Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the short story....

What'll We Do with Ragland Park? (1963) by P.K. Dick

From the anthology The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick. See The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories discussion hub for more info on the anthology and pointers to discussion of its other stories.

A continuation of Stand-in. Poor Ragland he did not know what he was capable of. Somehow I read a similar story before...

So apparently the space got divided based on countries. I wonder what Indonesia got, we'd make good Belters.

I first read this story in the PKD collection I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (which also contains "Explorers We" from this collection). Strangely, "Stand-By" does not appear in that collection so I only got part 2 of the story.

As I read this one I wondered if PKD meant for this storyline to continue over several episodes, maybe eventually being collected or converted into a full-length book. I did enjoy Ragland Park and his abilities - it seemed funny that he didn't recognize what he could do although others noticed it quickly. I thought the ending was funny.

Randy wrote: "I wondered if PKD meant for this storyline to continue over several episodes..."

This story continues Stand-By, and like Stand-By, it still has loose ends.

According to iSFDb, Newsclown Jim Briskin & Stand-by President Max Fischer also appear in the PKD story "Cantata 140", published in 1964 (The first two, "Stand-By" & "What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" appeared in the Oct & Nov 1963 issues of Amazing, but "Cantata 140" appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction (July 1964). It's unusual for an author to switch a continued series of short stories to a different magazine. But even stranger (still according to iSFDb) "Cantata 140" has never been republished anywhere else; It doesn't appear in any PKD collection.

By the way, did anyone notice the whole alien invasion thing kind of got lost?

In the “life imitates art” observation, I noticed Hada runs a TV network called CULTURE, dedicated to the arts, which he's “improving” by adding other kinds of more popular programming (such as newsclown Jim Briskin.)

First, in writing at a time when there were only three TV networks (and a few independent stations in some of the larger cities), all of them quite homogenous in their popular programming choices, it's interesting that PKD actually envisioned a future specialized network.

But I thought it was humorous that Hada has decided to evolve CULTURE from education & art, owing to an ominous drop in viewers. This seems to match perfectly the experience of half a dozen US cable networks, which began with lofty, specialized ideals, and soon found themselves chasing ratings into homogeneity. E.g. SciFi running wrestling, MTV running dramas, and probably most on-point, Bravo leaving the world of theater and concerts for Real Housewives & Top Chef.

G33z3r wrote: "According to iSFDb, Newsclown Jim Briskin & Stand-by President Max Fischer also appear in the PKD story "Cantata 140", published in 1964 (The first two, "Stand-By" & "What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" appeared in the Oct & Nov 1963 issues of Amazing, but "Cantata 140" appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction (July 1964). It's unusual for an author to switch a continued series of short stories to a different magazine. But even stranger (still according to iSFDb) "Cantata 140" has never been republished anywhere else; It doesn't appear in any PKD collection."

FYI - Cantata 140 was published as The Crack in Space. But I didn't know it was a continuation of the Briskin/Fischer storyline. Interesting.

G33z3r wrote: "By the way, did anyone notice the whole alien invasion thing kind of got lost?"

Yeah, I noticed it. I thought it was just a plot device to get the computer-President out of the way so Fischer could get his first taste of power. The invasion is mentioned again in "Ragland Park" but Hada acts like he thinks the aliens aren't much of a threat.

EduTV does not indeed seem to work in real life, we used to have an Indonesian Education TV (that is the real name) showing nothing except edu shows for children and adult but after three years it started to include soap operas and at the end it has stopped airing edu shows altogether. Hard to stay idealistic when you rely on ratings. Which reminds me of the History Channel.

On the alien invasion, I suspected that the level of threat might not be too high or indeed it is being used as another political argument. Also art immitates life here: overblown threats being used for domestic squables.

I might said it before that I found the other two pillars missing, legislative and judicial. Executive vs media are just not sufficient to ensure good governance.

I found this story a little weaker than "Stand-by," but I got a kick out of the pre-cog folk songs

On a general level (if mostly in the background), the story gets at conflicts between entertainment and education. Specifically, reading this story right now, it was hard not to read in an anti-PBS theme. I didn't know until I Wikipedia's it that PBS officially began operations in 1970, taking over the National Educational Television (NET), which was largely funded by Ford.