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The Game-Players of Titan
In this sardonically funny gem of speculative fiction, Philip K. Dick creates a novel that manages to be simultaneously unpredictable and perversely logical. Poor Pete Garden has just lost Berkeley. He's also lost his wife, but he'll get a new one as soon as he rolls a three. It's all part of the rules of Bluff, the game that's become a blinding obsession for the last inhabitants of the planet Earth. But the rules are about to change--drastically and terminally--because Pete Garden will be playing his next game against an opponent who isn't even human, for stakes that are a lot higher than Berkeley.
157 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1963
83 people are currently reading
3098 people want to read
About the author
Philip K. Dick
2,007 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
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April 14, 2017
Checklist of common PKD novel elements present in Game Players of Titan:
drug use – check!
mental illness – check!
flying cars – check!
pre-cogs – check!
con-apts – check!
vid-phones – check!
homeopapes – check!
mass hallucinations – check!
paranoia – check!
psionic abilities – check!
telepathic aliens – check!
and of course,
simulacra – check!!
First published in 1963, one noticeable omission from the above list is any deep theological undertones. This is one of his more fun novels, in the category with Galactic Pot-Healer and The Crack in Space, though it also closely resembles Dr. Bloodmoney in its post apocalyptic kookiness.
In this novel, Phil describes a far future Earth where we have been defeated by a race of telepathic slugs from Titan. Along with this is the fact that Earth is 99% sterile and the population is dwindling fast. Amongst the wreckage of our lost civilization is the need to play a board game (somewhat resembling Life) to trade property and wives.
Wildly fantastic, subtly absurdist and altogether fun for PKD fans, Game Players of Titan is one of his better offerings. Amidst the absurd humor and nihilism is Dick’s own inimitable brand of humanistic hope for the future.
I would not be surprised if this one joins the ranks of PKD stories developed into a film.
drug use – check!
mental illness – check!
flying cars – check!
pre-cogs – check!
con-apts – check!
vid-phones – check!
homeopapes – check!
mass hallucinations – check!
paranoia – check!
psionic abilities – check!
telepathic aliens – check!
and of course,
simulacra – check!!
First published in 1963, one noticeable omission from the above list is any deep theological undertones. This is one of his more fun novels, in the category with Galactic Pot-Healer and The Crack in Space, though it also closely resembles Dr. Bloodmoney in its post apocalyptic kookiness.
In this novel, Phil describes a far future Earth where we have been defeated by a race of telepathic slugs from Titan. Along with this is the fact that Earth is 99% sterile and the population is dwindling fast. Amongst the wreckage of our lost civilization is the need to play a board game (somewhat resembling Life) to trade property and wives.
Wildly fantastic, subtly absurdist and altogether fun for PKD fans, Game Players of Titan is one of his better offerings. Amidst the absurd humor and nihilism is Dick’s own inimitable brand of humanistic hope for the future.
I would not be surprised if this one joins the ranks of PKD stories developed into a film.
June 22, 2021
Power to the people! Unfortunately, in Philip K. Dick's 1962 novel The Game-Players of Titan, we're two hundred years into the future, the people are the entire human race and humans have anything but power – in the aftermath of Hinkle radiation and losing a war with the Titanians aka vugs from Planet Titan, the human population has been decimated, only a handful of couples can have kids and those vugs hold the real power.
This is a world of advanced technology with such things as The Rushmore Effect wherein elevators, medicine cabinets and flying automobiles are programed to answer questions by speaking the truth. It’s also a world where playing The Game is of central importance: those fortunate humans who play the Game are referred to as Bindmen. And the vugs? There are some vugs here on Earth to keep tabs on human activity, participation in the Game heading up the list. Vugs can manifest as either flies or humans, one can never be sure when one’s dealing with a vug. It’s the roll of the dice.
The Game-Players of Titan is one weird, wild, freaky fiction. PKD works his magic to scramble all sorts of spaced out madness into his speculative stew. To share a taste, here are a number of key ingredients:
The Game: board game that’s similar to Risk or Monopoly requiring a combination of skill and luck, where a spinner and a deck of cards are needed to play and players trade properties and wives back and forth. What’s particularly helpful for a game player: an ability to read other players, knowing when your opponent is or is not bluffing.
Pete Garden: an ordinary kind of guy with suicidal tendencies and gloomy, manic-depressive phases, a guy prone to addiction to liquor and especially drugs. Oh, yes, Pete can get extremely paranoid, frequently for good reason - he has hallucinations that we humans are all surrounded by vugs. Or, maybe he's actually seeing the truth? Even paranoids have enemies. I bet when he was a little kid, Pete saw the sippy cup as half empty. And you've has such bad luck playing the game recently, Pete! You lost Berkeley, California and also your latest wife. You need a three to get yourself a new wife – and you desperately want Berkeley back; you're willing to trade three small cities in Marin County. What you really need, Pete, is some luck - either in yourself or in a new Game playing partner.
Joe Shilling: Poor Joe! He lost big time to Lucky Luckman from New York City. Subsequently, he dropped from Bindman to a non-B (the major distinction in status in this brave new depopulated world). But thanks to his good buddy Pete, Joe can rejoin the game. Once at the table for the ultimate stakes, Joe shares a true gem of wisdom: the biggest enemies for a game player are greed and fear. Thus spoke Shilling. Lesson to last a lifetime.
Psychic Pat McClain: This PKD-style femme fatale is a telepath. Since this luscious lady can read minds, she is automatically disqualified from the Game, forever relegated to non-B status, a fact of life that makes her furious. There’s something funny about Pat – she refuses to submit to having her own mind read, such a curious stance for a mind-reader. Sounds like Pat might have something to hid from the Bindmen.
Mary Anne McClain: Holy psychokinesis! Mary Anne is Pat’s eighteen-year old daughter, a young lady having the power to invoke the Poltergeist effect, moving people and things through space and through walls. Oh, funky baby! I want you on my side. As do Pete and his fellow players.
Jerome Luckman: lucky guy at the Game: lucky guy at having children. Is there such a thing as too much luck? The fate of this New Yorker adds yet again another philosophic dimension to the novel.
Carol Holt: Pete's new wife. He did come up with a three, after all. Shortly following their marriage, turns out Carol is pregnant. Oh, lucky day for both Carol and Pete. Now our protagonist truly has the stakes raised as he gambles at the Game and takes his chances at life.
Dave Mutreaux: A pre-cog, that is, someone able to tell the future, another type of person excluded from the Game. And the players have an EEG Machine to detect if someone wishing to come to the table is a pre-cog. However, the more PKD develops his story, the more Dave and his pre-cog abilities rise in importance. In the game of life, always a good idea to befriend a person who can warn you of the consequences of possible bad decisions.
Vugs on Titan: There's the ultimate Game. It's Pete and his group versus the vug master game players on Titan. But alas, even if the vugs lose, those critters still wield tremendous power. The vugs just might take W.C. Fields seriously when he said, "It’s morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money."
Life, a Game of Chance: But seriously folks, there’s a great sense of play in The Game-Players of Titan. Who can Pete trust when appearances frequently differ so radically from reality? Whatever choices Pete makes depend so much on LUCK, big time. Pete recognizes we ordinary humans are at such a disadvantage - we can't see into the future, we can’t read other people’s minds, we simply have to take our chances.
In many ways, the challenges Pete and his fellow players face are similar to our own. No answers are provided (unlike VALIS and other PKD novels, The Game-Players of Titan does not even touch on theology). Decision making here is more in the spirit of gaming and game theory, of bluffing and calling bluff, of relying on skill and playing the odds, all along counting on a bit of luck. And please remember, no matter where you are on the game board or where you are in life, greed and fear will rarely work to your advantage.
Such a flaky, fun novel. One of the most enjoyable PKDs I've come across.
"Junk, like a billion golf balls, cascaded brightly, replacing the familiar reality of substantial forms. It was, Joe Schilling thought, like a fundamental breakdown of the act of perception itself... "I'm scared - what is this?" He did not understand and he reached out groping in the stream of atom-like sub-particles that surged everywhere. Is this the understructure of the universe itself? he wondered. The world outside of space and time, beyond the modes of cognition?" - Philip K. Dick, The Game-Players of Titan
February 10, 2025
hello, my new favorite Dick! this one has all of the author's usual strengths and none of his occasional weaknesses.
♚ the plot is dense dense dense but the pace is fast fast fast which means the whole thing feels light light light despite all of the many moving parts and ideas being thrown around, all of the layers peeling back, all of the revelations and twists & turns and stops & starts. there is a swarming effect to it all, but this is a fun kind of swarm, take it easy, let the swarm pick you up and carry you away.
♛ there's a great sorta-heroine who doesn't really come into her own until about halfway through the book: Mary Anne McClain, a student at San Francisco State, potential love interest but also a person with agency, an attitude, and a moral core to boot. she has a certain psychic power: psychokinesis. she can toss people around, twist them into pretzels, phase them in and out of walls, fling them into the sky. she does all of that and more. I love a violent young lady. and she's not the only great female character: there's her mom, a jaded and complicated femme fatale of sorts, and there's our hero's embittered ex-wife (lost her in one of the games) who has a big ax to grind and whose potential to cause a new round of grief ends the book on a fun sorta-cliffhanger. plus there's his new wife, who moves from an annoyance into someone both rootable and relatable - a very sympathetic creation. and that's just the women, there are plenty of distinctive and interesting male characters as well, perhaps our hero Pete Garden most of all. smart, frequently perplexed and irritable, Pete also becomes an amnesiac, as if he didn't have enough to deal with after losing both his wife and the city of Berkeley in a late-night game. been there.
♜ even more psychic shenanigans! Mary Anne's psychokinesis (and a useful ability to negate precognition) is just one of a bunch. Dick often has psychic powers in his stories and Game-Players is an embarrassment of psychic riches, with telepaths and precogs running around messing things up and poking into minds and stopping plans by peeking into the future. psionic warfare is the best. plus there's a range of very chatty AI on top of that, including appliances and cars. the future is wild, man.
♝ excellent aliens! the amorphous, silicon-based, amoeba-like vugs from Jupiter's moon Titan at first appear harmless and friendly but are soon revealed to be a complex society where game-playing centrists manipulating the human race are opposed by Titan First radicals who want to eliminate the subjects of their seemingly benign rule: humans. and just like humans, there are bad vugs and good vugs, the former including a psychotherapist vug with the ability to teleport and the latter including a suspicious, officious vug cop. an embarrassment of vug riches!
♞ a complex but easily understood post-apocalyptic society with a property-owning elite who play the game Bluff and are able to own entire regions (besides Berkeley, Pete owns most of Marin). everyone wants to be an elite, of course. why post-apocalypse? because we destroyed ourselves, of course. with a weapon that got out of control and ended up fucking over everyone, of course. humans always our own worst enemy. fortunately, friendly vugs are here to help!
♟ as has been noted by Carlo Pagetti in 2014, Game-Players is a "parodic meta-narrative... [it] is also the story of a science-fiction writer who manipulates science-fiction's most predictable formulas, who uses his characters as puppets, who thinks he is allowed to call in doubt his own ending with the tricks and sleights of hand of a juggler, a game player..." layers upon layers! enjoy the book for its exciting surface plot, or its take on game theory, or for its ideas about free will, how "friendly" colonial rule could look, the traps of identity, or for how the entire story operates as a game, its players flying all across board, strategies rising or falling depending on which side and which player is gaining or losing or switching sides. so many ways to enjoy this book. all the layers are awesome!
♚ the plot is dense dense dense but the pace is fast fast fast which means the whole thing feels light light light despite all of the many moving parts and ideas being thrown around, all of the layers peeling back, all of the revelations and twists & turns and stops & starts. there is a swarming effect to it all, but this is a fun kind of swarm, take it easy, let the swarm pick you up and carry you away.
♛ there's a great sorta-heroine who doesn't really come into her own until about halfway through the book: Mary Anne McClain, a student at San Francisco State, potential love interest but also a person with agency, an attitude, and a moral core to boot. she has a certain psychic power: psychokinesis. she can toss people around, twist them into pretzels, phase them in and out of walls, fling them into the sky. she does all of that and more. I love a violent young lady. and she's not the only great female character: there's her mom, a jaded and complicated femme fatale of sorts, and there's our hero's embittered ex-wife (lost her in one of the games) who has a big ax to grind and whose potential to cause a new round of grief ends the book on a fun sorta-cliffhanger. plus there's his new wife, who moves from an annoyance into someone both rootable and relatable - a very sympathetic creation. and that's just the women, there are plenty of distinctive and interesting male characters as well, perhaps our hero Pete Garden most of all. smart, frequently perplexed and irritable, Pete also becomes an amnesiac, as if he didn't have enough to deal with after losing both his wife and the city of Berkeley in a late-night game. been there.
♜ even more psychic shenanigans! Mary Anne's psychokinesis (and a useful ability to negate precognition) is just one of a bunch. Dick often has psychic powers in his stories and Game-Players is an embarrassment of psychic riches, with telepaths and precogs running around messing things up and poking into minds and stopping plans by peeking into the future. psionic warfare is the best. plus there's a range of very chatty AI on top of that, including appliances and cars. the future is wild, man.
♝ excellent aliens! the amorphous, silicon-based, amoeba-like vugs from Jupiter's moon Titan at first appear harmless and friendly but are soon revealed to be a complex society where game-playing centrists manipulating the human race are opposed by Titan First radicals who want to eliminate the subjects of their seemingly benign rule: humans. and just like humans, there are bad vugs and good vugs, the former including a psychotherapist vug with the ability to teleport and the latter including a suspicious, officious vug cop. an embarrassment of vug riches!
♞ a complex but easily understood post-apocalyptic society with a property-owning elite who play the game Bluff and are able to own entire regions (besides Berkeley, Pete owns most of Marin). everyone wants to be an elite, of course. why post-apocalypse? because we destroyed ourselves, of course. with a weapon that got out of control and ended up fucking over everyone, of course. humans always our own worst enemy. fortunately, friendly vugs are here to help!
♟ as has been noted by Carlo Pagetti in 2014, Game-Players is a "parodic meta-narrative... [it] is also the story of a science-fiction writer who manipulates science-fiction's most predictable formulas, who uses his characters as puppets, who thinks he is allowed to call in doubt his own ending with the tricks and sleights of hand of a juggler, a game player..." layers upon layers! enjoy the book for its exciting surface plot, or its take on game theory, or for its ideas about free will, how "friendly" colonial rule could look, the traps of identity, or for how the entire story operates as a game, its players flying all across board, strategies rising or falling depending on which side and which player is gaining or losing or switching sides. so many ways to enjoy this book. all the layers are awesome!
January 27, 2018
The first time I read this was years ago and I remember thinking how wild it was to have so many of PKD's normal theme soup all in one place. You know... simulacra, psi, suicide, drugs, intrigue, murder, aliens, altered realities, dark fate for humanity, etc... but I didn't remember this novel being so funny.
I mean, aside from the fact it's not quite as good as the Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, the two are quite similar. I can see Banks sitting down to write and think, how could I improve upon this novel. I have robots, interstellar war, a better game, and intrigue. But then PKD had all the rest and murder, memory alteration, prolonged life, and genocide.
It all boils down to execution. ;)
The style is very '63, but that's not really a horrible thing. A lot of great SF came out of that year and this was PKD's hugely prolific period. I have to put things in their proper place. Aliens begging for rare records and entire cities being the stakes in a bet is quite delicious.
Don't expect a really deep read, however. This one is all about the fun and the twists throughout the plot. :) Still fun to this day.
I mean, aside from the fact it's not quite as good as the Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, the two are quite similar. I can see Banks sitting down to write and think, how could I improve upon this novel. I have robots, interstellar war, a better game, and intrigue. But then PKD had all the rest and murder, memory alteration, prolonged life, and genocide.
It all boils down to execution. ;)
The style is very '63, but that's not really a horrible thing. A lot of great SF came out of that year and this was PKD's hugely prolific period. I have to put things in their proper place. Aliens begging for rare records and entire cities being the stakes in a bet is quite delicious.
Don't expect a really deep read, however. This one is all about the fun and the twists throughout the plot. :) Still fun to this day.
January 27, 2021
A potent and amusing brew of many of PKDs favorite themes, e.g. paranoia, conspiracy, depression, hallucinatory drugs, psi, and really weird aliens with seemingly insidious intentions posing as humans. On top of this luck plays a central role, as embodied in the strange monopoly/poker like game called Bluff, played to determine economic and marital fate and ultimately that of Earth itself, the "luck" of a mostly barren post-apocalyptic population in conceiving children, and the incredible luck and ultimate unluckiness of Jermoe "Lucky" Luckman who's mysterious demise sets the stage for broader events and conflict. All this comes together into a trippy mass of blurred perceptions, mystery and intrigue, pitting humanity in a high stakes game against the Titanians. While The Game-Players of Titan features many of PKD's regular ingredients, they are mixed in a way that comes out fresh, fast-paced and especially in this case, more outrageous and amusing than usual.
December 16, 2024
„Играчите от титан“ е много хубава и изпълнена с интересни обрати научна фантастика! Тя притежава завладяваща атмосфера, подобна на тази от „Блейд Рънър“, като със сигурност ще се хареса на почитателите на големия Филип Дик.
В книгата се потаяпяме в едно бъдеще на Земята, в което хората са спрели да остаряват, както и разполат с летящи коли и други технологии с Рашмор-ефект, но пък се раждат все по-малко деца и населението е значително намаляло. Човечеството вече е изгубило война срещу извънземните от Титан, като някои титанци живеят на нашата планета и помагат на оцелелите. Увеличаването на шансовете за раждане на дете и контрола върху благата зависят от участието на определени хора в Играта... Участниците в нея, наречени Настойници, залагат собствеността върху цели градове, като е забранено да играят хора, притежаващи телепатични способности. Един от участниците е главният герой в романа - Пит, който една вечер губи своя любим град, като с това се поставя началото на големи опасности и шокиращи разкрития, след които ще се състои много по-грандиозна игра, а залогът ще бъде бъдещето на цялото човечество...
В книгата се потаяпяме в едно бъдеще на Земята, в което хората са спрели да остаряват, както и разполат с летящи коли и други технологии с Рашмор-ефект, но пък се раждат все по-малко деца и населението е значително намаляло. Човечеството вече е изгубило война срещу извънземните от Титан, като някои титанци живеят на нашата планета и помагат на оцелелите. Увеличаването на шансовете за раждане на дете и контрола върху благата зависят от участието на определени хора в Играта... Участниците в нея, наречени Настойници, залагат собствеността върху цели градове, като е забранено да играят хора, притежаващи телепатични способности. Един от участниците е главният герой в романа - Пит, който една вечер губи своя любим град, като с това се поставя началото на големи опасности и шокиращи разкрития, след които ще се състои много по-грандиозна игра, а залогът ще бъде бъдещето на цялото човечество...
November 4, 2016
"Anyhow, Pete Garden, you were psychotic and drunk and on amphetamines and hallucinating, but basically you perceived the reality that confronts us…"
― Philip K. Dick, The Game-Players of Titan
Books seem to float into my life in pairs, like aces, kings, or quite often twos. I guess I could count "The Game-Players of Titan" as my second gambling novel in a month. The first was Jonathan Lethem's A Gambler's Anatomy: A Novel. There is something fascinating by the whole literary genre of game novels (King, Queen, Knave, The Glass Bead Game, Oscar and Lucinda, The Gambler, Daniel Deronda*, The Music of Chance*, and more).
Games of chance and skill allow good writers to look into some of life's big questions of causation, death, love with the ability to dance between the coldness of luck/chance and the warmth of skill. Philip K. Dick uses the basics of a game of chance to introduce the idea of a group of people on Earth who gamble not for small stakes, but for cities and counties. Pots are filled with Berkeley and Detroit instead of watches and coins. Add to this mix, drugs, paranoia, aliens, and the pot both thickens and grows.
I usually walk away from a Dick novel amazed in the same way I'm amazed at Darwin. You see what he did, understand the idea almost instantly, and kick yourself for not being born first and thinking in a way that produces the end result. Dick seems naturally talented at looking at the world from a slightly warped perspective. He seems to both float in a lactescent zone by himself, but at the same time he is able to hold onto the teats of the world tight enough to squeeze out an amazing story every couple years. There is a reason I keep coming back to PKD -- either he is crazy or I am.
* I have yet to read these.
― Philip K. Dick, The Game-Players of Titan
Books seem to float into my life in pairs, like aces, kings, or quite often twos. I guess I could count "The Game-Players of Titan" as my second gambling novel in a month. The first was Jonathan Lethem's A Gambler's Anatomy: A Novel. There is something fascinating by the whole literary genre of game novels (King, Queen, Knave, The Glass Bead Game, Oscar and Lucinda, The Gambler, Daniel Deronda*, The Music of Chance*, and more).
Games of chance and skill allow good writers to look into some of life's big questions of causation, death, love with the ability to dance between the coldness of luck/chance and the warmth of skill. Philip K. Dick uses the basics of a game of chance to introduce the idea of a group of people on Earth who gamble not for small stakes, but for cities and counties. Pots are filled with Berkeley and Detroit instead of watches and coins. Add to this mix, drugs, paranoia, aliens, and the pot both thickens and grows.
I usually walk away from a Dick novel amazed in the same way I'm amazed at Darwin. You see what he did, understand the idea almost instantly, and kick yourself for not being born first and thinking in a way that produces the end result. Dick seems naturally talented at looking at the world from a slightly warped perspective. He seems to both float in a lactescent zone by himself, but at the same time he is able to hold onto the teats of the world tight enough to squeeze out an amazing story every couple years. There is a reason I keep coming back to PKD -- either he is crazy or I am.
* I have yet to read these.
May 4, 2020
In the aftermath of an inter-species war somewhere around the 22th century, Terrans and Vugs settled on a military 'Concordate', stating the rules which both species have to obey from then on.
Take one of these rules : As Vugs frown on plain causality, now your life as a Terran is determined by how you fare playing a game. The stakes in this game from Titan are extensive urban areas, called 'binds'. If you are lucky, then you become a powerful Bindman, if not... you live under one, who rules over the city you live in, as a kind of liege. Also, if you happen to be a male player and lose a Bind, you lose your current wife, along with other pieces of furniture. That's right. You see, wives are bets, too.
However, chancy as the Game seems, you soon realize vugs and humans try to prevent the game from relying on pure luck, making use of mind-reading, mind-sculpting, precognition, altering physical reality, etc. In my opinion, that does not even out the story. On the contrary, it accounts for a very sketchy plot indeed and a lot of loose ends .
To me, here is where the story failed.
Relations amidst player groups are hardly plausible : do you really believe people would be that cheerful and good-humoured if they were liable to regularly lose huge property, status and partners to one another? As far as I know, the Players' motives to gather and play for such stakes on a regular basis... are left unexplained in the whole story.
... and so are the consequences of such a living style on the characters' psychology, undergoing huge swings of property every now and then, more or less compelled to go from one partner to another.
For instance : is it always the woman who is being forfeited? Is there any room for dissent about the whole game? In the end, the superior longevity of the characters (average 150 y.o.) does not seem to influence their personalities and minds whatsoever.
More, the dialogue is uneasy and sometimes inordinately clunky, featuring rough spins and abrupt lines, esp. with female characters. Incidentally, the latter are revolving around Pete, merely competing, vying for his attention, one way or another. Which sadly takes away all possible depth out of characters quite shallow from the start.
On the whole, the story felt as if it was being cooked up into existence just as you are reading it... Which accounts for some frantic action but just does not make the trick as a consistent story-telling method.
Not the most enjoyable PKD I have read.
Music :
Any title by Magma.
Film suggestions :
∼ Inception
∼ They Live
Take one of these rules : As Vugs frown on plain causality, now your life as a Terran is determined by how you fare playing a game. The stakes in this game from Titan are extensive urban areas, called 'binds'. If you are lucky, then you become a powerful Bindman, if not... you live under one, who rules over the city you live in, as a kind of liege. Also, if you happen to be a male player and lose a Bind, you lose your current wife, along with other pieces of furniture. That's right. You see, wives are bets, too.
However, chancy as the Game seems, you soon realize vugs and humans try to prevent the game from relying on pure luck, making use of mind-reading, mind-sculpting, precognition, altering physical reality, etc. In my opinion, that does not even out the story. On the contrary, it accounts for a very sketchy plot indeed and a lot of loose ends .
To me, here is where the story failed.
Relations amidst player groups are hardly plausible : do you really believe people would be that cheerful and good-humoured if they were liable to regularly lose huge property, status and partners to one another? As far as I know, the Players' motives to gather and play for such stakes on a regular basis... are left unexplained in the whole story.
... and so are the consequences of such a living style on the characters' psychology, undergoing huge swings of property every now and then, more or less compelled to go from one partner to another.
For instance : is it always the woman who is being forfeited? Is there any room for dissent about the whole game? In the end, the superior longevity of the characters (average 150 y.o.) does not seem to influence their personalities and minds whatsoever.
More, the dialogue is uneasy and sometimes inordinately clunky, featuring rough spins and abrupt lines, esp. with female characters. Incidentally, the latter are revolving around Pete, merely competing, vying for his attention, one way or another. Which sadly takes away all possible depth out of characters quite shallow from the start.
On the whole, the story felt as if it was being cooked up into existence just as you are reading it... Which accounts for some frantic action but just does not make the trick as a consistent story-telling method.
Not the most enjoyable PKD I have read.
Music :
Any title by Magma.
Film suggestions :
∼ Inception
∼ They Live
August 18, 2011
Philip K. Dick's 10th novel, "The Game-Players of Titan," was originally released in 1963 as an Ace paperback (F-251, for all the collectors out there), with a cover price of a whopping 40 cents. His follow-up to the Hugo Award-winning "The Man in the High Castle," it was one of six novels that Phil saw published from 1962-'64, during one of the most sustained and brilliant creative bursts in sci-fi history. Like so many of the author's works, the action in "Game-Players" transpires on a futuristic Earth (around the year 2225, if I read between the lines correctly) that has been laid waste by war and hard radiation. Here, it has been 130 years since mankind fought the vugs of the Saturnian moon Titan to a stalemate, and now an uneasy peace of sorts reigns, while the fortunate landowners of the depleted, sterile society play a game called Bluff and wager gigantic chunks of real estate at the table. When we first meet the book's central character, Pete Garden, a suicidal, 150-year-old landowner, he is sorely upset due to his recent loss of Berkeley at that night's game...not to mention the lose of his 18th wife! And Pete's lot is soon to get a lot worse, when the newest member of his playing group is abruptly murdered, Pete's memory is blanked out, and suspicion falls squarely upon him. And that murder rap just opens up an ever-widening labyrinth of political intrigue and escalating paranoia for the poor, befuddled character.
I must say, this is one of the wildest, most imaginative, most way-out Dickian jaunts that I have ever encountered...perhaps too much so, for its own good. The book is filled with all kinds of interesting touches, from talking cars, tea kettles and bathroom cabinets to the fascinating sequence in which a telepath examines the mind of a "pre-cog." Many of Phil's pet interests, such as opera, cigars and divorce (Phil would ultimately marry five times) are given an airing, and there is much humor to be had, as well. For example, the car that Joe Schilling, Pete's best friend (a bearded manager of a classical music store, as Phil had been in the early '50s, and a clear stand-in here for the author), drives, is a riot, responding to its owner's commands with comments such as "Up yours." The book has a typically large cast (47 named characters, including the 16 in Pete's Pretty Blue Fox game-playing group); some human, some vugs, and many with ESP-type abilities. Those vugs, by the way, are silicon based, Phil here beating "Star Trek"'s Horta to the silicic punch by a good four years! Typical for a Dick novel, the book is compulsively readable and brimming with ideas. And as for Dick's favorite theme, that of the elusiveness of objective reality, boy, does this novel deliver in spades, and then some! And that is part of the problem.
In this book--where the vugs are capable of mind control, and many characters lie to one another, and red herrings abound, and in which Pete Garden takes so many pills with his booze that he has psychotic episodes--it really is impossible to tell what's what. To make matters even more confusing, the vugs are capable of appearing human and some can even teleport Earth folk instantaneously to Titan or to some in-between limbo state. In short, readers will be hard put to ever know what is real, who is what, where we are or whom we can trust. It is Dick at his most paranoid and extreme, and although it does make for fun reading, I'm not sure that the whole thing hangs together logically, or whether the motivations of several characters are consistent. Heck, this is a murder mystery in which the identity of the killer is never even revealed (!) ,and in truth, as the novel progresses, that issue becomes increasingly unimportant. I was ultimately left unsure, by the book's conclusion, if several characters were actual vugs or merely humans being controlled by vugs. Those vugs, by the way, are never adequately described by Phil; he just tells us that they are "amorphous" and have pseudopods. Six feet tall or six inches? Who knows? And although Dick's novel ends happily, for the most part, the author seems unable to resist throwing in some downbeat ambiguity in the final pages. This is clearly a book that could have seen a sequel, a common temptation for sci-fi writers and one that Phil, amazingly, never succumbed to. In all, a highly readable and entertaining novel from Dick's middle period, if a bewildering one.
I must say, this is one of the wildest, most imaginative, most way-out Dickian jaunts that I have ever encountered...perhaps too much so, for its own good. The book is filled with all kinds of interesting touches, from talking cars, tea kettles and bathroom cabinets to the fascinating sequence in which a telepath examines the mind of a "pre-cog." Many of Phil's pet interests, such as opera, cigars and divorce (Phil would ultimately marry five times) are given an airing, and there is much humor to be had, as well. For example, the car that Joe Schilling, Pete's best friend (a bearded manager of a classical music store, as Phil had been in the early '50s, and a clear stand-in here for the author), drives, is a riot, responding to its owner's commands with comments such as "Up yours." The book has a typically large cast (47 named characters, including the 16 in Pete's Pretty Blue Fox game-playing group); some human, some vugs, and many with ESP-type abilities. Those vugs, by the way, are silicon based, Phil here beating "Star Trek"'s Horta to the silicic punch by a good four years! Typical for a Dick novel, the book is compulsively readable and brimming with ideas. And as for Dick's favorite theme, that of the elusiveness of objective reality, boy, does this novel deliver in spades, and then some! And that is part of the problem.
In this book--where the vugs are capable of mind control, and many characters lie to one another, and red herrings abound, and in which Pete Garden takes so many pills with his booze that he has psychotic episodes--it really is impossible to tell what's what. To make matters even more confusing, the vugs are capable of appearing human and some can even teleport Earth folk instantaneously to Titan or to some in-between limbo state. In short, readers will be hard put to ever know what is real, who is what, where we are or whom we can trust. It is Dick at his most paranoid and extreme, and although it does make for fun reading, I'm not sure that the whole thing hangs together logically, or whether the motivations of several characters are consistent. Heck, this is a murder mystery in which the identity of the killer is never even revealed (!) ,and in truth, as the novel progresses, that issue becomes increasingly unimportant. I was ultimately left unsure, by the book's conclusion, if several characters were actual vugs or merely humans being controlled by vugs. Those vugs, by the way, are never adequately described by Phil; he just tells us that they are "amorphous" and have pseudopods. Six feet tall or six inches? Who knows? And although Dick's novel ends happily, for the most part, the author seems unable to resist throwing in some downbeat ambiguity in the final pages. This is clearly a book that could have seen a sequel, a common temptation for sci-fi writers and one that Phil, amazingly, never succumbed to. In all, a highly readable and entertaining novel from Dick's middle period, if a bewildering one.
April 13, 2015
"Anyhow, Pete Garden, you were psychotic and drunk and on amphetamines and hallucinating, but basically you perceived the reality that confronts us..."
PKD must have dreamed that any one of his five wives or several girlfriends would one day sit across the breakfast table and speak those words to him. I don't know that he was ever psychotic, that term was tossed around differently in the 1960's than it would be today. But drunk and on amphetamines,? Yes. Hallucinating? During the time he was writing this novel PKD walked daily from his home to his "writing shack" about a mile down the road. In the blue, Northern California sky, he saw a gigantic malevolent face. "It was immense, it filled like a quarter of the sky. It had empty slots for eyes -- it was metal and cruel and, worst of all, it was God." An Episcopal priest PKD consulted suggested it was a vision of Satan. Whatever the case, it didn't go away for days. So, I think that is another "yes" for hallucinating.
In Game Players of Titan, earth has been dealt a double blow. As per usual with Dick, there has been an atomic war, this one started by the Red Chinese using a new weapon developed in East Germany. (Nice period details, there.) The radiation released by the new weapon sterilizes the populations it is directed against, but wind currents being what they are, the Red Chinese have inadvertently almost completely sterilized the human race. To add insult to injury, beings from Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, have invaded and conquered earth. They are the Vugs, oversized amoebas that sound a bit like Al Capp's Shmoo. Humans find them irritating and keep Vug sticks on hand for pushing them out of rooms. But the Vugs are, in their way, benevolent landlords. Longevity drugs allow humans to live into their hundreds while never looking much over 30 or 40 years of age. With earth's population in the low millions, lucky humans are Bindmen, property owners whose properties include towns, cities, and vast swathes of the depopulated planet. If you are a Bindman you must also play the Titans' game.
The Titans' game seems like nothing more than a rudimentary board game, a simplified form of Monopoly but with all your landholdings at stake. Peter Garden's loss of Berkeley in the first chapter of the book sets in motion events that will involve murder, interplanetary travel, telekinesis, ESP, and large quantities of alcohol and amphetamines.
Along with Berkeley, Garden loses his current wife, but acquires a new one that same night. Another purpose of the game is to keep reshuffling human couples in hopes of finding those who can still "get lucky," the current term for becoming pregnant. Garden's spectacular bender that takes up much of the book occurs when he discovers that with his new wife he has gotten lucky for the first time and on their first night. He ingests every pill in the house and starts hitting the bars. What he discovers are conspiracies within conspiracies, Vug infiltration of his closest friends, and an offer to play the ultimate game to decide the fate of the earth.
Game Players of Titan is PKD really hitting his stride. It is a masterpiece of paranoia, where no one can be trusted to be who they claim to be, where rules are made to be broken, and the protagonist must bluff his way through a game that he knows is a deadly sham. And how do you go about bluffing if half the people in the room can read your mind? The fact that PKD works out a method implies that he had spent for too much energy in his personal life dealing with just barely more earthbound versions of these same issues. And remember that every morning, on his walk to his typewriter, he must endure the glaring, empty eyes of a malevolent god.
PKD must have dreamed that any one of his five wives or several girlfriends would one day sit across the breakfast table and speak those words to him. I don't know that he was ever psychotic, that term was tossed around differently in the 1960's than it would be today. But drunk and on amphetamines,? Yes. Hallucinating? During the time he was writing this novel PKD walked daily from his home to his "writing shack" about a mile down the road. In the blue, Northern California sky, he saw a gigantic malevolent face. "It was immense, it filled like a quarter of the sky. It had empty slots for eyes -- it was metal and cruel and, worst of all, it was God." An Episcopal priest PKD consulted suggested it was a vision of Satan. Whatever the case, it didn't go away for days. So, I think that is another "yes" for hallucinating.
In Game Players of Titan, earth has been dealt a double blow. As per usual with Dick, there has been an atomic war, this one started by the Red Chinese using a new weapon developed in East Germany. (Nice period details, there.) The radiation released by the new weapon sterilizes the populations it is directed against, but wind currents being what they are, the Red Chinese have inadvertently almost completely sterilized the human race. To add insult to injury, beings from Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, have invaded and conquered earth. They are the Vugs, oversized amoebas that sound a bit like Al Capp's Shmoo. Humans find them irritating and keep Vug sticks on hand for pushing them out of rooms. But the Vugs are, in their way, benevolent landlords. Longevity drugs allow humans to live into their hundreds while never looking much over 30 or 40 years of age. With earth's population in the low millions, lucky humans are Bindmen, property owners whose properties include towns, cities, and vast swathes of the depopulated planet. If you are a Bindman you must also play the Titans' game.
The Titans' game seems like nothing more than a rudimentary board game, a simplified form of Monopoly but with all your landholdings at stake. Peter Garden's loss of Berkeley in the first chapter of the book sets in motion events that will involve murder, interplanetary travel, telekinesis, ESP, and large quantities of alcohol and amphetamines.
Along with Berkeley, Garden loses his current wife, but acquires a new one that same night. Another purpose of the game is to keep reshuffling human couples in hopes of finding those who can still "get lucky," the current term for becoming pregnant. Garden's spectacular bender that takes up much of the book occurs when he discovers that with his new wife he has gotten lucky for the first time and on their first night. He ingests every pill in the house and starts hitting the bars. What he discovers are conspiracies within conspiracies, Vug infiltration of his closest friends, and an offer to play the ultimate game to decide the fate of the earth.
Game Players of Titan is PKD really hitting his stride. It is a masterpiece of paranoia, where no one can be trusted to be who they claim to be, where rules are made to be broken, and the protagonist must bluff his way through a game that he knows is a deadly sham. And how do you go about bluffing if half the people in the room can read your mind? The fact that PKD works out a method implies that he had spent for too much energy in his personal life dealing with just barely more earthbound versions of these same issues. And remember that every morning, on his walk to his typewriter, he must endure the glaring, empty eyes of a malevolent god.
June 14, 2024
Мега-добро ново издание на класиката на Дик, чието оригинално родно издание е ненамираемо за под два бъбрека.
Кратко допълнение към описания сюжет: Земята е в пост-апокалипсис. Комунистите са изобретили вещество, което прави стерилни само прогнилите западняци, но се оказва, че го прави с всички. Вече не са останали много хора, а раждаемостта е наистина ниска. Имало е и война между хората и извънземните, обитаващи спътника на Сатурн - Титан и уж е постигнат мир, но на практика титанците са победили. Те уж не се месят в землянските работи, но всъщност го правят.
Хората са разделени на две касти - играещи и, да речем, граждани. Играещите притежават цели квартали и градове, където живеят граждани и се грижат, според способностите си, за добруването им. Те играят игра, подобна на монополи, но залозите са истински населени места. Титанците играят по-сложна нейна версия, защото са телепати.
Главният герой попада във водовъртеж от интриги и престъпления, които водят чак до Титан и заплашват останалите хора с изчезване.
Добър роман, като на моменти си личи как Дик е прекалявал с амфетамините и от време на време действието прескача моменти, защото е прекалено бързо. Би могъл да спечели от още петдесетина, че и повече страници, които да водят читателя по-лесно из повествованието и да се оправят някои неубедително обосновани или изобщо нелогични, случки. Това последното е особено рядко в днешно време, в което проблемът масово е обратен - излишното раздуване на романите става някаква перверзна норма.
Краят се случи много бързо, но беше добър, та не мрънкам много-много.
Силно препоръчителна класическа фантастика!
Кратко допълнение към описания сюжет: Земята е в пост-апокалипсис. Комунистите са изобретили вещество, което прави стерилни само прогнилите западняци, но се оказва, че го прави с всички. Вече не са останали много хора, а раждаемостта е наистина ниска. Имало е и война между хората и извънземните, обитаващи спътника на Сатурн - Титан и уж е постигнат мир, но на практика титанците са победили. Те уж не се месят в землянските работи, но всъщност го правят.
Хората са разделени на две касти - играещи и, да речем, граждани. Играещите притежават цели квартали и градове, където живеят граждани и се грижат, според способностите си, за добруването им. Те играят игра, подобна на монополи, но залозите са истински населени места. Титанците играят по-сложна нейна версия, защото са телепати.
Главният герой попада във водовъртеж от интриги и престъпления, които водят чак до Титан и заплашват останалите хора с изчезване.
Добър роман, като на моменти си личи как Дик е прекалявал с амфетамините и от време на време действието прескача моменти, защото е прекалено бързо. Би могъл да спечели от още петдесетина, че и повече страници, които да водят читателя по-лесно из повествованието и да се оправят някои неубедително обосновани или изобщо нелогични, случки. Това последното е особено рядко в днешно време, в което проблемът масово е обратен - излишното раздуване на романите става някаква перверзна норма.
Краят се случи много бързо, но беше добър, та не мрънкам много-много.
Силно препоръчителна класическа фантастика!
July 24, 2019
New introduction by Robert Thurston.
Note: This is not a library copy.
Roaming the pristine landscape of Earth, cared for by machines and aliens, the few remaining humans alive since the war with Titan play Bluff, allowing them to win or lose property and also form new marriages in order to maximize the remote chance some pairings will produce a child. When Pete Garden, a particularly suicidal member of the Pretty Blue Fox game-playing group, loses his current wife and his deed to Berkeley, he stumbles upon a far bigger, more sinister version of the game.
The telepathic, slug-like Vugs of Titan are the players and at stake is the Earth itself. The Game-Players of Titan is a brilliantly conceived vision of a future dystopia, full of imaginative detail, moments of pure humor and thought-provoking musings on the nature of perception, as the seemingly straightforward narrative soon turns into a tumultuous nightmare of delusion, precognition and conspiracy.
Note: This is not a library copy.
Roaming the pristine landscape of Earth, cared for by machines and aliens, the few remaining humans alive since the war with Titan play Bluff, allowing them to win or lose property and also form new marriages in order to maximize the remote chance some pairings will produce a child. When Pete Garden, a particularly suicidal member of the Pretty Blue Fox game-playing group, loses his current wife and his deed to Berkeley, he stumbles upon a far bigger, more sinister version of the game.
The telepathic, slug-like Vugs of Titan are the players and at stake is the Earth itself. The Game-Players of Titan is a brilliantly conceived vision of a future dystopia, full of imaginative detail, moments of pure humor and thought-provoking musings on the nature of perception, as the seemingly straightforward narrative soon turns into a tumultuous nightmare of delusion, precognition and conspiracy.
June 9, 2020
"It had been a bad night, and when he tried to drive home he had a terrible argument with his car."
A vintage record store owner. A mysterious crooner by the name of Nats Katz. Characters who are all casually familiar with the theories of Jung. Yes, you've stepped into another Philip K. Dick novel. Also, get ready to hear a lot about Vugs. What's that, you don't know what a Vug is? Well, I can see how that might bug you.
The Game-Players of Titan (written '63, published '63) is another novel in Phil's prolific early 60s run. As in Clans of the Alphane Moon (written '63-'64, published '64), the story takes place in the aftermath of a war between Earth and an alien race, and the aliens in question- Vugs from Titan in this case, Saturn's largest moon- are known as great gamblers and lovers of chance, maybe not unlike a certain science-fiction writer who once or twice plotted a novel with the help of the I-Ching. In contrast to Clans, however, this is a war that Earth has lost; the planet is now depopulated (not primarily due to the war however, but to the sterilizing effects of the Hinkel radiation designed by Nazi scientist Bernhardt Hinkel and used as a weapon during a separate, Sino-American war) and under the more-or-less benevolent administration of Titan, sort of like the relationship between Guam and the United States. Naturally there are some extremist hard-line Vugs who make the relationship volatile, though in general things don't sound that bad: the Vugs, in accordance with their great love of gambling and chance, simply require Earth's remaining inhabitants to play a Monopoly-like board game called Bluff for the ownership of various locales (an almost entirely depopulated Berkley, CA for example), as well as to determine their spouses (well, why not, you've got to be adaptable in life)...at least until the next session of the game that is, which has the potential to once again upend everything, just as the characters in this novel change allegiances and identities; lose their memories and get them back; and step into their therapists' offices on Earth only to find themselves halfway across the solar system, until finally the dust settles with, what else, an epic game of Bluff on the Vugs' home turf.
A fun novel. Not bad, but it's probably not going to stick in my memory either.
October 3, 2021
Another good Dick.
August 23, 2022
Luck of the Draw
22 Aug 2022 – Saarbrucken
I finally managed to finish this book, but in part that was because I had a particularly long journey yesterday, which included a train replacement bus through southern Belgium (which added about an hour to the journey) and a particularly crowded German regional train where some bright spark thought it would be a great idea to send the refreshment trolley through (amidst cries of ‘es ist voll, es ist voll!’). However, here I am, sitting in a decently sized hotel room (which I didn’t expect existed in Europe) in the city of Saarbrucken while I wait for the train to take me on to Strasbourg.
Like many of Phillip K Dick’s works, this one sort of seems to be all over the place, but you could easily describe it as a science-fiction murder mystery with a conspiracy theory thrown in for good measure. Well, okay, it pretty much sounds like one of those film-noir/neo-noir films except that it is set in a post apocalyptic world. Honestly, I think Dick does a pretty good job in crossing these genres, as I suspect was the whole idea behind it. Okay, he did it with Blade Runner as well, so yeah, it certainly can be done.
Anyway, Earth has been at war with Titan which is inhabited by a race of telepathic blob aliens called the Vug. During the war, the Red Chinese deployed a weapon which resulted in a bulk of the human population becoming infertile, so what that basically means is that humanity is now an occupied, and a dying race. The victorious vug have implemented this idea called the game, where you can only enter if you own land, and you can only own land if you can correctly predict when another landowner dies. Oh, if you happen to be a telepath, then you are banned from playing the game.
Honestly, the game sounds a little bit like monopoly, though instead of rolling dice you draw cards with numbers on them, and move the piece a certain position along the board. However, this is where the catch comes in, you can move your pieces as many spaces as you chose, but if somebody decides to call your bluff you have to pay out, however if they incorrectly call a bluff, you have to pay out. What is interesting is that Dick keeps the general rules of the game pretty vague until the final game at the end, where there are a number of new twists added (though it turns out it is because the vug keep on changing the rules).
In part you could say that this is a commentary on modern capitalism, and also seems to be pretty prescient with the world of today. It is through pure luck that you are able to get a seat at the table, whether it be through property, or whether it is just through having enough money to actually invest it. Then again, even if you do manage to get enough money to invest, it can be like playing against some pretty skillful, and well resourced players. Mind you, you also have the ability to get somebody else to play on your behalf, but you never know whether that entity is going to win you a lot more, or lose everything.
I’ve actually seen a tweet that goes around everyso often and it describes entrepreneurialism as sort of like a game of darts, and the goal is to hit the centre of the board. If you are poor, you get no shots whatsoever, if you are middle class, you get one shot, maybe two, but if you are wealthy you can throw as many darts at the board as you like. Why do you think Elon Musk has been involved in so many different ventures, and why do you think Amazon keeps on adding more products to its inventory, going to the point where they can spend millions of dollars on television shows that aren’t likely to give it a return.
However, everybody seems to want to point out that it is only the wealthy who succeed, and that may be the case but there are quite a few people who have succeeded from more modest backgrounds, but that is because they have had a lucky break (like Lan Hancock realising that his cattle station was sitting on a huge pile of iron ore), or getting the right product out there at the right time (I was going to say Jeff Bezos, but he went to Princeton and worked on Wall Street, so I’ll say Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquar, who made billions out of time management software but went to a second-tier Australian university).
Yet, like what Dick suggests in this book, it is all a game, and the thing is that even if you somehow manage to win the game, your opponents generally hold many more cards that you, and even if you play fairly, they don’t necessarily need to, and can use their friends, and their resources, to push you back to where you belong.
22 Aug 2022 – Saarbrucken
I finally managed to finish this book, but in part that was because I had a particularly long journey yesterday, which included a train replacement bus through southern Belgium (which added about an hour to the journey) and a particularly crowded German regional train where some bright spark thought it would be a great idea to send the refreshment trolley through (amidst cries of ‘es ist voll, es ist voll!’). However, here I am, sitting in a decently sized hotel room (which I didn’t expect existed in Europe) in the city of Saarbrucken while I wait for the train to take me on to Strasbourg.
Like many of Phillip K Dick’s works, this one sort of seems to be all over the place, but you could easily describe it as a science-fiction murder mystery with a conspiracy theory thrown in for good measure. Well, okay, it pretty much sounds like one of those film-noir/neo-noir films except that it is set in a post apocalyptic world. Honestly, I think Dick does a pretty good job in crossing these genres, as I suspect was the whole idea behind it. Okay, he did it with Blade Runner as well, so yeah, it certainly can be done.
Anyway, Earth has been at war with Titan which is inhabited by a race of telepathic blob aliens called the Vug. During the war, the Red Chinese deployed a weapon which resulted in a bulk of the human population becoming infertile, so what that basically means is that humanity is now an occupied, and a dying race. The victorious vug have implemented this idea called the game, where you can only enter if you own land, and you can only own land if you can correctly predict when another landowner dies. Oh, if you happen to be a telepath, then you are banned from playing the game.
Honestly, the game sounds a little bit like monopoly, though instead of rolling dice you draw cards with numbers on them, and move the piece a certain position along the board. However, this is where the catch comes in, you can move your pieces as many spaces as you chose, but if somebody decides to call your bluff you have to pay out, however if they incorrectly call a bluff, you have to pay out. What is interesting is that Dick keeps the general rules of the game pretty vague until the final game at the end, where there are a number of new twists added (though it turns out it is because the vug keep on changing the rules).
In part you could say that this is a commentary on modern capitalism, and also seems to be pretty prescient with the world of today. It is through pure luck that you are able to get a seat at the table, whether it be through property, or whether it is just through having enough money to actually invest it. Then again, even if you do manage to get enough money to invest, it can be like playing against some pretty skillful, and well resourced players. Mind you, you also have the ability to get somebody else to play on your behalf, but you never know whether that entity is going to win you a lot more, or lose everything.
I’ve actually seen a tweet that goes around everyso often and it describes entrepreneurialism as sort of like a game of darts, and the goal is to hit the centre of the board. If you are poor, you get no shots whatsoever, if you are middle class, you get one shot, maybe two, but if you are wealthy you can throw as many darts at the board as you like. Why do you think Elon Musk has been involved in so many different ventures, and why do you think Amazon keeps on adding more products to its inventory, going to the point where they can spend millions of dollars on television shows that aren’t likely to give it a return.
However, everybody seems to want to point out that it is only the wealthy who succeed, and that may be the case but there are quite a few people who have succeeded from more modest backgrounds, but that is because they have had a lucky break (like Lan Hancock realising that his cattle station was sitting on a huge pile of iron ore), or getting the right product out there at the right time (I was going to say Jeff Bezos, but he went to Princeton and worked on Wall Street, so I’ll say Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquar, who made billions out of time management software but went to a second-tier Australian university).
Yet, like what Dick suggests in this book, it is all a game, and the thing is that even if you somehow manage to win the game, your opponents generally hold many more cards that you, and even if you play fairly, they don’t necessarily need to, and can use their friends, and their resources, to push you back to where you belong.
May 1, 2012
Not exactly what I expected with a title like that or a blurb like the one found on this 1973 printing but what I didn't expect (and don't ask me why I ignored it) was an allegory of Cold War America told through an interstellar cold war with aliens from Titan.
So Dick wanted to be thought of as a literary writer not a pulpy sci-fi author, and I say fair enough as my experiences of his work so far point to the obvious conclusion that this drug fuelled writer had a lot more to say than most sci-fi writers of teh time and seemingly better tools to say it with. It's a shame that just because you write in genre fiction you are immediately dismissed as being less than Jhumpa Lahiri but sadly great ideas men (and women) will forever be faced with this off hand dismissal like so much Dan Brown on the bottom of your shoe.
That being said a sci-fi novel dealing with McCarthyism et al struggles to make much of an impression on this reader nearly 50 years after its initial publication.
The constant paranoia and second guessing was a little too much by the end of the novel and perhaps is a good representation of what it might have been like to live through; nobody feeling 100% comfortable in their own skin, with their neighbours and loved ones or with their governments behaviour making every action and reaction an awkward or painful one to make.
So Dick wanted to be thought of as a literary writer not a pulpy sci-fi author, and I say fair enough as my experiences of his work so far point to the obvious conclusion that this drug fuelled writer had a lot more to say than most sci-fi writers of teh time and seemingly better tools to say it with. It's a shame that just because you write in genre fiction you are immediately dismissed as being less than Jhumpa Lahiri but sadly great ideas men (and women) will forever be faced with this off hand dismissal like so much Dan Brown on the bottom of your shoe.
That being said a sci-fi novel dealing with McCarthyism et al struggles to make much of an impression on this reader nearly 50 years after its initial publication.
The constant paranoia and second guessing was a little too much by the end of the novel and perhaps is a good representation of what it might have been like to live through; nobody feeling 100% comfortable in their own skin, with their neighbours and loved ones or with their governments behaviour making every action and reaction an awkward or painful one to make.
May 22, 2023
My 19th PKD novel. 2.5 overall.
Alas, a real mixed-bag - and, ultimately, not a successful novel.
Very early on, I had the desire to DNF this title. (The first time I've had that desire with a PKD book.) But... since I'm on a mission - to read at least all SF-related PKD books, except maybe the ones he collaborated on - giving up on a book isn't an option.
If this had been the first PKD book I tried, it would have been a real struggle to stay committed to it after the first few chapters.
I held fast. The good news is that, once there is a clearing - once the plot seems to gain some sort of foothold - things improve. ~ for a good part of the novel anyway but, unfortunately, towards the end, all hell breaks loose in a confounding, convoluted way that is just too much, even for Dick.
As an author, Dick often wants his readers to plunge head-first into what can seem like demanding extremes. That's often part of his... charm (?). But, with this novel, I had the odd feeling that he was withholding; he seemed unwilling to impart significant pieces of information.
Strangely, because the specifics of the plot are bare-bones (without the usual additions of sub-plots), it doesn't take that much time to get through the book if you keep at it. It's not impenetrable, it's just somewhat murky and under-written.
The novel's landscape: In the unusually mild (and unexplained) post-apocalyptic dystopia in which we find Earth's remaining inhabitants (people who can live a long time), those who are left worldwide (a staggeringly low percentage) seem 'governed' by small groups of people who gamble for property (the focus is on American cities) - and for new marriage partners (to aid with a population problem).
For some reason (also unexplained), the alien rulers of Titan want to crash the gambling sessions more openly (than they were before), to gain an upper hand. In this effort, deceptions of various kinds abound: who's a real human and who isn't?; who's a spy and who isn't?; who has telepathic ability and who doesn't? Paranoia sweeps through the pages, and into the reader's brain.
As much as this book frustrated me, I still didn't feel like Dick was coasting with it. I don't think he's the kind of writer who allows himself to become lazy, necessarily, and I did sense that his intent was to genuinely stretch himself. I admire that about him.
There are fun bits - i.e., when things like elevators and cars (even, on one occasion, an ice cube dispenser) talk with those who use them. (One car has a real bitchy attitude, which is fun.) And Dick manages the occasional witticism:
Alas, a real mixed-bag - and, ultimately, not a successful novel.
Very early on, I had the desire to DNF this title. (The first time I've had that desire with a PKD book.) But... since I'm on a mission - to read at least all SF-related PKD books, except maybe the ones he collaborated on - giving up on a book isn't an option.
If this had been the first PKD book I tried, it would have been a real struggle to stay committed to it after the first few chapters.
I held fast. The good news is that, once there is a clearing - once the plot seems to gain some sort of foothold - things improve. ~ for a good part of the novel anyway but, unfortunately, towards the end, all hell breaks loose in a confounding, convoluted way that is just too much, even for Dick.
As an author, Dick often wants his readers to plunge head-first into what can seem like demanding extremes. That's often part of his... charm (?). But, with this novel, I had the odd feeling that he was withholding; he seemed unwilling to impart significant pieces of information.
Strangely, because the specifics of the plot are bare-bones (without the usual additions of sub-plots), it doesn't take that much time to get through the book if you keep at it. It's not impenetrable, it's just somewhat murky and under-written.
The novel's landscape: In the unusually mild (and unexplained) post-apocalyptic dystopia in which we find Earth's remaining inhabitants (people who can live a long time), those who are left worldwide (a staggeringly low percentage) seem 'governed' by small groups of people who gamble for property (the focus is on American cities) - and for new marriage partners (to aid with a population problem).
For some reason (also unexplained), the alien rulers of Titan want to crash the gambling sessions more openly (than they were before), to gain an upper hand. In this effort, deceptions of various kinds abound: who's a real human and who isn't?; who's a spy and who isn't?; who has telepathic ability and who doesn't? Paranoia sweeps through the pages, and into the reader's brain.
As much as this book frustrated me, I still didn't feel like Dick was coasting with it. I don't think he's the kind of writer who allows himself to become lazy, necessarily, and I did sense that his intent was to genuinely stretch himself. I admire that about him.
There are fun bits - i.e., when things like elevators and cars (even, on one occasion, an ice cube dispenser) talk with those who use them. (One car has a real bitchy attitude, which is fun.) And Dick manages the occasional witticism:
"When you're eighteen you believe you know everything, you possess absolute certitude. And then when you're one hundred and fifty you know you don't."It's possible that this is another of PKD's books - perhaps like 'Ubik' - that could benefit from a second reading. But... here I sort of doubt it. Even 'Ubik' - with its particular challenges - is a lot more accessible on a first-read.
February 19, 2018
Reading Philip K Dick, for me, is like hanging out with a super odd friend and just marveling at how very odd he is. This is the ninth book I have read by him. I am reading his books roughly in the order he published them though I have skipped a few. He was very prolific at the beginning and it seems I can only take so much of his clunky prose. However, he was so prescient, perhaps the most of all speculative writers ever and that is why he fascinates me and many other readers.
In this one, Earth is ruled by an alien race that presents as amorphous blobs. The human race is dying off due to a low birth rate. The remaining adults are obsessed with Bluff, a game in which they gamble for cities and spouses, while drinking heavily.
It is funny in a black humor way. All the characters are unlikable. Everything changes every few pages. The set piece is a game of Bluff on the alien planet Titan, with the two races competing for Earth.
Read it at your own risk!
January 20, 2019
This is great fun pulp written only the way PKD could. It's a hilarious romp in his weird future world views. The over-all idea was more what I had expected "Solar Lottery" to be, but it was so much more. The world is ruled by some sort of alien slug creatures from Titan. Earth's population is practically sterile, therefore, a big deal is made over the media when a couple manages to get pregnant scores. A man may go through many wives during a lifetime, hoping that they might make that rare combination - the constant use of "rabbit paper" is a very funny thing. The gaming element in the story is especially outrageous. A game called Bluff, which is similar to Monopoly or Life is played wagering actual real estate and such is pulled off as a normal thing in a way that only PKD could.
Overall, this book is one of his most outrageous and entertaining efforts.
Overall, this book is one of his most outrageous and entertaining efforts.
November 7, 2016
It's interesting how comprehensive a novel Gameplayers is - it comprises so many of the bizarre, unique elements characteristic of the PKD classics. Gameplayers is not a particularly amazing novel or a favorite, but it is bizarre and exceptionally memorable - and certainly a quick, worthwhile read.
March 10, 2022
Mi s-a părut foarte bună.
Traducerea mi s-a părut bună spre foarte bună.
Oamenii sunt prinși într-un joc unde își dispută proprietățile de pe Pământ, de parcă ar juca un Monopoly planetar. Jocul se numește Cacealmaua și a fost importat de la titanieni, care supraveghează ca acesta să se desfășoare corect. O proprietate câștigată poate aduce un partener nou de viață și, cine știe, norocul unei sarcini pe un Pământ unde natalitatea a scăzut alarmant. Totuși, oamenii cu puteri telepatice, precognitive și psihokinetice par prinși într-o rețea care ar putea să însemne sfârșitul omenirii, sau, dimpotrivă, eliberarea de sub jugul titanienilor.
Philip K. Dick se joacă, în acest roman, cu ce știe el mai bine: oamenii afectați de droguri ce le modifică simțul realității. Și o face magistral într-o carte ale cărei repere se schimbă la fiecare câteva zeci de pagini, dar care, în final, se dovedesc a respecta o logică internă, Autorului îi reușește de minune jocul de-a „uite realitatea, nu e realitatea”, condimentând-o cu pasiunea lui pentru persoane cu puteri paranormale. Când am citit prima dată cartea, cu mult timp în urmă, știu că mi-a plăcut, chiar dacă n-am fost în totalitate pe aceeași lungime de undă cu finalul. De data asta, lucrurile au făcut clic și la deznodământ, iar experiența a fost una încântătoare.
Traducerea mi s-a părut bună spre foarte bună.
Oamenii sunt prinși într-un joc unde își dispută proprietățile de pe Pământ, de parcă ar juca un Monopoly planetar. Jocul se numește Cacealmaua și a fost importat de la titanieni, care supraveghează ca acesta să se desfășoare corect. O proprietate câștigată poate aduce un partener nou de viață și, cine știe, norocul unei sarcini pe un Pământ unde natalitatea a scăzut alarmant. Totuși, oamenii cu puteri telepatice, precognitive și psihokinetice par prinși într-o rețea care ar putea să însemne sfârșitul omenirii, sau, dimpotrivă, eliberarea de sub jugul titanienilor.
Philip K. Dick se joacă, în acest roman, cu ce știe el mai bine: oamenii afectați de droguri ce le modifică simțul realității. Și o face magistral într-o carte ale cărei repere se schimbă la fiecare câteva zeci de pagini, dar care, în final, se dovedesc a respecta o logică internă, Autorului îi reușește de minune jocul de-a „uite realitatea, nu e realitatea”, condimentând-o cu pasiunea lui pentru persoane cu puteri paranormale. Când am citit prima dată cartea, cu mult timp în urmă, știu că mi-a plăcut, chiar dacă n-am fost în totalitate pe aceeași lungime de undă cu finalul. De data asta, lucrurile au făcut clic și la deznodământ, iar experiența a fost una încântătoare.
March 28, 2022
Fun, mad and full of Dickisms.
Dick always manages to balance you on the edge of paranoia and comfort; his recurring tools of the trade are present in this book: untrustworthy, often telepathic characters; corruption; plot twists; ethical dilemmas, and zany quasi-sentient inanimate objects.
I loved our familiar protagonist who is a depressed charismatic addict that spends his days collecting records and gambling on a humorously grand scale under the rule of an alien race from Titan.
The world building is classic Dick - dystopian, desperate and filled with stubborn AI and drugs.
A solid middle of the road Dick novel, with many of his recurring themes but nothing groundbreaking or revolutionary.
8.5/10
Dick always manages to balance you on the edge of paranoia and comfort; his recurring tools of the trade are present in this book: untrustworthy, often telepathic characters; corruption; plot twists; ethical dilemmas, and zany quasi-sentient inanimate objects.
I loved our familiar protagonist who is a depressed charismatic addict that spends his days collecting records and gambling on a humorously grand scale under the rule of an alien race from Titan.
The world building is classic Dick - dystopian, desperate and filled with stubborn AI and drugs.
A solid middle of the road Dick novel, with many of his recurring themes but nothing groundbreaking or revolutionary.
8.5/10
May 20, 2022
The Game-Players of Titan (TGPOT) by Philip K Dick is purportedly a story about a game (not unlike Monopoly), played by humans to acquire property deeds and match with new partners in the hope of finding the right partner who has the ‘luck’: the right combination that would allow reproduction in a world we can only assume has a dwindling population after international accidents and a war against the telepathic slug-like vugs.
Pete Garden is one such Bindman, a status of game-player/property owner, who has lost his wife Freya and his important deed Berkeley to master game-player Luckman. And Pete’s not going to let his defeat go easily; he wants a rematch and it’s a question of whether to play alongside potential new wife Carol or old hand game-player Joe Schilling who also lost to Luckman in the past and may have a motive to get even.
TGPOT was more about the vugs themselves. Some of them were police officers, and we’re made aware there is a moderate faction that co-operates with humans while the extremist faction wants humanity’s population kept low and controlled so that it can be wiped out in a potential second war. One feature of the vugs and the game itself was the ban of telepathic powers that the vugs themselves possess alongside certain humans; otherwise the game could be weighed heavily on one side.
Some of the great things about TGPOT were the flying cars, talking machines (including cars) afflicted by the Rushmore Effect that caused them to talk, but not always to co-operate with owners in the way they’d hope. It’s a world of talking elevators, and kettles, but sometimes automation gets it wrong or disagrees, causing half a bucket of inconvenience, and stress, for every one of convenience.
Pete Garden is one such Bindman, a status of game-player/property owner, who has lost his wife Freya and his important deed Berkeley to master game-player Luckman. And Pete’s not going to let his defeat go easily; he wants a rematch and it’s a question of whether to play alongside potential new wife Carol or old hand game-player Joe Schilling who also lost to Luckman in the past and may have a motive to get even.
TGPOT was more about the vugs themselves. Some of them were police officers, and we’re made aware there is a moderate faction that co-operates with humans while the extremist faction wants humanity’s population kept low and controlled so that it can be wiped out in a potential second war. One feature of the vugs and the game itself was the ban of telepathic powers that the vugs themselves possess alongside certain humans; otherwise the game could be weighed heavily on one side.
Some of the great things about TGPOT were the flying cars, talking machines (including cars) afflicted by the Rushmore Effect that caused them to talk, but not always to co-operate with owners in the way they’d hope. It’s a world of talking elevators, and kettles, but sometimes automation gets it wrong or disagrees, causing half a bucket of inconvenience, and stress, for every one of convenience.
December 9, 2018
Maybe the most PKD book PKD ever wrote. It's trippy and weird, and has a slightly upsetting and unsatisfactory ending, yet is still so good.
February 25, 2008
In the future there’s nothing more important the board game ‘Bluff’. A great war with the Vugs, an alien race from the planet Titan, has seriously decimated the human race. Mankind finds a way to win a decisive victory against the Vugs, but at the cost of infertility throughout the majority of those few humans who survive the conflict. There really are no more than a few thousand Americans left on the planet. They spend most of their time playing Bluff, those that have no psi-ability - psis are banned from playing Bluff for obvious reasons. If the Vug-Human police alliance finds any psi’c playing Bluff, they’re banned for life. But that’s not the basis for the story.
The political backdrop is the truly alien part of the book. The Vugs haven’t really lost; they’ve just allowed mankind to continue on. They are the true rulers of the planet. They control the space around planet Earth. They control what makes the remaining populace tick. Bluff is the drug they use to control mankind.
Philip K Dick was a true innovator and seer of the future. He foresaw how control of a basically-addictive populace could be achieved in a number of ways; in his book A Scanner Darkly, it’s substance D; in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it’s Mercerism; here it’s a simple board game.
But why ban the psychics from the game? Isn’t it obvious? The game’s a Monopoly / poker hybrid. Very simple rule set. Try to cheat, that’s the best way to victory. Bluff by name. Bluff by nature. In common-or-garden Monopoly you roll your dice, you move your piece. Bluff’s poker-like overlay ensures that your opponent never knows whether the move you’ve made is a true move or a fake move to increase your score. Call your opponent’s bluff at your peril - they could be leading you down a debt-painted garden path.
In true Philip K Dick fashion, the world is treated like a parallel world. Written in 1963, the book harkens back to a time not unlike the end of the Second World War. Or maybe that’s just the particular twist my mind put on it whilst reading. It felt like the 1950s. Of course all domestic appliances have Rushmore effects that allow you to communicate with them, of course the cars fly; of course they have heat-needles (lasers). It felt like a place of hope. If only we could see the ‘big picture’. But Dick only shows us that late in the novel, though hints at the true intentions of the Vugs are there for the astute PKD fan to at least guess at early on.
The political backdrop is the truly alien part of the book. The Vugs haven’t really lost; they’ve just allowed mankind to continue on. They are the true rulers of the planet. They control the space around planet Earth. They control what makes the remaining populace tick. Bluff is the drug they use to control mankind.
Philip K Dick was a true innovator and seer of the future. He foresaw how control of a basically-addictive populace could be achieved in a number of ways; in his book A Scanner Darkly, it’s substance D; in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it’s Mercerism; here it’s a simple board game.
But why ban the psychics from the game? Isn’t it obvious? The game’s a Monopoly / poker hybrid. Very simple rule set. Try to cheat, that’s the best way to victory. Bluff by name. Bluff by nature. In common-or-garden Monopoly you roll your dice, you move your piece. Bluff’s poker-like overlay ensures that your opponent never knows whether the move you’ve made is a true move or a fake move to increase your score. Call your opponent’s bluff at your peril - they could be leading you down a debt-painted garden path.
In true Philip K Dick fashion, the world is treated like a parallel world. Written in 1963, the book harkens back to a time not unlike the end of the Second World War. Or maybe that’s just the particular twist my mind put on it whilst reading. It felt like the 1950s. Of course all domestic appliances have Rushmore effects that allow you to communicate with them, of course the cars fly; of course they have heat-needles (lasers). It felt like a place of hope. If only we could see the ‘big picture’. But Dick only shows us that late in the novel, though hints at the true intentions of the Vugs are there for the astute PKD fan to at least guess at early on.
November 11, 2012
Personalmente non è il Dick che preferisco. Questo autore mi da l'impressione che ne scriva uno buono e tre frettolosamente perché doveva saldare i conti alla fine del mese (un po' come fa Woody Allen con i film). Un onesto libro di fantascienza, un onesto libro di Dick. I temi cardine dell'autore sono sempre là in bella posta: droga, percezione della realtà, complottismo a gogò e, questa volta, anche una bella puntata nel mondo delle relazioni di coppia (che non fu tanto tenero con il nostro). E' inutile financo perdersi nel descrivere la trama. Sappiate che l'intreccio è come al solito pirotecnico, i colpi di scena non mancano ed i personaggi sono delineati con sufficiente profondità. Quello che fa storcere il naso è che a metà del romanzo, l'autore si è ricordato che doveva andare a comprare le sigarette e poiché alle nove chiudevano i negozi, ha pensato bene di finire in quattro e quattr'otto il libro. Il che, dopo tutte quelle tensioni emotive accumulate dal lettore grazie ai capovolgimenti di scena, può anche dar fastidio sentendosi il tal lettore appunto preso per il naso (già storto). Peccato perché con un minimo di sforzo in più ne sarebbe potuto uscire davvero un bel romanzo. Visto la prolificità e la migliore qualità di altri suoi romanzi, probabile che più delle sigarette la causa di tanta sciatteria sia stata un editore rompiballe. Pazienza, ci consoliamo con i tanti capolavori che questo genio ha sfornato.
November 22, 2011
I've only read one other novel by Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, but based on these two novels, I'm not really that interested in his writing. The Game-Players of Titan is strong on plot but weak on characterization. The book has too many characters, all of whom are pretty one-dimensional, and it switches perspectives from character to character too often. The book does present several intriguing ideas, like the post-apocalyptic world with a tiny population, the game of "Bluff" itself, and the interactions between the telepaths and the game-players, as well as the interactions between the vugs and the humans. But there are too many ideas in the book, and none of it really comes together. The main problem is that I just didn't care about any of the characters, including the bipolar protagonist.
November 23, 2025
This is very much minor Dick. A contrived setup involving a game called Bluff which is some sort of amalgam of Monopoly and Poker means players can win and lose title deeds to massive areas of a heavily depopulated US.
Some of the usual Dick preoccupations are here such as drug use and the nature of what's real and what is fake. But the drugs are still real ones rather than ones which Dick has made up and the reality stuff just involves shape-shifting aliens.
Some of the usual Dick preoccupations are here such as drug use and the nature of what's real and what is fake. But the drugs are still real ones rather than ones which Dick has made up and the reality stuff just involves shape-shifting aliens.
August 2, 2023
L'humanité doit affronter deux problèmes : sa fertilité quasi-nulle (compensée par une longévité très longue) et les Vugs, une race extraterrestre venue de Titan et dominant les humains. Les Vugs ont également importé le Jeu, dans lequel vous pouvez tout gagner et tout perdre, de votre propriété à votre conjoint par exemple.
2.5/5, ramené ici à 3 étoiles car j'aimais bien le concept de départ. Ce dernier m'enthousiasmait pas mal : une espèce de Monopoly géant combiné à d'autres jeux comme la roulette ou le Poker (en fait, ce n'est jamais vraiment très clair) vous permet de voir votre vie changer du tout au tout. A travers ce postulat de base, K. Dick nous fait suivre la vie d'un "Possédant" (donc pouvant miser au jeu) venant de perdre sa femme et sa propriété de Berkeley, qu'il désire absolument récupérer (la propriété, pas la femme...).
On retrouve rapidement ses marques avec l'univers de Philip K. Dick : des pouvoirs mentaux (télékinésie, télépathie, précognition...), la réécriture de l'Histoire (radiations à cause des "Chinois rouges")... Tout au plus est-on étonné de ne pas avoir de religion dans cette nouvelle. De plus, l'histoire part très vite dans une direction que je n'avais pas du tout anticipé, nous plongeant dans une enquête policière. Tout était donc là pour me plaire...
Malheureusement, cette nouvelle devient par la suite extrêmement brouillonne. Suite à un blackout du héros, tout devient confus dans la narration. Là où Ubiksemait le doute de manière magistrale, j'ai passé la deuxième moitié du livre à m'interroger sur les règles régissant cet univers et cela à cause d'un élément en particulier : les Vugs. Cette race est pour moi un désastre qui mine totalement la nouvelle. Les Vugs semblent disposer de nouvelles capacités au fil de l'histoire afin de répondre aux besoins de l'intrigue et toutes les règles des pouvoirs psychiques semblent parfois changer. Cela peut amener à certaines situations ridicules . A cette confusion se rajoute par ailleurs une fin que j'ai trouvé très moyenne...
Une nouvelle qui m'a enthousiasmé pendant toute sa première partie avant de me provoquer une migraine dans la deuxième moitié de ma lecture...
2.5/5, ramené ici à 3 étoiles car j'aimais bien le concept de départ. Ce dernier m'enthousiasmait pas mal : une espèce de Monopoly géant combiné à d'autres jeux comme la roulette ou le Poker (en fait, ce n'est jamais vraiment très clair) vous permet de voir votre vie changer du tout au tout. A travers ce postulat de base, K. Dick nous fait suivre la vie d'un "Possédant" (donc pouvant miser au jeu) venant de perdre sa femme et sa propriété de Berkeley, qu'il désire absolument récupérer (la propriété, pas la femme...).
On retrouve rapidement ses marques avec l'univers de Philip K. Dick : des pouvoirs mentaux (télékinésie, télépathie, précognition...), la réécriture de l'Histoire (radiations à cause des "Chinois rouges")... Tout au plus est-on étonné de ne pas avoir de religion dans cette nouvelle. De plus, l'histoire part très vite dans une direction que je n'avais pas du tout anticipé, nous plongeant dans une enquête policière. Tout était donc là pour me plaire...
Malheureusement, cette nouvelle devient par la suite extrêmement brouillonne. Suite à un blackout du héros, tout devient confus dans la narration. Là où Ubiksemait le doute de manière magistrale, j'ai passé la deuxième moitié du livre à m'interroger sur les règles régissant cet univers et cela à cause d'un élément en particulier : les Vugs. Cette race est pour moi un désastre qui mine totalement la nouvelle. Les Vugs semblent disposer de nouvelles capacités au fil de l'histoire afin de répondre aux besoins de l'intrigue et toutes les règles des pouvoirs psychiques semblent parfois changer. Cela peut amener à certaines situations ridicules . A cette confusion se rajoute par ailleurs une fin que j'ai trouvé très moyenne...
Une nouvelle qui m'a enthousiasmé pendant toute sa première partie avant de me provoquer une migraine dans la deuxième moitié de ma lecture...
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