Manfred to the school during a job, the simulacra begin acting strangely, as it seems Manfred is altering their reality. Eventually Bohlen is asked to take Manfred away.

Only Heliogabalus, Kott's Bleekman servant, is able to connect with Manfred. From Manfred's viewpoint, humans are strange beings who live in a world of fractured time where they disappear from one place and reappear in another, and move in a jerky uncoordinated manner. Heliogabalus, to Manfred, moves smoothly and gracefully. He seems to talk to Manfred without words.

The precipitating event of the story was Steiner's suicide, which connected Kott to Manfred and deprived Otto Zitte of his livelihood. The crux of the story is a meeting between Kott, Bohlen and Anderton at Kott's home, in view of Manfred. Instead of occurring in "real time", this episode is previewed three times before it actually occurs, apparently through Manfred's eyes but with participation by Bohlen. Each time the events are more surreal, the perceptions more hallucinatory. When the events of the story finally reach the crucial point, which Bohlen fears, having foreseen the outcome, Bohlen himself does not experience it. His awareness stops as he and Doreen arrive at Kott's home, and picks up after they leave. He only knows that he and Kott parted ways, superficially friendly but actually enemies.

Pressured by Kott, Heliogabalus reveals that the Bleekmen's sacred rock, "Dirty Knobby", can be used as a time travel portal that Manfred may be able to open. Kott centers his interest in altering the past on two goals: Revenge on Jack Bohlen and claiming the FDR mountains before Leo Bohlen does.

However the scheme goes badly wrong. Returned in time to the point where he first appeared in the novel, emerging from the sybaritic bath-house run by the Union, he finds himself repeating the actions which led him to meeting Bohlen, while dealing with perceptual distortions seeming to issue from Manfred's mind. He is unable to get to the FDR mountains to plant his stake, being compelled by law to go the aid of Bleekmen just as he did before. He encounters Bohlen, as he did originally, but in attempting to shoot him he is killed by a Bleekman's arrow.

Waking from the vision, Kott realizes he has failed. He decides to give up on his schemes, abandon Doreen, and let Bohlen get on with his life. He would like to help Manfred, who has disappeared during the time-travel. Leaving the cave in Dirty Knobby where they performed Heliogabalus' strange ritual, he encounters Otto Zitte. After Steiner's suicide Kott, his best customer, elected to take over Steiner's business. Zitte was competing, so Kott's men destroyed the smuggler's storage facility and his transportation, leaving a message that "Arnie Kott doesn't like what you stand for". Zitte has pursued Kott, following his helicopter to Dirty Knobby. He shoots Kott, who thinks he is still in Manfred's hallucination. Bohlen and Doreen land in Kott's own helicopter, and take Kott back to the town. Kott dies, believing to the last that he was only having a hallucination.

Bohlen and Doreen realize their relationship was based on mutual fear of Kott. Bohlen returns to his wife (who has been seduced by Zitte on his sales round), but both decide to maintain their marriage. There is a disturbance in the Steiner home, and Steiner's widow runs screaming into the night. Running in, Bohlen and his father see Manfred, old and in a wheelchair, festooned with tubes, accompanied by Bleekmen. Manfred joined a group of Bleekmen after leaving Dirty Knobby, and has saved himself from AM-WEB. He has returned in time to see his family and thank Bohlen for saving him. Bohlen, barely aware of his role in events, sees the apparition disappear.

In a subdued final scene, Bohlen and his father are out searching for Steiner's widow in the darkness, with voices "business-like and competent and patient."

[edit] Major themes

[edit] Mental Illness

Like many Dick novels, Martian Time-Slip features characters that could be considered mentally ill or enlightened savants. Jack Bohlen is troubled by his schizophrenia but he also believes that it helped him predict the arrival of robotic teachers. Manfred is more severely affected. Philip K. Dick describes Manfred Steiner's autism as being linked to a distorted conception of time and its flow. He cannot escape visions of his future self sick and kept miserably alive in a rundown hospital.

The idea that mental illness is a form of precognition is inconsistent with modern psychiatric standards, but it coincides with the underlying theme of most of Dick’s work: what one person perceives may be different from what another perceives, and the more outlandish perception may be correct.

Dick, who was no stranger to psychiatric problems, puts words in the mouth of Dr. Milton Glaub, the psychiatrist, with the apparent intent of holding certain psychiatric theories up to ridicule. Glaub blames problems like autism and schizophrenia on parental misdeeds, such as "a controlling mother", coupled with references to excretion and the discredited "oral/anal" personality classifications. Dick administers the coup de grace through the Bleekman Heliogabalus, who declares to Kott that psychoanalysis is "vainglorious foolishness". When Kott asks him why, Heliogabalus re-states Dick's perennial theme: "How do we know what is normal?"

Dr. Glaub's name may be related to the German verb glauben, which means "to believe". Dick was a keen student of German. Calling a character "Glaub" might be the equivalent of calling him "Believer" or "True Believer" in English, a name for a person who holds tight to beliefs that nobody else holds to. He is certainly a gadfly to the other characters.

[edit] Non-Linear Time

Martian Time-Slip advances the idea that the flow of time can change or even be reversed from place-to-place. Time on Mars is much more malleable than time on Earth or at least there are more portals and loop holes on Mars.

The Bleekmen have apparently known this for eons and a non-linear understanding of time is part of their basic belief system. This may explain why the Bleekmen, who are genetically similar to human beings, are much less technologically advanced. Time is not linear for them so the idea of progress may have little appeal.

[edit] The Dangers of Powerful Authority Figures

Authority figures are portrayed as malevolent or at least injudicious in Martian Time-Slip. The clearest example is Arnie Kott who goes to great efforts to accumulate power and takes sadistic pleasure in achieving those aims regardless of the harm he causes others.

Another example is the United Nations. The organization rules over the Martian colonies but its edicts are rarely beneficial. In order to make the colonies self-sufficient, the U.N. bans the importing of food but this merely causes a massive black market for fine foods. In order to improve the gene pool of the colonies, the U.N. considers massacring the children at Camp B-G but this is obviously an inhumane action. They also plan to build huge apartment complexes in the mountainous regions of Mars but Manfred’s visions reveal that these buildings will be left in ruin and become horrendous institutions for the sick.

An Earth-bound authority misgoverning an off-world colony is also the theme of another science fiction novel of the time, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Dick’s close friend Robert A. Heinlein.