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| Time Out of Joint | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | Philip K. Dick |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publisher | J. B. Lippincott Company |
| Publication date | 1959 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 221 pp |
| ISBN | NA [1] |
Time Out of Joint is a novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in novel form in the United States in 1959. An abridged version was also serialised in the British science fiction magazine New Worlds Science Fiction in several installments from December 1959 to February 1960, under the title Biography in Time.
The novel epitomises many of Dick's themes, with its concern about the nature of reality, and ordinary people in ordinary lives having the world unravel around them. The title is a reference to the line uttered by Hamlet to Horatio after being visited by his father's ghost and learning that his uncle Claudius murdered his father; in short, a shocking supernatural event that fundamentally alters the way Hamlet perceives the state and the universe ("The time is out of joint; O cursed spite!/That ever I was born to set it right!" [I.V.211-2]), much as do several events in the novel.
Contents |
Plot summary
As the novel opens, its protagonist Ragle Gumm believes that he lives in the year 1959 in a quiet American suburb. His unusual profession consists of repeatedly winning the cash prize in a local newspaper competition called, "Where will the little green man be next?". Gumm's 1959 has some differences from ours: the Tucker car is in production, and Uncle Tom's Cabin was recently written. As the novel opens, strange things begin to happen to Gumm. A soft-drink stand disappears, replaced by a small slip of paper with the words "Soft-Drink Stand" written on it. Pieces of our 1959 turn up: an article on Marilyn Monroe (who didn't exist in their world), and radios (which had been abandoned at the dawn of television). People with no apparent connection to Gumm mention him by name, including military aircraft pilots. Few other characters notice these or experience similar anomalies; the sole exception is Gumm's supposed brother-in-law, Victor "Vic" Nielson, in whom he confides. A neighbor woman, Mrs Keitelbein, invites him to a civil defense class where he sees a model of a strange military factory. He has the odd feeling he's been in that building before.
Confusion gradually mounts for Gumm. His neighbor Bill Black, observing this, starts worrying: "Suppose Ragle is becoming sane again?". In fact, Gumm does become sane, and the deception surrounding him (erected to protect and exploit him) begins to unravel.
Gumm tries to escape the town and is turned back by kafkaesque obstructions. He sees a magazine with himself on the cover, in a military uniform, at the factory depicted in the model. He tries a second time to escape, this time with Vic, and succeeds. He learns that his idyllic town is a constructed reality designed to protect him from the frightening fact that he lives on a then-future Earth (circa 1998) that is at war with its colonists on the Moon, who are fighting for independence. Gumm has a unique ability to predict where the colonists' nuclear strikes will be aimed. Previously Gumm did this work for the military, but then he defected to the colonists' side and planned to secretly emigrate to the moon. He was captured, his memory erased, and the fake town created so he would continue predicting missles in the guise of a newspaper contest, without moral qualms about being on the wrong side.
When Gumm realizes his true history, he decides to emigrate to the Moon after all, because yearning to explore and migrate is an innate human tendency. Vic rejects this belief, and returns to the town. The book ends with hope for peace, because the colonists are more willing to negotiate than the Earth government has been telling its citizens.
The book also shows that the fake town was not merely a fraud imposed on Gumm. Gumm himself had daydreamed about his idyllic 1950s childhood, and was beginning to confuse dream with reality. The Earth government merely took advantage of this tendency, and constructed a town that matched his dream, and brainwashed people to be his "family" and "neighbors". The discrepencies between the fake 1959 and our 1959 are explained as features of his dreams, ideas that gave him comfort. Gumm is thus a complex figure. On the one hand his talents saved the Earth from attack and he was thus regarded a hero. On the other hand, he realized the suppressed truth and went to it, repudiating the task of predicting missles. And on the third hand, his desire to escape to the 1950s and delusion is un-heroic. Gumm acknowledged that all these aspects were parts of himself.
Differences from our world
1959
- Uncle Tom's Cabin was written recently (because Gumm loved the book)
- the Tucker car (because Gumm had seen a prototype in childhood and admired it)
- Marilyn Monroe did not exist
- radios were abandoned after the dawn of television (because people would have picked up outside radio broadcasts, while their TVs were cable)
- dial phones had recently been invented, and all phone numbers had been changed with their installation
- Gumm did not know the name of the town or state, and it never occurred to him to ask (although chapter 1 indicates it's not in the South)
- pull-chain light switches had been replaced with wall switches earlier than they actually were
1998
- cars are powered by kerosine, and the road material is unfamiliar to Gumm
- dollars and credit cards are replaced by plastic wartime tokens with different denominations
- in the youth culture, boys wear togas and girls wear suits. Their slang is a pidgin English without verb tenses, and with doubled words ("top-top" = on the surface, "chuck-chuck" = money, "flute-flute" = flute) and compound words ("necktie-fellow", "walkinachamber").
- adults speak standard English, although some have adopted a few doubled words
- videotape players are reel-to-reel (Dick based them on the tape recorders of his day)
References
- ^ First edition published prior to adoption of ISBN standard
Criticism
- DiTommaso, Lorenzo, "A logos or Two Concerning the logoz of Umberto Rossi and Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint", Extrapolation, 39:4, 1998, pp. 285-98.
- Potin, Yves, "Four Levels of Reality in Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint", Extrapolation 39:2, 1998, pp. 148-165.
- Rossi, Umberto, "Just a Bunch of Words: The Image of the Secluded Family and the Problem of logos in P.K. Dick's Time out of Joint", Extrapolation, Vol. 37 No. 3, Fall 1996.
- ______________, “The Harmless Yank Hobby: Maps, Games, Missiles and Sundry Paranoias in Time Out of Joint and Gravity’s Rainbow”, Pynchon Notes #52-53, Spring-Fall 2003, pp. 106-123
See also
- Simulated reality
- Ding an sich, a concept mentioned in the story.
- Ender's Game, a 1985 novel with a similar premise
External links
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