What do you think?
Rate this book
Lies, Inc.
A masterwork by Philip K. Dick, this is the final, expanded version of the novella The Unteleported Man, which Dick worked on shortly before his death. In Lies, Inc., fans of the science fiction legend will immediately recognize his hallmark themes of life in a security state, conspiracy, and the blurring of reality and illusion. This publication marks its first complete appearance in the United States.
In this wry, paranoid vision of the future, overpopulation has turned cities into cramed industrial anthills. For those sick of this dystopian reality, one corporation, Trails of Hoffman, Inc., promises an alternative: Take a teleport to Whale's Mouth, a colonized planet billed as the supreme paradise. The only catch is that you can never comeback. When a neurotic man named Rachmael ben Applebaum discovers that the promotional films of happy crowds cheering their newfound existence on Whale's Mouth are faked, he decides to pilot a scapeship on the eighteen-year journey there to see if anyone wants to return.
In this wry, paranoid vision of the future, overpopulation has turned cities into cramed industrial anthills. For those sick of this dystopian reality, one corporation, Trails of Hoffman, Inc., promises an alternative: Take a teleport to Whale's Mouth, a colonized planet billed as the supreme paradise. The only catch is that you can never comeback. When a neurotic man named Rachmael ben Applebaum discovers that the promotional films of happy crowds cheering their newfound existence on Whale's Mouth are faked, he decides to pilot a scapeship on the eighteen-year journey there to see if anyone wants to return.
202 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1984
266 people are currently reading
2518 people want to read
About the author
Philip K. Dick
2,005 books22.4k followersPhilip Kindred Dick was a prolific American science fiction author whose work has had a lasting impact on literature, cinema, and popular culture. Known for his imaginative narratives and profound philosophical themes, Dick explored the nature of reality, the boundaries of human identity, and the impact of technology and authoritarianism on society. His stories often blurred the line between the real and the artificial, challenging readers to question their perceptions and beliefs.
Raised in California, Dick began writing professionally in the early 1950s, publishing short stories in various science fiction magazines. He quickly developed a distinctive voice within the genre, marked by a fusion of science fiction concepts with deep existential and psychological inquiry. Over his career, he authored 44 novels and more than 100 short stories, many of which have become classics in the field.
Recurring themes in Dick's work include alternate realities, simulations, corporate and government control, mental illness, and the nature of consciousness. His protagonists are frequently everyday individuals—often paranoid, uncertain, or troubled—caught in surreal and often dangerous circumstances that force them to question their environment and themselves. Works such as Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly reflect his fascination with perception and altered states of consciousness, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health struggles and drug use.
One of Dick’s most influential novels is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for Ridley Scott’s iconic film Blade Runner. The novel deals with the distinction between humans and artificial beings and asks profound questions about empathy, identity, and what it means to be alive. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, each reflecting key elements of his storytelling—uncertain realities, oppressive systems, and the search for truth. These adaptations have introduced his complex ideas to audiences well beyond the traditional readership of science fiction.
In the 1970s, Dick underwent a series of visionary and mystical experiences that had a significant influence on his later writings. He described receiving profound knowledge from an external, possibly divine, source and documented these events extensively in what became known as The Exegesis, a massive and often fragmented journal. These experiences inspired his later novels, most notably the VALIS trilogy, which mixes autobiography, theology, and metaphysics in a narrative that defies conventional structure and genre boundaries.
Throughout his life, Dick faced financial instability, health issues, and periods of personal turmoil, yet he remained a dedicated and relentless writer. Despite limited commercial success during his lifetime, his reputation grew steadily, and he came to be regarded as one of the most original voices in speculative fiction. His work has been celebrated for its ability to fuse philosophical depth with gripping storytelling and has influenced not only science fiction writers but also philosophers, filmmakers, and futurists.
Dick’s legacy continues to thrive in both literary and cinematic spheres. The themes he explored remain urgently relevant in the modern world, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with human identity and governance. The Philip K. Dick Award, named in his honor, is presented annually to distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. His writings have also inspired television series, academic studies, and countless homages across media.
Through his vivid imagination and unflinching inquiry into the nature of existence, Philip K. Dick redefined what science fiction could achieve. His work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a
Raised in California, Dick began writing professionally in the early 1950s, publishing short stories in various science fiction magazines. He quickly developed a distinctive voice within the genre, marked by a fusion of science fiction concepts with deep existential and psychological inquiry. Over his career, he authored 44 novels and more than 100 short stories, many of which have become classics in the field.
Recurring themes in Dick's work include alternate realities, simulations, corporate and government control, mental illness, and the nature of consciousness. His protagonists are frequently everyday individuals—often paranoid, uncertain, or troubled—caught in surreal and often dangerous circumstances that force them to question their environment and themselves. Works such as Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly reflect his fascination with perception and altered states of consciousness, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health struggles and drug use.
One of Dick’s most influential novels is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for Ridley Scott’s iconic film Blade Runner. The novel deals with the distinction between humans and artificial beings and asks profound questions about empathy, identity, and what it means to be alive. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, each reflecting key elements of his storytelling—uncertain realities, oppressive systems, and the search for truth. These adaptations have introduced his complex ideas to audiences well beyond the traditional readership of science fiction.
In the 1970s, Dick underwent a series of visionary and mystical experiences that had a significant influence on his later writings. He described receiving profound knowledge from an external, possibly divine, source and documented these events extensively in what became known as The Exegesis, a massive and often fragmented journal. These experiences inspired his later novels, most notably the VALIS trilogy, which mixes autobiography, theology, and metaphysics in a narrative that defies conventional structure and genre boundaries.
Throughout his life, Dick faced financial instability, health issues, and periods of personal turmoil, yet he remained a dedicated and relentless writer. Despite limited commercial success during his lifetime, his reputation grew steadily, and he came to be regarded as one of the most original voices in speculative fiction. His work has been celebrated for its ability to fuse philosophical depth with gripping storytelling and has influenced not only science fiction writers but also philosophers, filmmakers, and futurists.
Dick’s legacy continues to thrive in both literary and cinematic spheres. The themes he explored remain urgently relevant in the modern world, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with human identity and governance. The Philip K. Dick Award, named in his honor, is presented annually to distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. His writings have also inspired television series, academic studies, and countless homages across media.
Through his vivid imagination and unflinching inquiry into the nature of existence, Philip K. Dick redefined what science fiction could achieve. His work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 350 reviews
Read
April 18, 2022
Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick - Am I reading about a teleport trip or an acid trip, or both? This has been the prime question PKD fans have been asking themselves ever since The Unteleported Man was expanded into Lies, Inc..
As by way of explanation, a quick note on the history of the novel. Back in 1964, Phil published his novella, The Unteleported Man. But then about 1981, he inserted 100 pages (midway thru Chapter 8) of his main character tripping out on acid, having been hit by an LSD dart.
I echo other PKD fans familiar with the author's short stories and novels: only read Lies, Inc. after you've familiarized yourself with the author's other books. Thus, having a fund of PKD hyper-crazy weirdness, you'll take all the wacky, tripped out, not-very-clear happenings in the novel more in stride.
I admit, as reviewer, I wrestled with how to best deal with this Dick doozy. I considered several possible formats before deciding to highlight the main character and themes along with adding a quartet of acid visions. Here goes:
Main Character, Main Story
Lies, Inc. (Listening Instructional Education Services) claims the women and men they have teleported from Terra (Earth) to the distant planet of Whale's Mouth are living in paradise since all the massages received from Whale's Mouth describe how life is, indeed, milk and honey, harmony and happiness. Unfortunately, such fifteen minute teleportation is a one-way trip so verification of these reports is questionable at best.
.
Rachmael ben Applebaum doesn't believe those reports. After all, Rachmael, son of dearly departed dad, Maury Applebaum, founder of Applebaum Enterprises, was put out of business by Lies, Inc. and their teleporting. Rachmael could transport people to other planets and moons the good old fashion way, by rocket ship. But rocket ship travel isn't a quick as teleportation - case in point, Rachmael's rocket would take eighteen years to reach Whales Mouth (not quite as fast as fifteen minutes).
Overpopulation
The whole reason for all the immigration to outer space (attempts have been made to colonize the Moon and Mars but they were unsuccessful) is simple: too many people currently on Terra. Back in the 1960s, overpopulation was a hot button. Many feared by the early 21st century, we'd be faced with standing room only. PKD sets his novel in 2014. Fortunately, the dire predictions back then proved not to be quite so dire. However, we shouldn't speak too quickly. Various manifestations of ecological and environmental catastrophe have become real possibilities (not to mention things like viruses).
Rats
Rachmael ben Applebaum is on the receiving end of a transmission from computers owned by Lies, Inc.. One might even say Rachmael was the victim of such a nefarious transmission. The transmission has to do with colonies of rats in garbage dumps in Oakland, California. The consequence of this transmission: Rachmael has been having powerful dreams that he's a rat. And they have been pleasurable rat dreams!
Rachmael thinks he might have been a rat millions of lifetimes ago and that he might have to see a psychiatrist. But then Rachmael thinks there might be another, more sinister, reason:
"Or a microwave transmission, using my brain as a transducer without an electronic interface. They have those, especially the police agencies.
He was very much afraid of the world-wide police agencies. Especially Lies, Incorporated, the worst police agency of them all. Even the Soviet police were afraid of them.
They're beaming psychotronic signals at me subliminally while I'm asleep, he thought. And then he realized how paranoid that was. Christ; no sane person would think that."
The above quote underscores two important ongoing PKD themes: fear of mind control by large government and commercial organizations (Phil was especially fearful of manipulation via television and other mass media) and questions of sanity vs. insanity. What does it mean to be sane? Should a sane person accept an insane world? How much pressure can one take before going completely mad?
Oh My Omphalos
Rachmael ben Applebaum makes a critical decision once he detects Lies, Inc. footage of joyful colonists on Whales Mouth are phonies: he'll find out for himself via first hand experience. To accomplish such a mission, Rachmael will do what he has to do: a solo rocket trip to the distant planet in his rocket ship Omphalos that's currently hidden away on the Moon.
Acid Vision, One
"His gaze fixed, he watched the shining, brittle, transparent thing elaborate itself, produce from its central column slender branches like glass stalagmites; in a series of lurches, of jumps forward into the non-spacial dimension of altered movement, the tree-thing developed until its complexity terrified him. It was all over the world, now; from his hand it had jerked out into stage after stage so that, he knew, it was everywhere, and nothing else had room to exist: the tree-thing had taken up all the space and crowded reality-as-it-usually-was out."
Acid Vision, Two
"It means something, he realized. This thing's ocean-face; its presence at the far end of the tube, at the outer opening where I'm not, that isn't a hallucinated event inside me - it's here for a reason; it drips and wads itself into glued-together folds and stares without winking at me and wants to keep me dead, keep me from every getting back."
Acid Vision, Three
"He rubbed his forehead, feeling the ache, the constriction; like a deep, chronic sinusitis which had flared to its most malignant stage. A pain-threshold alteration, he speculated dully. Due to the drug. Routine common discomfort, ordinary somatic promptings, everything enlarged to the point of unbearability, and signifying nothing, nothing at all."
Acid Vision, Four
"Within its bow-shaped mouth the half-chewed eyes lay, rolling on the surface of its greedy, licking tongue. Those not completely eaten, those which still shone with luster, regarded him as they rolled slightly; they continued to function, although no longer fixed to the bulbed, oozing exterior surface of the head. New eyes, like tiny pale eggs, had already begun to form, he perceived. They clung in clusters."
All clear? If so, please read this PKD as soon as plausible.
January 31, 2016
Wow, what an unmitigated disaster this was. What starts out as a pretty typical PKD tale, if a bit straightforward for him, descends into a hallucinogenic mess that was impossible for me to wade through. This is an expansion (rejected by his publisher) of his 1966 novella, The Unteleported Man, which I'd never read, but I have to imagine it makes more sense than this.
The story here, about a man who decides to take an interstellar trip to a supposed "paradise" planet to see if it really is paradise, or if the government is lying, was actually pretty interesting. But then, about 70-80 pages in, he gets hit with an LSD-laden dart that makes the next hundred pages or so almost nonsensical. I had no idea what was happening, though there was some stuff about parallel worlds, illusory worlds, etc., which is fine, but I had no clue as to what it had to do with anything, or what the main character was doing, or where he was, and I wondered what the people around him were thinking about the vegetative state he must be in and the catatonic stare he most assuredly has. I almost thought it was a joke while reading, I just couldn't believe that Dick thought this would be a good way to stretch his short novel out into a longer one.
I would give this one star, but I have to award it another half just for the immense size of Dick's balls in handing this in to his publisher.
1.5 Stars
The story here, about a man who decides to take an interstellar trip to a supposed "paradise" planet to see if it really is paradise, or if the government is lying, was actually pretty interesting. But then, about 70-80 pages in, he gets hit with an LSD-laden dart that makes the next hundred pages or so almost nonsensical. I had no idea what was happening, though there was some stuff about parallel worlds, illusory worlds, etc., which is fine, but I had no clue as to what it had to do with anything, or what the main character was doing, or where he was, and I wondered what the people around him were thinking about the vegetative state he must be in and the catatonic stare he most assuredly has. I almost thought it was a joke while reading, I just couldn't believe that Dick thought this would be a good way to stretch his short novel out into a longer one.
I would give this one star, but I have to award it another half just for the immense size of Dick's balls in handing this in to his publisher.
1.5 Stars
January 29, 2016
Back in the first set of Saturday Night Live, the original (and funniest ensemble) that featured Bill Murray, John Belushi and Dan Akroyd, in 1979, Steve Martin made one of his many guest appearances. To the tune of a hokey piano accompaniment, Martin walks out onto the stage wearing a Hawaiian shirt and peers out into the audience, beyond the camera and asks in a country bumpkin twang: “What the hell is that?” He looks querulous, perplexed, confused but curious and asks again, “What is that dang thing?” This inquiry is repeated several times in a multitude of humorous variation and he is finally joined by Bill Murray, who squints, peers out into the crowd and wonders: “What the hell is that?”
And so holding Philip K. Dick’s posthumously published Lies, Inc., previously published as The Unteleported Man, I gaze into its mysterious pages and ask:
“What the hell is this??”
I am confused, perplexed, more than befuddled, but still curious:
“Huh. What the hell kind of dang deal is this anyway??”
According to Goodreads this will be my 39th PKD to read, so I’m no stranger to the strange, mystical, weird and maybe deranged world Phil invites us to join. I understand the place in the universe for shape shifting hermaphroditic exhibitionist prostitutes, classical jug bands, co-joined twins who share a head, telepathic slime molds, self medicating schizophrenics and the rest of the oddly populated world according to Dick.
And then we have Lies, Inc.
An incomplete and insubstantial summary might go as follows: in a futuristic (2014) world where the Earth is overpopulated, scientists have figured out how to teleport people to a colony far distant in space, but they cannot come back by teleportation, and no trusted communication is available. Folks could fly there, but the space trip would take 18 years one way. Our intrepid hero doubts the veracity of the propaganda he has been fed and vows to fly his spaceship (now obsolete due to the technological advancements of the teleportation system and rescue the trapped colonists.
And that’s about when Hunter S. Thompson shows up with his mescaline and LSD fun sized combo meal and gets the party started.
Actually, I was very interested to learn that Phil had sought, in the months before his death, to re-write the story and from Lies, Inc. I can see traces of the theological quest he had begun in his VALIS trilogy writings and as evidenced in the The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. I’d almost like to read The Unteleported Man to compare the two writings.
If I could just get someone to tell me:
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS???
And so holding Philip K. Dick’s posthumously published Lies, Inc., previously published as The Unteleported Man, I gaze into its mysterious pages and ask:
“What the hell is this??”
I am confused, perplexed, more than befuddled, but still curious:
“Huh. What the hell kind of dang deal is this anyway??”
According to Goodreads this will be my 39th PKD to read, so I’m no stranger to the strange, mystical, weird and maybe deranged world Phil invites us to join. I understand the place in the universe for shape shifting hermaphroditic exhibitionist prostitutes, classical jug bands, co-joined twins who share a head, telepathic slime molds, self medicating schizophrenics and the rest of the oddly populated world according to Dick.
And then we have Lies, Inc.
An incomplete and insubstantial summary might go as follows: in a futuristic (2014) world where the Earth is overpopulated, scientists have figured out how to teleport people to a colony far distant in space, but they cannot come back by teleportation, and no trusted communication is available. Folks could fly there, but the space trip would take 18 years one way. Our intrepid hero doubts the veracity of the propaganda he has been fed and vows to fly his spaceship (now obsolete due to the technological advancements of the teleportation system and rescue the trapped colonists.
And that’s about when Hunter S. Thompson shows up with his mescaline and LSD fun sized combo meal and gets the party started.
Actually, I was very interested to learn that Phil had sought, in the months before his death, to re-write the story and from Lies, Inc. I can see traces of the theological quest he had begun in his VALIS trilogy writings and as evidenced in the The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. I’d almost like to read The Unteleported Man to compare the two writings.
If I could just get someone to tell me:
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS???
May 4, 2020
Lies, Inc.
Features one of the best bad trips conceived by PKD. Ever.
Matching Soundtrack :
Can - Aumgn
Features one of the best bad trips conceived by PKD. Ever.
Matching Soundtrack :
Can - Aumgn
July 13, 2024
Despite its Frankenstein-style history of construction, which in another author’s hands might have doomed it, this LSD-laced dart of a novel strikes a near-perfect bullseye on many of PKD’s major obsessions and predilections: hallucinogenic effects, paranoia, conspiracies, alternate realities, and even traces of WWII’s worst legacies for good measure. What sets this apart from lesser PKD novels is the holistic way these elements are integrated into the plot, making them all the more frightening and believable, as they become seemingly impossible to untangle. While the novel is not devoid of PKD’s characteristic humor, that too does not distract as it sometimes can in his books by reaching the level of camp. Instead, it flows out here in a subtle and natural way, chiefly through dialogue—a kind of deadpan response to the very real dangers the characters are facing. There are passages in this book that are more horrific to read than much of the prose I’ve encountered in fiction classified as horror. Interestingly, in this novel, there also appears, as in Galactic Pot-Healer (which I read prior to this), a unique book of history that is in a constant state of revision and expansion, reflecting all of what has happened and is about to happen, which certain characters consult at various times. In both novels, the books in question are not entirely trusted to accurately predict the future, and in fact, are possibly being used as a ruse to thwart those who are consulting them in hopes of doing so. This is yet another ingenious way in which PKD drills holes in the foundation of the ‘realities’ depicted in his plots, even as he grappled with the foundation of his own reality in so-called ‘real’ life. A top-tier PKD novel, for sure, and one I won’t soon forget.
December 21, 2015
"If you are wise, Matson said to himself grimly, you never take one-way trips. Anywhere. Even to Boise, Idaho...even across the street. Be certain, when you start, that you can scramble back."
-- Philip K. Dick, Lies, Inc.
The novel was originally published as a novella titled 'The Unteleported Man' in the Amazing-Fantastic back in 1964. The publisher rejected his original expansion idea, which was later added back in (about 1/2 through Chapter 8). If you are reading this going "WTF" you are probably reading the expansion. The novel itself deals with themes of fascism, control, death, technology. None of these themes are new to DIck. DIck was working this novella back into novel form right before he died and there were a couple (not huge gaps) left when he took his one-way trip. Not that it matters. When you are dealing with post "2-3-74" PKD, gaps and jumps and "WTF" moments are part of the literary landscape.
Anyway, If you are only going to read ONE Dick novel. Skip this one. If you are only going to read ten Dick novels, yeah, probably still best to skip this one too. But if you just can't get enough Dick, well, Lies, Inc., at its core is both an old and a new novel, both a traditional SF and a experimental novel written on ACID. But my warning stands. If you are new to PKD, this may just be a one-way trip out of PKD land.
-- Philip K. Dick, Lies, Inc.
The novel was originally published as a novella titled 'The Unteleported Man' in the Amazing-Fantastic back in 1964. The publisher rejected his original expansion idea, which was later added back in (about 1/2 through Chapter 8). If you are reading this going "WTF" you are probably reading the expansion. The novel itself deals with themes of fascism, control, death, technology. None of these themes are new to DIck. DIck was working this novella back into novel form right before he died and there were a couple (not huge gaps) left when he took his one-way trip. Not that it matters. When you are dealing with post "2-3-74" PKD, gaps and jumps and "WTF" moments are part of the literary landscape.
Anyway, If you are only going to read ONE Dick novel. Skip this one. If you are only going to read ten Dick novels, yeah, probably still best to skip this one too. But if you just can't get enough Dick, well, Lies, Inc., at its core is both an old and a new novel, both a traditional SF and a experimental novel written on ACID. But my warning stands. If you are new to PKD, this may just be a one-way trip out of PKD land.
August 17, 2011
Of all the sci-fi novels by cult author Philip K. Dick, "The Unteleported Man"--in its later, expanded version known as "Lies, Inc."--has the most complicated publishing history. Those who are interested in the minutiae of this nearly 40-year saga are advised to seek out Paul Williams' afterword in the currently available Vintage edition. In a nutshell, let's just say that "The Unteleported Man" first saw the light of day in the December '64 issue of "Fantastic" magazine and then in one of those cute little "Ace doubles" in 1966. It wasn't until 1983 that the expanded edition appeared, incorporating 100 pages (around 30,000 words) of Dick's manuscript that had been previously rejected by Ace editor Don Wollheim, but with some missing sections still. The Vintage edition now in print reinstates Dick's original vision of the book...or, at least, as much as he could arrange before his untimely death in 1982. The result is one of Dick's most challenging books, those extra 100 pages (pages 73 - 173 in the Vintage edition) having served as a bone of contention among Dick's fans for years now.
In the novel, we meet a young man with the unusual name of Rachmael ben Applebaum. His family's interplanetary shipping business has recently been made obsolete by the one-way teleportation device of the outfit whimsically known as Trails of Hoffman, Ltd. With this new device, colonists can make the 18-year journey to the distant planet of Whale's Mouth in a mere 15 seconds. The only catch: They can't return the same way. Rachmael, suspicious of just what might be going on on Whale's Mouth, decides to venture there the old-fashioned way, proposing to make the 18-year trip by himself. But what he finds when he ultimately DOES reach the colony world certainly pulls the interstellar rug out from under him...and the reader! Those 100 pages of Whale's Mouth material, absent from the original novella, comprise some of Dick's most way-out speculations on the nature of objective reality; as brilliant as they are hopelessly frustrating, they represent Dick at his most extreme. Incorporating a very hallucinogenic LSD trip, hypnotically induced "para worlds" AND a time-warping device, this section is somewhat difficult (to put it mildly!) to get a handle on, and can almost be seen as one big psychedelic red herring. Skipping those 100 pages (in other words, jumping from page 73 to 173) and reading just the original short novel may be more satisfying for many readers, but even read this way, some mind-warping dilemmas spring up as regards time paradoxes. I have read "Lies, Inc." twice now and continue to be baffled by it. The Byzantine plottings of the two warring factions and the significance of the initial computer snafu on page 3 remain elusive to this reader. I can almost barely put the darn thing together in my head, but please don't ask me to explain it out loud. Let's just say that Dick fans who thought the plottings of "The Simulacra" and "The Penultimate Truth" to be complex, and those who thought the drug-induced reality bending of "The Game-Players of Titan" and, especially, "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" to be a bit headache inducing, are really going to be in for some tough sledding here!
But perhaps I am being a bit too harsh. Although I do agree with British critic David Pringle when he calls the novel one of Dick's "least satisfactory books," and with Dick biographer Lawrence Sutin when he says that the novel is "damn weird," I still maintain that even a failure of a novel from P.K. Dick is more fascinating and readable than a "success" by many others. "Lies, Inc.," though ultimately largely incomprehensible, remains eminently readable and entertaining. It exhibits the influence of the then hugely popular spy craze, features an excellent acid trip depiction, contains what might be the first use of the word "psychotronic" (sorry, Michael Weldon!) and foresees the unification of Germany a good 25 years before the actual event. (If only Dick's prediction of a Federation of Semitic Peoples could come to pass!) And yet...is it a mistake on Dick's part that on page 85, the "white-oak blonde" is referred to as Gretch (Borbman), and then on page 92, she becomes Sheila Quam? Or is this just another cerebrum-twisting aspect of the acid trip in the para world undergoing a time warp? Take two Excedrin, read the novel and get back to me....
In the novel, we meet a young man with the unusual name of Rachmael ben Applebaum. His family's interplanetary shipping business has recently been made obsolete by the one-way teleportation device of the outfit whimsically known as Trails of Hoffman, Ltd. With this new device, colonists can make the 18-year journey to the distant planet of Whale's Mouth in a mere 15 seconds. The only catch: They can't return the same way. Rachmael, suspicious of just what might be going on on Whale's Mouth, decides to venture there the old-fashioned way, proposing to make the 18-year trip by himself. But what he finds when he ultimately DOES reach the colony world certainly pulls the interstellar rug out from under him...and the reader! Those 100 pages of Whale's Mouth material, absent from the original novella, comprise some of Dick's most way-out speculations on the nature of objective reality; as brilliant as they are hopelessly frustrating, they represent Dick at his most extreme. Incorporating a very hallucinogenic LSD trip, hypnotically induced "para worlds" AND a time-warping device, this section is somewhat difficult (to put it mildly!) to get a handle on, and can almost be seen as one big psychedelic red herring. Skipping those 100 pages (in other words, jumping from page 73 to 173) and reading just the original short novel may be more satisfying for many readers, but even read this way, some mind-warping dilemmas spring up as regards time paradoxes. I have read "Lies, Inc." twice now and continue to be baffled by it. The Byzantine plottings of the two warring factions and the significance of the initial computer snafu on page 3 remain elusive to this reader. I can almost barely put the darn thing together in my head, but please don't ask me to explain it out loud. Let's just say that Dick fans who thought the plottings of "The Simulacra" and "The Penultimate Truth" to be complex, and those who thought the drug-induced reality bending of "The Game-Players of Titan" and, especially, "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" to be a bit headache inducing, are really going to be in for some tough sledding here!
But perhaps I am being a bit too harsh. Although I do agree with British critic David Pringle when he calls the novel one of Dick's "least satisfactory books," and with Dick biographer Lawrence Sutin when he says that the novel is "damn weird," I still maintain that even a failure of a novel from P.K. Dick is more fascinating and readable than a "success" by many others. "Lies, Inc.," though ultimately largely incomprehensible, remains eminently readable and entertaining. It exhibits the influence of the then hugely popular spy craze, features an excellent acid trip depiction, contains what might be the first use of the word "psychotronic" (sorry, Michael Weldon!) and foresees the unification of Germany a good 25 years before the actual event. (If only Dick's prediction of a Federation of Semitic Peoples could come to pass!) And yet...is it a mistake on Dick's part that on page 85, the "white-oak blonde" is referred to as Gretch (Borbman), and then on page 92, she becomes Sheila Quam? Or is this just another cerebrum-twisting aspect of the acid trip in the para world undergoing a time warp? Take two Excedrin, read the novel and get back to me....
June 29, 2024
Dick's supreme statement on paranoia and the unknowability of reality. Yes, it's a giant mess, but so is consciousness. So is everything. A lot of the reviews I've read online seem to think that the infamous "LSD sequence" in the middle of the book introduces plot holes. I think it's clear, however, that once the paraworlds have been discovered, they cannot be escaped. The narrative fractures and splinters outward, looping back on itself. There are books that seem to explain the present, the past, and the future. Characters appear to be in two places at once. There is a time-warping construct. And all of it illustrates the underlying idea of Lies, Inc.: nothing is what it seems. Our reality remains and runs parallel to the dream. And in this way, it can never be "verified," as Al Dosker says. We are only dreaming rats, unwitting agents of broader government conspiracy. This is a profoundly disturbing, challenging, and deeply weird book.
February 12, 2013
Over the past year I have read I think 15 PKD novels in more or less chronological order. I have read some good ones, some bad ones, some sloppy ones, and a couple of brilliant ones. Lies, Inc. is the first I have read the pissed me off. A certain level of incoherency comes with the PKD territory, and keeping up with what he is thinking and typing furiously onto the page is part of the fun. But this time out, he creates an irritating mess.
This novel had a chaotic publication history, and it's problems stem from editors' determination, early on with Dick's approval, to make it into a book. In 1963 or 1964, PKD wrote, along with about a dozen other novels, The Unteleported Man , intended for Fantastic Stories or some other Ace Publsihing outlet. (All this information comes from the afterward to the current edition of Lies, Inc. published by Vintage.) With the short novel already in hand, Donald Wolheim, publisher of Ace Books, received what he thought was a really cool cover painting and asked PKD to expand his novelette into book form so the cover might be used. PKD doubled the length of the novelette, but Wolheim, reportedly, was not please with Part Two. (If his reaction was indeed that mild, publishing, in the 1960's, remained a "gentleman's profession.") Part One appeared as part of an Ace Double. In 1979, now working with Berkeley Publishing, PKD had the idea of issuing the complete novel, although what he found of Part Two was missing around a dozen pages of text. PKD wrote a new opening, filled in most but not all of the gaps, and decided that Part Two, rather than succeeding Part One, should appear about halfway into Chapter 8 and end somewhere in Chapter 15. The book, retitled Lies, Inc. winds up in another 25 pages. It was not published until 1983, sixteen months of PKD's death and melodramatically labeled "uncensored."
All of the above is more interesting than anything else about the book. I will not pretend to summarize the plot, but Part Two has the main character appearing on another planet under the false identity that had been assigned to a different character. He is immediately injected with LSD, and PKD wallows in a hyperbolic description of the LSD experience for almost fifty pages. Somebody, more dedicated than myself, might dig up a copy of the short Unteleported Man and see if it makes sense. But LIes, Inc., spins so seriously out of control that I cannot even recommend it for PKD Completists. It is only for PKD Masochists.
This novel had a chaotic publication history, and it's problems stem from editors' determination, early on with Dick's approval, to make it into a book. In 1963 or 1964, PKD wrote, along with about a dozen other novels, The Unteleported Man , intended for Fantastic Stories or some other Ace Publsihing outlet. (All this information comes from the afterward to the current edition of Lies, Inc. published by Vintage.) With the short novel already in hand, Donald Wolheim, publisher of Ace Books, received what he thought was a really cool cover painting and asked PKD to expand his novelette into book form so the cover might be used. PKD doubled the length of the novelette, but Wolheim, reportedly, was not please with Part Two. (If his reaction was indeed that mild, publishing, in the 1960's, remained a "gentleman's profession.") Part One appeared as part of an Ace Double. In 1979, now working with Berkeley Publishing, PKD had the idea of issuing the complete novel, although what he found of Part Two was missing around a dozen pages of text. PKD wrote a new opening, filled in most but not all of the gaps, and decided that Part Two, rather than succeeding Part One, should appear about halfway into Chapter 8 and end somewhere in Chapter 15. The book, retitled Lies, Inc. winds up in another 25 pages. It was not published until 1983, sixteen months of PKD's death and melodramatically labeled "uncensored."
All of the above is more interesting than anything else about the book. I will not pretend to summarize the plot, but Part Two has the main character appearing on another planet under the false identity that had been assigned to a different character. He is immediately injected with LSD, and PKD wallows in a hyperbolic description of the LSD experience for almost fifty pages. Somebody, more dedicated than myself, might dig up a copy of the short Unteleported Man and see if it makes sense. But LIes, Inc., spins so seriously out of control that I cannot even recommend it for PKD Completists. It is only for PKD Masochists.
October 28, 2012
If you don't have some time to dedicate to this novel then don't bother picking it up. The amount of detail is abstract on it's own. The story is very typical of Dick - Nazis won the big one - everyone has a German sounding name - teleportation devices with unknown destinations - otherworldly soldiers that shoot LSD tipped darts and send your brain to another dimension - Yah its all there - classic Dick. Oddly enough this was originally titled the unteleported man and it was the first title of his that I ever picked up but I waited until I had read more than half his catalogue to actually finish it. It's like many critics say, If there was such thing as black science fiction this is your guy and theyre right! If you can get through this book congrats becasue it is a challenge.
November 28, 2025
Month ruined.
The only redeeming part of this book was the initial LSD trip which was interesting and well written. Other than that this book was extremely tedious to get through. Atleast the first half was coherent and understandable. The second half is unforgivably bad. I am not going to pick apart the symbolic significance of the characters and world because they were so boring and incomprehensible it is a waste. Reading this seriously makes me question if any science fiction is worth reading. You are telling me your story takes place in the year 2025+, there are teleportations portals to other solar systems, but you have not yet invented the internet, or even mobile phones? And the world is grossly overpopulated and 100% of humanity lives in pods because there is a WHOPPING 7 billion people living on Earth? This feels so dated, such a waste of time. Maybe this was interesting in 1960 or whenever it came out but feels total irrelevant now.
Could not wait to finish this so I could get it out of my sight. The only intriguing part was the imaginary world where Germany becomes the world super power after losing WW II some how. A silly imaginary world but it does give some strange/curious insight into the minds of people in the 50s and 60s. I had been meaning to read Philip K Dick because I had heard good things. Maybe I’ll read Valis because I’ve heard that’s one of his best, but not for a long long time.
The only redeeming part of this book was the initial LSD trip which was interesting and well written. Other than that this book was extremely tedious to get through. Atleast the first half was coherent and understandable. The second half is unforgivably bad. I am not going to pick apart the symbolic significance of the characters and world because they were so boring and incomprehensible it is a waste. Reading this seriously makes me question if any science fiction is worth reading. You are telling me your story takes place in the year 2025+, there are teleportations portals to other solar systems, but you have not yet invented the internet, or even mobile phones? And the world is grossly overpopulated and 100% of humanity lives in pods because there is a WHOPPING 7 billion people living on Earth? This feels so dated, such a waste of time. Maybe this was interesting in 1960 or whenever it came out but feels total irrelevant now.
Could not wait to finish this so I could get it out of my sight. The only intriguing part was the imaginary world where Germany becomes the world super power after losing WW II some how. A silly imaginary world but it does give some strange/curious insight into the minds of people in the 50s and 60s. I had been meaning to read Philip K Dick because I had heard good things. Maybe I’ll read Valis because I’ve heard that’s one of his best, but not for a long long time.
December 8, 2011
ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.
In the early 21st century, Earth has become overcrowded and has begun to look toward space as a potential new home. Only one habitable planet has been found — Whale’s Mouth — and it’s said to be a paradise. Rachmael ben Applebaum’s company has developed a spaceship that will take settlers there, but the trip takes 18 years. Just as business is about to begin, it’s undercut by Trails of Hoffman, Inc., a company who has developed a new teleporting technology that will get settlers to Whale’s Mouth in only 15 minutes. The only catch is that it’s a one-way trip — once you leave, you can’t come back. Ben Applebaum, whose company has been financially devastated by this new technology, discovers that the videos of happy settlers have been faked and thinks there’s something nefarious going on at Whale’s Mouth. After all, Trails of Hoffman is run by Germans, and their eugenic ideas have not been forgotten. Ben Applebaum also believes that the United Nations, also led by Germans, might be in league with Trails of Hoffman. With the help of a company called Lies, Inc., ben Applebaum sets out on the 36-year round-trip to investigate and inform the world about what’s happening in Whale’s Mouth.
Lies, Inc. is the most inaccessible PKD work I’ve ever read. It actually starts off well — I loved the premise and couldn’t wait to find out what was going on at Whale’s Mouth. (Except that I still have no idea what was up with the rat in ben Applebaum’s head.) But just as ben Applebaum sets out, things get really weird. Too weird. In the middle of the novel, ben Applebaum gets hit by an LSD-coated dart and most of the rest of the story is one big time-warped acid trip for him and for the reader. There’s talk about paraworlds, hypnagogic experiences, paranoia, bad psychotherapy, and the illusion of reality. None of this is new for a PKD story, but this time the reader has no idea where or when the characters are. The plot jumps around in time and space and is so disorienting that the reader doesn’t know what’s going on. I think perhaps that if I read it a few more times, I could make more sense of it, but I really don’t want to.
Suddenly at nearly the end of Lies, Inc., things get back on track. At that point, I said to myself, “This feels like someone dropped a huge acid sequence into the middle of a novella.” After a few minutes of investigation on the internet, I found an afterword by PKD’s literary executor, Paul Williams, explaining that that’s exactly what happened. Lies, Inc. is an expansion of Philip K. Dick’s novella The Unteleported Man. The huge awful chunk in the middle (you can tell exactly where it begins and ends) is an addition to the novel that was originally rejected (with very good reason) by Don Wollheim at Ace. It gets complicated after that, but basically it was added back in after Dick’s death and patched up a bit by SF author John Sladek. The result is that a really cool novella was turned into something quite unreadable. I can recommend it only to PKD completists who want to know how weird it can get. To others, I suggest reading The Unteleported Man instead.
I listened to Lies, Inc. on audio. Brilliance Audio has just produced several old PKD works, and I’m excited about that! This one was read by Luke Daniels, who is fast becoming one of my favorite readers. His narration actually made the acid trip bearable — it’s probably the only reason I didn’t quit Lies, Inc.
In the early 21st century, Earth has become overcrowded and has begun to look toward space as a potential new home. Only one habitable planet has been found — Whale’s Mouth — and it’s said to be a paradise. Rachmael ben Applebaum’s company has developed a spaceship that will take settlers there, but the trip takes 18 years. Just as business is about to begin, it’s undercut by Trails of Hoffman, Inc., a company who has developed a new teleporting technology that will get settlers to Whale’s Mouth in only 15 minutes. The only catch is that it’s a one-way trip — once you leave, you can’t come back. Ben Applebaum, whose company has been financially devastated by this new technology, discovers that the videos of happy settlers have been faked and thinks there’s something nefarious going on at Whale’s Mouth. After all, Trails of Hoffman is run by Germans, and their eugenic ideas have not been forgotten. Ben Applebaum also believes that the United Nations, also led by Germans, might be in league with Trails of Hoffman. With the help of a company called Lies, Inc., ben Applebaum sets out on the 36-year round-trip to investigate and inform the world about what’s happening in Whale’s Mouth.
Lies, Inc. is the most inaccessible PKD work I’ve ever read. It actually starts off well — I loved the premise and couldn’t wait to find out what was going on at Whale’s Mouth. (Except that I still have no idea what was up with the rat in ben Applebaum’s head.) But just as ben Applebaum sets out, things get really weird. Too weird. In the middle of the novel, ben Applebaum gets hit by an LSD-coated dart and most of the rest of the story is one big time-warped acid trip for him and for the reader. There’s talk about paraworlds, hypnagogic experiences, paranoia, bad psychotherapy, and the illusion of reality. None of this is new for a PKD story, but this time the reader has no idea where or when the characters are. The plot jumps around in time and space and is so disorienting that the reader doesn’t know what’s going on. I think perhaps that if I read it a few more times, I could make more sense of it, but I really don’t want to.
Suddenly at nearly the end of Lies, Inc., things get back on track. At that point, I said to myself, “This feels like someone dropped a huge acid sequence into the middle of a novella.” After a few minutes of investigation on the internet, I found an afterword by PKD’s literary executor, Paul Williams, explaining that that’s exactly what happened. Lies, Inc. is an expansion of Philip K. Dick’s novella The Unteleported Man. The huge awful chunk in the middle (you can tell exactly where it begins and ends) is an addition to the novel that was originally rejected (with very good reason) by Don Wollheim at Ace. It gets complicated after that, but basically it was added back in after Dick’s death and patched up a bit by SF author John Sladek. The result is that a really cool novella was turned into something quite unreadable. I can recommend it only to PKD completists who want to know how weird it can get. To others, I suggest reading The Unteleported Man instead.
I listened to Lies, Inc. on audio. Brilliance Audio has just produced several old PKD works, and I’m excited about that! This one was read by Luke Daniels, who is fast becoming one of my favorite readers. His narration actually made the acid trip bearable — it’s probably the only reason I didn’t quit Lies, Inc.
January 31, 2016
You know the face only a mother could love? This is a book only a serious PKD fan could complete. It's a shame because the premise is such a grabber: a company offers ongoing transportation to a paradise planet in another solar system, except it's only one-way, and someone gets it into their head that the paradise planet must not be all they claim if they don't let anyone come back, so he decides to head there in a regular ship so he can come back to expose the company.
Spoilers ahead! Believe me, I'm doing you a favor in saving you from having to read it yourself.
It's hard to screw up such a solid premise, but here's how you do it: let the setup drag once you've already established that something is rotten in Denmark, so the protagonist doesn't get to ship off for a while and just hangs around feeling like a loser (was this autobiographical?). Have him suddenly decide to just teleport halfway through the story since he can't launch his ship, so at least the reader will see what the distant planet is like -- after all, that's the big payoff in the story. Steal the payoff away by shooting the protagonist with an LSD-laced dart right after he arrives, so he's on one long drug trip and can't tell reality from hallucination (again, autobiographical?). Allow everyone who supported him to come through the teleporters, then defeat them so their situation is hopeless and they lose. That way you only get to find out what the planet is like if you're suffering with the characters in a hopeless situation.
Suddenly change the story so that the protagonist didn't teleport after all and actually just left Earth in his ship. Then make the bad guys capture him so he either still fails or fails all over again, depending on what kind of sense you made out of the story earlier. Sprinkle the writing with all kinds of unannounced shifts in perspective and reality so the reader can't make sense of what's going on, and can't easily tell if it's the book or he's just THAT tired (he is that tired, but trust me: it was the book).
I think it's actually hard to make a story this incoherent, so maybe PKD deserves some credit for avoiding any accidental excitement. If the protagonist had done a single thing on the new planet, if anything had happened on his abortive space journey, or if we'd learned more of what the bad guys are doing and what their plans are, this would have been more worthwhile. Also, at 200 pages, it's a mercifully short novel for the amount of effort required to get through it.
All is not completely lost, although I did come close to a 1-star rating. I gave a bonus half star for mention of Oakland on the first page, and it was nice to see a reference to San Diego (if not Portland or Oregon). Part of the incoherence is from PKD making up lots of vocabulary, but you can tell many of the words were made up on purpose with a sense of humor. My favorite of these is "disemflappled". It's kind of like his short story Service Call, which was MUCH better than this drivel, where one character tells another "I've come to fix your swibble." That line tickled me enough I still remember it years later. And that's why I'm a PKD fan :)
Spoilers ahead! Believe me, I'm doing you a favor in saving you from having to read it yourself.
It's hard to screw up such a solid premise, but here's how you do it: let the setup drag once you've already established that something is rotten in Denmark, so the protagonist doesn't get to ship off for a while and just hangs around feeling like a loser (was this autobiographical?). Have him suddenly decide to just teleport halfway through the story since he can't launch his ship, so at least the reader will see what the distant planet is like -- after all, that's the big payoff in the story. Steal the payoff away by shooting the protagonist with an LSD-laced dart right after he arrives, so he's on one long drug trip and can't tell reality from hallucination (again, autobiographical?). Allow everyone who supported him to come through the teleporters, then defeat them so their situation is hopeless and they lose. That way you only get to find out what the planet is like if you're suffering with the characters in a hopeless situation.
Suddenly change the story so that the protagonist didn't teleport after all and actually just left Earth in his ship. Then make the bad guys capture him so he either still fails or fails all over again, depending on what kind of sense you made out of the story earlier. Sprinkle the writing with all kinds of unannounced shifts in perspective and reality so the reader can't make sense of what's going on, and can't easily tell if it's the book or he's just THAT tired (he is that tired, but trust me: it was the book).
I think it's actually hard to make a story this incoherent, so maybe PKD deserves some credit for avoiding any accidental excitement. If the protagonist had done a single thing on the new planet, if anything had happened on his abortive space journey, or if we'd learned more of what the bad guys are doing and what their plans are, this would have been more worthwhile. Also, at 200 pages, it's a mercifully short novel for the amount of effort required to get through it.
All is not completely lost, although I did come close to a 1-star rating. I gave a bonus half star for mention of Oakland on the first page, and it was nice to see a reference to San Diego (if not Portland or Oregon). Part of the incoherence is from PKD making up lots of vocabulary, but you can tell many of the words were made up on purpose with a sense of humor. My favorite of these is "disemflappled". It's kind of like his short story Service Call, which was MUCH better than this drivel, where one character tells another "I've come to fix your swibble." That line tickled me enough I still remember it years later. And that's why I'm a PKD fan :)
January 30, 2018
Questa volta, Philip K. Dick non fa centro, lasciandomi un senso di totale smarrimento. La storia parte bene, aprendo un classico quanto inquietante quadro di utopia/distopia, a cui il lettore medio di fantascienza dovrebbe essere abituato. La trama risulta semplice e lineare, ma riesce ad incuriosire: l'uomo, costretto a vivere su un pianeta Terra sovraffollato, trova la soluzione con una colonizzazione di massa di un pianeta recentemente scoperto, Bocca di Balena, situato in un remoto sistema "solare". Ciò che si nasconde dietro questa apparentemente idilliaca nuova terra promessa non è noto, tanto da far sorgere parecchi dubbi ai pochi che osano porsi qualche domanda, in quanto la nuova colonizzazione ricorda in modo fin troppo sinistro ed esplicito la deportazione di massa nei campi di sterminio ad opera dei nazisti. I protagonisti decidono così di indagare per portare alla luce la verità, qualunque essa sia, e partono alla volta del tanto decantato pianeta.
Purtroppo, a partire da circa metà romanzo, quando la concentrazione è più viva che mai, si entra in un totale stravolgimento di tutto: ci si ritrova catapultati in un trip allucinogeno di LSD, paramondi, distorsione del tempo, libri che predicono il futuro condizionando la mente, alieni che (forse) assumono sembianze umane, gente a caso che fa cose, gente a caso che dice cose, cose a caso che succedono e basta. Una scena dopo l'altra, il lettore viene immerso in un capitolo più WTF?! dell'altro, finchè il filo viene perso del tutto, e tanti saluti. Dick è notoriamente bravo nel ricreare le sensazioni di alterazione dello spazio-tempo, comprese quelle dovute alla droga. Purtroppo in questo caso la mia sensazione è che ci sia semplicemente troppa roba, e devo ammettere, anche con un po' di vergogna, che in alcuni passaggi non ci ho davvero capito niente; alcuna gente non ho nemmeno capito chi fosse; sui paramondi alzo le mani, perchè nella mia mente c'è il vuoto.
Gli ostici ed altisonanti paroloni futuristici, anziché contribuire ad immergere il lettore nel mondo creato, proiettato nel futuro, creano ancora più confusione, rendendo la trama, che già era un guazzabuglio, ancora più arzigogolata, finchè rimane solo il delirio, e si assiste impotenti allo sfacelo di quello che prometteva essere un Signor romanzo.
Debole il recupero finale in cui si cerca di far tornare a combaciare i pezzi del puzzle, e francamente, anche se non posso parlarne per evitare spoiler, anche il finale in sé non mi è piaciuto particolarmente.
Ora che ho terminato la lettura, leggo che anche la pubblicazione di questa opera non ha avuto un percorso felice, ma non faccio fatica a capire il perché. Anche i migliori sbagliano, pazienza.
Purtroppo, a partire da circa metà romanzo, quando la concentrazione è più viva che mai, si entra in un totale stravolgimento di tutto: ci si ritrova catapultati in un trip allucinogeno di LSD, paramondi, distorsione del tempo, libri che predicono il futuro condizionando la mente, alieni che (forse) assumono sembianze umane, gente a caso che fa cose, gente a caso che dice cose, cose a caso che succedono e basta. Una scena dopo l'altra, il lettore viene immerso in un capitolo più WTF?! dell'altro, finchè il filo viene perso del tutto, e tanti saluti. Dick è notoriamente bravo nel ricreare le sensazioni di alterazione dello spazio-tempo, comprese quelle dovute alla droga. Purtroppo in questo caso la mia sensazione è che ci sia semplicemente troppa roba, e devo ammettere, anche con un po' di vergogna, che in alcuni passaggi non ci ho davvero capito niente; alcuna gente non ho nemmeno capito chi fosse; sui paramondi alzo le mani, perchè nella mia mente c'è il vuoto.
Gli ostici ed altisonanti paroloni futuristici, anziché contribuire ad immergere il lettore nel mondo creato, proiettato nel futuro, creano ancora più confusione, rendendo la trama, che già era un guazzabuglio, ancora più arzigogolata, finchè rimane solo il delirio, e si assiste impotenti allo sfacelo di quello che prometteva essere un Signor romanzo.
Debole il recupero finale in cui si cerca di far tornare a combaciare i pezzi del puzzle, e francamente, anche se non posso parlarne per evitare spoiler, anche il finale in sé non mi è piaciuto particolarmente.
Ora che ho terminato la lettura, leggo che anche la pubblicazione di questa opera non ha avuto un percorso felice, ma non faccio fatica a capire il perché. Anche i migliori sbagliano, pazienza.
September 4, 2020
Wow, what a mess.
This is a book full of big crazy ideas. They aren't integrated very well, and nothing comes to a satisfying conclusion. In a lot of ways, this is a paragon of Philidickian writing, unfortunately it's not very readable. This is a book only a serious PKD fan could complete.
I read The Unteleported Man back in the 80s. It is a mostly incomprehensible mess, but fun. When I found out that Lies, Inc. was the complete and definitive version of The Unteleported Man I wanted to read it to see if it would make sense now. It doesn't. If anything, it's worse. I'd like to get a copy of the 1983 edition of The Unteleported Man to refresh my memory of it, and compare the two.
I can only recommend this book to hardcore PKD fans.
I'm going to link to a review on The Unteleported Man page that describes the complicated publishing history of this book.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
This is a book full of big crazy ideas. They aren't integrated very well, and nothing comes to a satisfying conclusion. In a lot of ways, this is a paragon of Philidickian writing, unfortunately it's not very readable. This is a book only a serious PKD fan could complete.
I read The Unteleported Man back in the 80s. It is a mostly incomprehensible mess, but fun. When I found out that Lies, Inc. was the complete and definitive version of The Unteleported Man I wanted to read it to see if it would make sense now. It doesn't. If anything, it's worse. I'd like to get a copy of the 1983 edition of The Unteleported Man to refresh my memory of it, and compare the two.
I can only recommend this book to hardcore PKD fans.
I'm going to link to a review on The Unteleported Man page that describes the complicated publishing history of this book.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
July 31, 2023
My 28th PKD novel.
I read about half of this (not sure how I even got that far)... and then skimmed ahead to the end (since the obfuscation was genuinely becoming crazy-making).
Ugh. Possibly a good contender for PKD's worst work; the dictionary definition of 'gobbledygook'. It's as though Dick is saying to the reader, 'Go ahead - try to get a handle on this plot. I dare you.' Even the characters are particularly poorly drawn.
The first chapter is actually pretty good. In an afterword, PKD's literary executor Paul Williams tells us that Phil tacked the first chapter on years after the fact of the book's troubled publishing history.
It was initially written in 1964... when Phil was largely drug-fueled. Apparently that wasn't as much of a problem with other novels - but this one... CRIPES! Reader-unfriendly and a muddy literary kerfuffle.
I read about half of this (not sure how I even got that far)... and then skimmed ahead to the end (since the obfuscation was genuinely becoming crazy-making).
Ugh. Possibly a good contender for PKD's worst work; the dictionary definition of 'gobbledygook'. It's as though Dick is saying to the reader, 'Go ahead - try to get a handle on this plot. I dare you.' Even the characters are particularly poorly drawn.
The first chapter is actually pretty good. In an afterword, PKD's literary executor Paul Williams tells us that Phil tacked the first chapter on years after the fact of the book's troubled publishing history.
It was initially written in 1964... when Phil was largely drug-fueled. Apparently that wasn't as much of a problem with other novels - but this one... CRIPES! Reader-unfriendly and a muddy literary kerfuffle.
May 13, 2023
When overpopulation threatens the Earth, one company offers a solution: transportation to the colony Whale's Mouth. The only problem? The teleportation machine only works one way. the whole thing sounds too good to be true to Rachel ben Applebaum, who sets himself to reveal the scam only to get ensnared in surveillance by the transport company, who will do anything to thwart him.
There is a MASSIVE tone and plot shift in the middle of the book that was incredibly bewildering, but slowly makes sense of itself. This book had a particularly tortured publication history, which was interesting to read about in the Afterword. It really explained some things!
Far from my favorite Dick, but I did really enjoy it.
There is a MASSIVE tone and plot shift in the middle of the book that was incredibly bewildering, but slowly makes sense of itself. This book had a particularly tortured publication history, which was interesting to read about in the Afterword. It really explained some things!
Far from my favorite Dick, but I did really enjoy it.
December 3, 2021
Δαιδαλώδες, χαώδες, δύσκολο να παρακολουθήσει κανείς τη ροή. Μπορούσε να είναι πιο "δεμένο". Ξεκινάει καλά, τελειώνει καλά, αλλά κάπου στη μέση χάνεται, μαζί με το LSD. Ίσως η εκδοχή του χωρίς την προσθήκη των 30.000 λέξεων που έγινε μεταγενέστερα να έδινε καλύτερο αποτέλεσμα. Ίσως.
July 23, 2015
Lies, Inc. is an incoherent mishmash, studded with brilliant ideas. Given the history of this novel (covered in an excellent Afterword in my edition), this isn't surprising. The book began life as a novella entitled The Unteleported Man. Dick was asked to expand the novella to novel length. He wrote new material and revised the existing work several times. However, the main chunk of expansion material wasn't even published until after his death, and at this point, nobody knew exactly where in the book it was intended to go!
So we have the "unteleported man" of the title, Rachmael ben Applebaum, determined to take the sole remaining starship from his father's ill-fated shipping empire on an 18 year journey to Newcolonizedland, on the distant planet of Formalhaut, normally reached by teleportation. One-way teleportation, according to the owners of this technology, so that none of the millions of immigrants eager to get off the overcrowded earth can ever return to tell those who remain whether the rosy tales of life in the new world are true or not. Everyone views Rachmael as insane - and if he isn't to start with, he will be by the end of eighteen solitary years - but he's determined to get to the bottom of the mystery (or hoax) by traveling the (more or less) old fashioned way. Plus this is the only way for him to save his ship from being attached by his creditors (Lies, Inc., the organization responsible for the teleportation craze).
Then, halfway through the novel, Rachmael suddenly shows up in Formalhaut, suffering from acute hallucinations due to the teleportation process (and possibly other psychic or pharmaceutical interventions). But by the end of the book, Rachmael is back on his ship, returning to earth after the evil plot of Lies, Inc. has been exposed and foiled.)
At which point I said WTF and stopped trying to understand.
However, there are some wonderfully Dickian notions in this book: factory workers doing quality control whose work is double-checked by trained pigeons; a terrorist attack that left residual traces of LSD in the world water supply, such that everyone must be educated to distinguish the inevitable occasional trip from so-called reality; synthetic versions of synthetic food stuffs...
Maybe the book should be read while in the grip of psychedelics. Maybe then it would make sense!
So we have the "unteleported man" of the title, Rachmael ben Applebaum, determined to take the sole remaining starship from his father's ill-fated shipping empire on an 18 year journey to Newcolonizedland, on the distant planet of Formalhaut, normally reached by teleportation. One-way teleportation, according to the owners of this technology, so that none of the millions of immigrants eager to get off the overcrowded earth can ever return to tell those who remain whether the rosy tales of life in the new world are true or not. Everyone views Rachmael as insane - and if he isn't to start with, he will be by the end of eighteen solitary years - but he's determined to get to the bottom of the mystery (or hoax) by traveling the (more or less) old fashioned way. Plus this is the only way for him to save his ship from being attached by his creditors (Lies, Inc., the organization responsible for the teleportation craze).
Then, halfway through the novel, Rachmael suddenly shows up in Formalhaut, suffering from acute hallucinations due to the teleportation process (and possibly other psychic or pharmaceutical interventions). But by the end of the book, Rachmael is back on his ship, returning to earth after the evil plot of Lies, Inc. has been exposed and foiled.)
At which point I said WTF and stopped trying to understand.
However, there are some wonderfully Dickian notions in this book: factory workers doing quality control whose work is double-checked by trained pigeons; a terrorist attack that left residual traces of LSD in the world water supply, such that everyone must be educated to distinguish the inevitable occasional trip from so-called reality; synthetic versions of synthetic food stuffs...
Maybe the book should be read while in the grip of psychedelics. Maybe then it would make sense!
August 15, 2023
This is approximately two-thirds of a decent Philip K. Dick novel, The beginning is pretty interesting, and the end is acceptable. But right in the middle is this indigestible bolus of a bad LSD trip in which there are twelve paraworlds, and characters are on the wrong planet at the wrong time, and ... and ... what can I say?
A company named Trails of Hoffman Limited (THL) has colonized the planet Fomalhaut IX. But there is a major problem: You can go there but you can't come back. Another company (Lies Inc) has reason to suspect that the messages from the planet promising a rosy paradisaical existence are fake. Then we get the indigestible bolus and the more normal ending.
I think that Philip K. Dick was a great writer, but he was not immune from having bad days, weeks, months, even years. You can read Lies, Inc. if you want, but toward the middle, you will be taken for a not entirely pleasurable ride.
A company named Trails of Hoffman Limited (THL) has colonized the planet Fomalhaut IX. But there is a major problem: You can go there but you can't come back. Another company (Lies Inc) has reason to suspect that the messages from the planet promising a rosy paradisaical existence are fake. Then we get the indigestible bolus and the more normal ending.
I think that Philip K. Dick was a great writer, but he was not immune from having bad days, weeks, months, even years. You can read Lies, Inc. if you want, but toward the middle, you will be taken for a not entirely pleasurable ride.
July 13, 2009
Disappointing. The afterword, which I wish had been the foreword, explained that this was Dick's expansion of an earlier novel, The Unteleported Man. The original novel, a mere 100 pages, was the part I liked. The added-on section (another 100 pages), which Dick inserted into the middle of the book, started exactly where I started to lose interest in the book. His obsession with LSD, hallucinations, and subjective experience--usually interesting in books like A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, UBIK, etc.--didn't work here. I can see why the original publisher of The Unteleported Man wasn't interested in republishing it with Dick's added material. He was creative, and prolific, but he did write a few duds. Lies, Inc., as an expansion, is one of those duds.
May 13, 2020
Yeah it is a mess with two books being jammed together but I like the theme of the one book and the weirdness of the other.
"Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils." This line is the one said to begin the craziness that is Lies, Inc. But not its beginning. PKD's 19th novel started as a shorter work, The Unteleported Man. However, it has been published in many forms—some after Dick's death. Joining your Dickheads this time around is Writer/professor/provocateur D. Harlan Wilson lending his assistance in unraveling the odd history of this bizarre book. Check out our episode of Dickheads...
https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodca...
"Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils." This line is the one said to begin the craziness that is Lies, Inc. But not its beginning. PKD's 19th novel started as a shorter work, The Unteleported Man. However, it has been published in many forms—some after Dick's death. Joining your Dickheads this time around is Writer/professor/provocateur D. Harlan Wilson lending his assistance in unraveling the odd history of this bizarre book. Check out our episode of Dickheads...
https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodca...
August 29, 2022
Not all of the parts of this novel gel together. It's obvious the Philip K. Dick was in the process of revising it when he died so that are pieces in the beginning that are not referred to again later in the novel and some text inconsistencies in the middle. The core story from The Unteleported Man is complete and internally consistent but the parts under revision, including the expansion of the novelette originally written in the sixties, are not always as polished.
December 4, 2012
My Philip K. Dick Project
Entry #35 - The Unteleported Man / Lies, Inc. (written Nov. 1964-Mar. 1965, published Sep. 1964)
Wow! Now this is a MESS. A glorious mess, yes, but still a mess.
In fact, I'd been kind of dreading dealing with the whole The Unteleported Man / Lies, Inc. problem. (See, I don't even know what to call it.).
Actually, scratch that. For the rest of the review, I'll be using Lies, Inc. as that was what Dick titled it during his final rewrite. For PKD fans who are interested in reading this, as I was, but unsure what to do, let me try and clear it up for you as best I can.
There is no definitive version of this story, although I think the newer Mariner edition is the closest. Dick originally wrote "The Unteleported Man" as a short story, or novellette. This was published in a Fantastic Stories magazine, and Dick's editor at Ace Books suggested to Dick that he nearly double the length (by adding to the ending) and they would publish it as a novel. Dick did so, but the editor didn't approve of the material, and so it was published as one half of an Ace Double Novel as it was in the magazine. I believe to read this original version, you would either have to get the original magazine, or the Ace Double, both of which would probably be expensive and hard to track down. Then ten or so years later, when the Ace copyright expired, Dick sought to have the book republished in the longer version, which he had written. However, there were two problems. Dick couldn't figure out how to unite the two halves of the book, and there were four pages missing from his 1965 expansion. Dick set about rewriting and expanding, so he wrote a new opening and rejiggered some of the material in the original novella. Unfortunately, Dick died before he could complete his rewrite, so the Berkeley edition published in 1983 was the original novelette, and the expansion material with three gaps indicated in the text from the missing pages. A later edition found the revisions Dick was making for the Berkeley edition, and another writer filled in the gaps. However, after that, the original missing pages were also found. The most definitive edition now is the Mariner edition, which includes the novel and the expansion with Dick's intended revisions and the missing pages. Dick's revisions also include some minor deletions here and there, so there is no one version that contains every word, however. Whew.
My solution was to buy both the Berkeley edition and the newest revision, which fortunately turned out to be the Mariner edition. In trying to unravel this whole mess, I consulted the internet, but most of the sites I found described the situation before the Mariner edition was published. Fortunately, the afterword in the Mariner version made the situation clear. If you're only going to get one version, I would recommend the Mariner edition. However, I had the interesting experience of reading both side by side, simultaneously, a chapter or two from each at a time.
First of all, they start differently. Dick's new beginning introduces us immediately to Lies, Inc. and the rats, one of my favorite conceits from the beginning of the book. The entire rat subplot (in which protagonist Rachmael ben Applebaum lives a mysterious double life as a rat in some alternate reality) adds a lot of spooky, mystical atmosphere to the beginning of the book but suffers as it disappears completely with no warning about a third of the way through. This is a weakness of the book, probably part of the rewrite Dick never got to finish, disappointingly. It's interesting to compare scenes played straight in the older version, where in the new version, poor Applebaum finds his rat reality superimposing itself over his life.
The rat example is just the most glaring example of a larger problem of this book. It's all over the place, and the tortured publication history is only partially to blame. It can be fairly difficult to follow at times. It's insanely complicated and packed with bizarre ideas, even for a Dick book. I enjoyed it a great deal, but after finishing it and reflecting on it a bit, I started to remember all the dropped plot threads I had been looking forward to more of, and felt some disappointment.
But man, this book is insane. Up to a certain point (anyone who has read this will know exactly what point I mean), it's actually relatively straight-forward for mid-period Dick, but once we go down the rabbit-hole here, you might find yourself needing some air. The expansion here was written not long after Dick's experience with LSD, and Dick did not have nice trips. He had terrifying trips, and he was nice enough to give you a little taste of what that's like here. To me, what it is most frightening here is the fact that time loses its meaning. Applebaum experiences in a short time what to him seems like thousands of years. And he is conscious of his reason and rationality disintegrating, but completely powerless to stop it. Reading this, it was almost viscerally panic-inducing.
After his initial freak-out, Applebaum and others find themselves trapped in para-worlds, a series of terrifying realities, where the rules are written by mysterious forces, and everyone seems to be vaguely malevolent, multi-ocular, self-cannibalizing, sea creatures with obscure motives in disguise, eager to push on you a book that seems to write the future. Did I mention it was weird?
How this all ties into Newcolonizedland on Whale's Mouth, and the Trails of Hoffman company and New Whole Germany's secret war on the UN and Lies, Inc. is unclear. I haven't even mentioned tons of things going on with Dr. Einem von Sepp and his disturbing experiments, the colony itself, Al Dosker and a million other things. There's a lot going on, and I'm not going to lie and say Dick really all brings it all together. But the book has a strange, entrancing logic of its own, and it seems that the various mysteries here might be more satisfying left unsolved, all though it would have been nice to have a little more light shone on them. Or maybe I'm really missing something big here.
Anyway, if you want a confounding, endearing, maddening completely Phildickian ride, you don't need to look much farther than this. The fact that there isn't even one definitive version, or even narrative that can be agreed on, seems to put a suitably meta spin on the whole thing.
My edition: The Unteleported Man: Berkley Books paperback, 1983
Lies, Inc: Mariner Paperback, 2004
Up next: "Counter-Clock World"!
December 4th, 2012
Entry #35 - The Unteleported Man / Lies, Inc. (written Nov. 1964-Mar. 1965, published Sep. 1964)
Wow! Now this is a MESS. A glorious mess, yes, but still a mess.
In fact, I'd been kind of dreading dealing with the whole The Unteleported Man / Lies, Inc. problem. (See, I don't even know what to call it.).
Actually, scratch that. For the rest of the review, I'll be using Lies, Inc. as that was what Dick titled it during his final rewrite. For PKD fans who are interested in reading this, as I was, but unsure what to do, let me try and clear it up for you as best I can.
There is no definitive version of this story, although I think the newer Mariner edition is the closest. Dick originally wrote "The Unteleported Man" as a short story, or novellette. This was published in a Fantastic Stories magazine, and Dick's editor at Ace Books suggested to Dick that he nearly double the length (by adding to the ending) and they would publish it as a novel. Dick did so, but the editor didn't approve of the material, and so it was published as one half of an Ace Double Novel as it was in the magazine. I believe to read this original version, you would either have to get the original magazine, or the Ace Double, both of which would probably be expensive and hard to track down. Then ten or so years later, when the Ace copyright expired, Dick sought to have the book republished in the longer version, which he had written. However, there were two problems. Dick couldn't figure out how to unite the two halves of the book, and there were four pages missing from his 1965 expansion. Dick set about rewriting and expanding, so he wrote a new opening and rejiggered some of the material in the original novella. Unfortunately, Dick died before he could complete his rewrite, so the Berkeley edition published in 1983 was the original novelette, and the expansion material with three gaps indicated in the text from the missing pages. A later edition found the revisions Dick was making for the Berkeley edition, and another writer filled in the gaps. However, after that, the original missing pages were also found. The most definitive edition now is the Mariner edition, which includes the novel and the expansion with Dick's intended revisions and the missing pages. Dick's revisions also include some minor deletions here and there, so there is no one version that contains every word, however. Whew.
My solution was to buy both the Berkeley edition and the newest revision, which fortunately turned out to be the Mariner edition. In trying to unravel this whole mess, I consulted the internet, but most of the sites I found described the situation before the Mariner edition was published. Fortunately, the afterword in the Mariner version made the situation clear. If you're only going to get one version, I would recommend the Mariner edition. However, I had the interesting experience of reading both side by side, simultaneously, a chapter or two from each at a time.
First of all, they start differently. Dick's new beginning introduces us immediately to Lies, Inc. and the rats, one of my favorite conceits from the beginning of the book. The entire rat subplot (in which protagonist Rachmael ben Applebaum lives a mysterious double life as a rat in some alternate reality) adds a lot of spooky, mystical atmosphere to the beginning of the book but suffers as it disappears completely with no warning about a third of the way through. This is a weakness of the book, probably part of the rewrite Dick never got to finish, disappointingly. It's interesting to compare scenes played straight in the older version, where in the new version, poor Applebaum finds his rat reality superimposing itself over his life.
The rat example is just the most glaring example of a larger problem of this book. It's all over the place, and the tortured publication history is only partially to blame. It can be fairly difficult to follow at times. It's insanely complicated and packed with bizarre ideas, even for a Dick book. I enjoyed it a great deal, but after finishing it and reflecting on it a bit, I started to remember all the dropped plot threads I had been looking forward to more of, and felt some disappointment.
But man, this book is insane. Up to a certain point (anyone who has read this will know exactly what point I mean), it's actually relatively straight-forward for mid-period Dick, but once we go down the rabbit-hole here, you might find yourself needing some air. The expansion here was written not long after Dick's experience with LSD, and Dick did not have nice trips. He had terrifying trips, and he was nice enough to give you a little taste of what that's like here. To me, what it is most frightening here is the fact that time loses its meaning. Applebaum experiences in a short time what to him seems like thousands of years. And he is conscious of his reason and rationality disintegrating, but completely powerless to stop it. Reading this, it was almost viscerally panic-inducing.
After his initial freak-out, Applebaum and others find themselves trapped in para-worlds, a series of terrifying realities, where the rules are written by mysterious forces, and everyone seems to be vaguely malevolent, multi-ocular, self-cannibalizing, sea creatures with obscure motives in disguise, eager to push on you a book that seems to write the future. Did I mention it was weird?
How this all ties into Newcolonizedland on Whale's Mouth, and the Trails of Hoffman company and New Whole Germany's secret war on the UN and Lies, Inc. is unclear. I haven't even mentioned tons of things going on with Dr. Einem von Sepp and his disturbing experiments, the colony itself, Al Dosker and a million other things. There's a lot going on, and I'm not going to lie and say Dick really all brings it all together. But the book has a strange, entrancing logic of its own, and it seems that the various mysteries here might be more satisfying left unsolved, all though it would have been nice to have a little more light shone on them. Or maybe I'm really missing something big here.
Anyway, if you want a confounding, endearing, maddening completely Phildickian ride, you don't need to look much farther than this. The fact that there isn't even one definitive version, or even narrative that can be agreed on, seems to put a suitably meta spin on the whole thing.
My edition: The Unteleported Man: Berkley Books paperback, 1983
Lies, Inc: Mariner Paperback, 2004
Up next: "Counter-Clock World"!
December 4th, 2012
March 29, 2019
This is one of Dick's weirder books. That probably isn't helped by the fact that the current version was published after Dick's death, nearly doubling in size over the original novel under a different title, in part based on material his publisher wouldn't include in the 60s, and in part newer material after he experienced his 'visions.'
However, it fits firmly within that part of Dick's canon which can be described as depicting drug trips as induced by science-fictional phenomena (the idea of how messed up Earth's colony world is comes from something not dissimilar to how Douglas Adams depicts Earth existing in a plural zone). That said, there's also at least one drug induced drug trip to make things even more interesting to follow.
I think I'm going to need to read this again because it's a book that I'll very much pick up more of after already knowing how it ends.
However, it fits firmly within that part of Dick's canon which can be described as depicting drug trips as induced by science-fictional phenomena (the idea of how messed up Earth's colony world is comes from something not dissimilar to how Douglas Adams depicts Earth existing in a plural zone). That said, there's also at least one drug induced drug trip to make things even more interesting to follow.
I think I'm going to need to read this again because it's a book that I'll very much pick up more of after already knowing how it ends.
September 6, 2023
Some smarty once said about PKD’s works (and I can’t find the source quote now, so I’m paraphrasing what I remember here) something like, “even the worst of Philip K. Dick’s writing is more engaging than some of the best works of other authors.”
I liked a lot of the para-world and other classic “PKD” fake fakes stuff here, but overall it’s a pretty disconnected sort of story. Still, the concepts were engaging enough for me.
Be warned: I’m a pretty big fan of PKD. If you aren’t, then I would advise starting with one of his more recognized works like … “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” or “The Man in the High Castle” or “Ubik” or “Flow My Tears the Policeman Said”
The publishing history of this novel is interesting too. It started out as a novella written to match the cover of a
an SF magazine and then became a novel. Dick expanded it years later and a couple different versions came out of Dick’s literary executor discovering his notes after PKD’s death.
I liked a lot of the para-world and other classic “PKD” fake fakes stuff here, but overall it’s a pretty disconnected sort of story. Still, the concepts were engaging enough for me.
Be warned: I’m a pretty big fan of PKD. If you aren’t, then I would advise starting with one of his more recognized works like … “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” or “The Man in the High Castle” or “Ubik” or “Flow My Tears the Policeman Said”
The publishing history of this novel is interesting too. It started out as a novella written to match the cover of a
an SF magazine and then became a novel. Dick expanded it years later and a couple different versions came out of Dick’s literary executor discovering his notes after PKD’s death.
October 17, 2025
PKD playing the hits - simulacra, mass media Nazis, outer space colonies, depression, acid casualties - and all over the place, a 1960s novel rewritten in the early '80s, apparently to add an entire new section on a nightmarish LSD experience.
November 20, 2011
Спустя всего десять лет после Нюрнбергского процесса фашизм в Германии был успешно восстановлен. Буквально за считанные годы лидеры Новой Единой Германии смогли не только стереть с лица земли угрожавших “холодной войной” коммунистов и китайцев, но и стать второй по могуществу державой мира. Следующей целью возрожденного рейха стала ликвидация демографической проблемы. Для этой цели германские ученые изобрели телепортацию и начали массовое заселение утопической колонии на Китовой Пасти - девятой планете системы Фомальгаута. К 2014 году обитателями колонии стало 40 миллионов добровольцев. Ученые и пиарщики “Телпора” дали слово увеличить к концу следующего десятилетия число прибывших колонистов до одного миллиарда.
У телепортации на Китовую Пасть есть всего лишь один минус – это дорога в один конец. Никто из колонистов никогда не возвращался назад на Землю. Их редкие электронные письма полны глупого энтузиазма и призывов к дальнейшей колонизации, поэтому легко могут оказаться банальной подделкой “Телпора”. Именно так и считает Рахмаэль бен Аппельбаум. Совсем недавно он был владельцем крупнейшей конторы по космическим перевозкам, но из-за открытия способа телепортации он лишился всего своего бизнеса. Чтобы разоблачить обманщиков Рахмаэль решает сесть на свой последний звездолет и отправится на Китовую Пасть, чтобы узнать правду и помочь тем колонистам, кто захочет вернуться на Землю. Дорога Рахмаэля до Китовой Пасти на звездолете займет 18 лет. Обратная дорога – столько же…
Первая половина романа – накручивание интриги вокруг того, что же именно скрывает “Телпор” на Китовой Пасти. Вторая половина – разъяснение того, что там происходило все эти годы. Предупреждаю сразу - это было самое бредовое и самое безумное разъяснение из всех прочитанных за этот год. Только по этой причине я бы крайне не советовал начинать знакомство с творчеством писателя именно с этого романа. Можно и не переварить.
Между тем, “Обман Инкорпорейтед” вышел этим летом в оранжевой серии “Альтернатива” с аннотацией примерно такого содержания. Это – ПОСЛЕДНИЙ роман Филиппа Дика, ПЕРВАЯ часть которого в виде новеллы Unteleported Man была издана еще при жизни автора; часть же вторая, сохранившаяся лишь в рукописях, издавалась в НЕСКОЛЬКИХ разных редакциях уже после его смерти. Перед вами – ВПЕРВЫЕ выходящий на русском языке ПОЛНЫЙ вариант романа – в редакции, наиболее близкой к оригинальной рукописи. В принципе, в этой информации нет ни капли обмана, но я считаю своим долгом пояснить подробно историю его появления на свет. Это крайне необходимо по причине того, что “Обман Инкорпорейтед” вполне можно назвать самым концептуально противоречивым романом писателя. В 1964 году Филиппа Дика попросили написать повесть для сборника, обложка к которому уже была заказана у одного известного художника. Поэтому писателю требовалось лишь придумать текст на тему этой самой обложки. Так родилась история про телепортацию в один конец и про странника Рахмаеля. История, у которой не было конца, только название - Unteleported Man.
Вскоре после выхода журнала издатель предложил Дику дописать историю и сделать из нее полноценный роман. Писателя это весьма позабавило, и он решил придумать наиболее бредовое объяснение тайне Китовой Пасти. В результате, объяснение получилось настолько бредовым, что издатель его забраковал, и оно увидело свет только десять лет спустя. К этому времени история про недописанный или недоизданный роман Филиппа Дика обросла целой кучей мифов и легенд. Апологеты говорили про утерянные четыре страницы, которые были ключом ко всему тексту.
В 1981 году очередное издательство решило издать наиболее полный вариант книги и обратилось за помощью к Дику, которому и предстояло собственноручно отредактировать рукопись. Самое смешное в этой истории в том, что к этому времени писатель совершенно забыл, какое объяснялово он придумал к этой книге, о чем даже однажды признался в одном из интервью. Что еще хуже - обещанную редакцию рукописи он сделать так и не смог, внезапно скончавшись. Но зато все же успел написать дополнительную первую главу, где из-за сбоя главного компьютера Рахмаэлю снятся сны о том, что он – крыса. В результате, эта самая первая глава поставила в тупик весь роман, делая его еще более непонятным и необъяснимым, чем раньше. Но автор уже был к этому времени мертв и отвечать на вопросы офигевших фанатов был не в состоянии.
Вот так и рождаются легенды… После подобной истории можно не удивляться всем тем фэнским кривотолкам вокруг “Блейд Раннера”. Теперь я уверен, что их природа имеет примерно такое же происхождение. (2005.10.15)
У телепортации на Китовую Пасть есть всего лишь один минус – это дорога в один конец. Никто из колонистов никогда не возвращался назад на Землю. Их редкие электронные письма полны глупого энтузиазма и призывов к дальнейшей колонизации, поэтому легко могут оказаться банальной подделкой “Телпора”. Именно так и считает Рахмаэль бен Аппельбаум. Совсем недавно он был владельцем крупнейшей конторы по космическим перевозкам, но из-за открытия способа телепортации он лишился всего своего бизнеса. Чтобы разоблачить обманщиков Рахмаэль решает сесть на свой последний звездолет и отправится на Китовую Пасть, чтобы узнать правду и помочь тем колонистам, кто захочет вернуться на Землю. Дорога Рахмаэля до Китовой Пасти на звездолете займет 18 лет. Обратная дорога – столько же…
Первая половина романа – накручивание интриги вокруг того, что же именно скрывает “Телпор” на Китовой Пасти. Вторая половина – разъяснение того, что там происходило все эти годы. Предупреждаю сразу - это было самое бредовое и самое безумное разъяснение из всех прочитанных за этот год. Только по этой причине я бы крайне не советовал начинать знакомство с творчеством писателя именно с этого романа. Можно и не переварить.
Между тем, “Обман Инкорпорейтед” вышел этим летом в оранжевой серии “Альтернатива” с аннотацией примерно такого содержания. Это – ПОСЛЕДНИЙ роман Филиппа Дика, ПЕРВАЯ часть которого в виде новеллы Unteleported Man была издана еще при жизни автора; часть же вторая, сохранившаяся лишь в рукописях, издавалась в НЕСКОЛЬКИХ разных редакциях уже после его смерти. Перед вами – ВПЕРВЫЕ выходящий на русском языке ПОЛНЫЙ вариант романа – в редакции, наиболее близкой к оригинальной рукописи. В принципе, в этой информации нет ни капли обмана, но я считаю своим долгом пояснить подробно историю его появления на свет. Это крайне необходимо по причине того, что “Обман Инкорпорейтед” вполне можно назвать самым концептуально противоречивым романом писателя. В 1964 году Филиппа Дика попросили написать повесть для сборника, обложка к которому уже была заказана у одного известного художника. Поэтому писателю требовалось лишь придумать текст на тему этой самой обложки. Так родилась история про телепортацию в один конец и про странника Рахмаеля. История, у которой не было конца, только название - Unteleported Man.
Вскоре после выхода журнала издатель предложил Дику дописать историю и сделать из нее полноценный роман. Писателя это весьма позабавило, и он решил придумать наиболее бредовое объяснение тайне Китовой Пасти. В результате, объяснение получилось настолько бредовым, что издатель его забраковал, и оно увидело свет только десять лет спустя. К этому времени история про недописанный или недоизданный роман Филиппа Дика обросла целой кучей мифов и легенд. Апологеты говорили про утерянные четыре страницы, которые были ключом ко всему тексту.
В 1981 году очередное издательство решило издать наиболее полный вариант книги и обратилось за помощью к Дику, которому и предстояло собственноручно отредактировать рукопись. Самое смешное в этой истории в том, что к этому времени писатель совершенно забыл, какое объяснялово он придумал к этой книге, о чем даже однажды признался в одном из интервью. Что еще хуже - обещанную редакцию рукописи он сделать так и не смог, внезапно скончавшись. Но зато все же успел написать дополнительную первую главу, где из-за сбоя главного компьютера Рахмаэлю снятся сны о том, что он – крыса. В результате, эта самая первая глава поставила в тупик весь роман, делая его еще более непонятным и необъяснимым, чем раньше. Но автор уже был к этому времени мертв и отвечать на вопросы офигевших фанатов был не в состоянии.
Вот так и рождаются легенды… После подобной истории можно не удивляться всем тем фэнским кривотолкам вокруг “Блейд Раннера”. Теперь я уверен, что их природа имеет примерно такое же происхождение. (2005.10.15)
August 21, 2013
I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy these days. I’m looking, as always, for books that will surprise and delight me. What I usually get are books that are competently written, with reasonably solid characters and an easily comprehensible plot. They are often driven by a strong idea. But, because they are largely small variations on well worn subjects, they hold few surprises, which does not delight me.
Philip K. Dick’s Lies, Inc. is a deeply flawed book. But, it was full of surprises – oh, boy, was it full of surprises – and I have to say that I was delighted all the while I read it.
Millions of humans have teleported to Fomalhaut IX by transporter. But, it’s a one way trip, and people on Earth are beginning to suspect that information coming back from the colony paints a much rosier picture of what awaits immigrants than what is really there.
The book comes in two parts which do not fit well together. The first is a straightforward telling of a mad plan by interstellar shipping magnate Rachmael ben Applebaum, his empire falling into financial ruin, to take the last ship he owns to Fomalhaut IX, an 18 year journey which would allow him to return with news about what was really happening on the colony. The second part focuses on ben Applebaum teleporting to Fomalhaut IX, almost immediately being drugged with LSD and possibly accessing paraworlds, surreal alternate realities that seem to coexist with the colony planet.
While the first part of the story is straight up science fiction, the second is an hallucinogenic journey into paranoia and madness. The book has a split-personality that is an interesting way of looking at Dick’s writing; the two parts, written at two very different points in his career, show how much his writing had changed in the interim. However, they really don’t work together in a single volume.
Other problems with integrating the two elements in the book crop up, such as character motivation. The decision by ben Applebaum, so concerned with interstellar travel, to teleport to Fomalhaut IX instead was not credible, especially when he claimed to be partially motivated by a love for a female character that he hadn’t previously shown. Worse: when he uses a time machine-like device to go back to before he teleported, he is back on his ship, about to make the 18 year journey, all feelings for the woman forgotten.
It’s also true that, after the excursion into paraworlds, what ben Applebaum actually finds when he reaches Fomalhaut IX is highly anti-climactic.
Given all of this, why would I give Lies, Inc. four stars? Because it’s so bizarre, so alive in ways that more solidly written fiction isn’t. Dick is reaching for something that is uniquely, fascinatingly his own. The fact that he doesn’t achieve it has to be acknowledged, but the fact that he is trying something most other authors wouldn’t go anywhere near is very attractive to me nonetheless.
Philip K. Dick’s Lies, Inc. is a deeply flawed book. But, it was full of surprises – oh, boy, was it full of surprises – and I have to say that I was delighted all the while I read it.
Millions of humans have teleported to Fomalhaut IX by transporter. But, it’s a one way trip, and people on Earth are beginning to suspect that information coming back from the colony paints a much rosier picture of what awaits immigrants than what is really there.
The book comes in two parts which do not fit well together. The first is a straightforward telling of a mad plan by interstellar shipping magnate Rachmael ben Applebaum, his empire falling into financial ruin, to take the last ship he owns to Fomalhaut IX, an 18 year journey which would allow him to return with news about what was really happening on the colony. The second part focuses on ben Applebaum teleporting to Fomalhaut IX, almost immediately being drugged with LSD and possibly accessing paraworlds, surreal alternate realities that seem to coexist with the colony planet.
While the first part of the story is straight up science fiction, the second is an hallucinogenic journey into paranoia and madness. The book has a split-personality that is an interesting way of looking at Dick’s writing; the two parts, written at two very different points in his career, show how much his writing had changed in the interim. However, they really don’t work together in a single volume.
Other problems with integrating the two elements in the book crop up, such as character motivation. The decision by ben Applebaum, so concerned with interstellar travel, to teleport to Fomalhaut IX instead was not credible, especially when he claimed to be partially motivated by a love for a female character that he hadn’t previously shown. Worse: when he uses a time machine-like device to go back to before he teleported, he is back on his ship, about to make the 18 year journey, all feelings for the woman forgotten.
It’s also true that, after the excursion into paraworlds, what ben Applebaum actually finds when he reaches Fomalhaut IX is highly anti-climactic.
Given all of this, why would I give Lies, Inc. four stars? Because it’s so bizarre, so alive in ways that more solidly written fiction isn’t. Dick is reaching for something that is uniquely, fascinatingly his own. The fact that he doesn’t achieve it has to be acknowledged, but the fact that he is trying something most other authors wouldn’t go anywhere near is very attractive to me nonetheless.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 350 reviews