High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies

High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies by Erik Davis

The book is weird. It is also long. Over an hour into the audiobook, it was still telling me what it was going to tell me. The focus is 1974 and thereabouts with psychedelic weirdness. Phillip K. Dick is the one that stood out. He claimed to have special visions while still clinging to Christianity. There were also other more typical people that would trip out. Jesus freaks were an interesting category of weirdos who adopted a hippie infused form of Christianity. The book could really use some editing. Perhaps it was intended to be consumed while tripping out on a psychedelic substance. 

A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly is a book about drugged out junkies. Because it was written by Philip K. Dick, he threw in a few science fiction elements (such as a "scramble suit", however, it wouldn't take much work to take those out and make it a "straight" piece on the drug users. He, alas, seems to know the community well from experience. These are people that made a choice and are now paying the consequences. The plot centers around an undercover narcotics agent who also happens to be a drug addict and dealer. One of his main female contacts is, unbeknownst to him, also undercover. She is using him to infiltrate a drug rehab center, which we find is the supplier for the highly-addictive "substance D". In between, we have many drug-induced hallucinations and details of the behavior of these junkies. It is typical Dick trippy darkness, but without the imagination and story-telling of his other works.

The Penultimate Truth

Most of the world now lives underground. They think there is a devastating nuclear war going on above the earth. They see videos of Detroit being destroyed and of their brave leader reporting on need for increased production. However, the war actually ended a decade ago, and the people above the surface are living a posh life, with plenty of robots to help them out.
There are conflicts going on up there, with people trying to get more power. One guy from "down low" attempts to go up to get an artificial organ to extend somebody's life and steps in the middle of things. There is also some limited time travel, with an attempt to set "alien artifacts" in the distant past accidentally helping an American Indian to extend his life from then to the present day. Eventually some people die and the people below are told the war is over and that they can go back up. We hear the story of a "spin writer" longing to craft some rationale for what happened and make it sound good.
The fake war is an interesting idea. However, the conflict here gets confusing. I had trouble keeping track of who didn't like who and why they were doing things. Maybe that's why this hasn't been made into a movie - yet. (Though it is used for the title for a movie about the author.)

The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau is an organization that makes sure that people "conform" to the proper behavior. They do this by encouraging minor events that change chance encounters. (Such as spilled coffee.) If for some reasons, that doesn't work, they intervene themselves. (But they threaten a brain wipe if you dare try to tell anyone about them.) A typical PKD story. The movie seemed pretty good, but I fell asleep during a chunk of it.

Selected Short Stories of Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick short stories are popular fodder for movies. He has an innovative mind, and explores bizarre situations that have some relevance to the current life. This collection had a few stories. Alas, it has been a long time since I started to write this, so I can't remember some of my original thoughts, but here we go.


Electric Ant
Novelty Act (1964) - jug blowing, furry animal make feel good. When you get by with a crutch, you also get in trouble when it leaves.
The Last of the Masters (aka Protection Agency) (1954) - ruled by "company" of robots. They try to do whats best for people, but that isn't what the people want. Oh, and their usefulness expired years ago.
A Little Something for us Tempunauts (1974) - time Travel closed loops
Progeny
The Exit Door Leads In
The War with the Fnools - I think these were people-like things that infiltrated earth.
The Preserving Machine - a shoe?

Radio Free Albemuth

You can save the world with a rock song. Or at least you can try. Radio Free Albemuth is a trippy voyage exploring an "extra-terrestrial deity". Aliens have sent a satellite to orbit the earth in order to help save the world from itself. This satellite sends special messages to people to help them to do its will. These feelings sometimes help get them out of quandaries, while at other times leading them on to do things that they would not have considered.

The world is lead by an ultra-Conservative who has managed to have everyone in his path to leadership eliminated. He helps enforce a fascist like state, often using strong anti-communist rhetoric. In the name of national security, any detractors are punished. However, this is all a cover, and he is secretly aligned with the communist. Thus, his target is often the secret organization of anti-Americans. The organization doesn't really exist, but is simply named for the few people that know that he was really aligned with the communists.

The protagonist is an artist who is guided to perform actions from the satellite. He is also friends with an author (the eponymous Phil.)

He tries to use a band to make an album with subliminal messages to tell the world the truth about the president. Alas the satellite is shot down, and they are left on their own, and are caught before the record is released. However, another band records the same song, so there is some hope for the earth before another satellite is sent.

The book seems to comment on the extremes of political power. It doesn't matter what the ideology of the person in power is. If they are attached to power at the expense of people, the world will suffer. Most people would probably just go on living their lives without getting in the way. However, the creative people who truly advance society would be stymied, negatively impacting humanity.

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

This novel is more commonly known by the name of the movie based on it, "Bladerunner". It centers around a "bounty hunter" who kills androids that are living among humans in a dystopian world.

A bounty hunter kills 6 androids in a day, but feels bad because he liked one of the android girls. However, with the money he gets, he hopes to be able to buy an animal. The world has suffered an environmental catastrophe. Thus, even ordinary farm animals are highly sought after. Electric animals are used in some sense to fill the gab. But, they are viewed as inferior.

The world that could create "electric" animals, also created "electric humans." These androids were initially supposed to focus primarily on areas of hard labor on remote colonies. However, some of them sneak back to earth to attempt to make a life there.

The novel can be confusing at times, and can be hard to tell what he is after (environment? Capital punishment? Morals? Consumerism?) You can even see a parallel to the United States immigration situation. The country loves to be able to reap the benefits of cheap labor from 3rd world countries, but doesn't want those people to dare take up residence in the US.

The Golden Man

In a future world, "mutants" are seen as a menace. Most or filtered and eliminated at birth. However, an elite squad is in place to hunt down and exterminate any that manage to slip through the cracks. One agent masquerades as a salesman near Walnut Creek and managed to uncover a stray comment about a stray mutant on a nearby farm. They capture the mutant (who is a beautiful "golden" man") and bring him in for investigation and potential extermination. He doesn't communicate. However, he seems to be able to avoid any attempts to fire weapons at him. They discover that he can see shortly in to the future just as we can see the present. Eventually, he uses this "power" to find his path to escape. The people then worry that he will seduce other women and eventually spread his genes, potentially becoming the post-human dominant race. Has the ability of "intelligence" reached its apex, to be replaced by this reflexive, future-seeing species. The novella is very much written in Dick's style. I enjoy the 1950s few of San Francisco suburbia. (dusty farms in Walnut Creek are a little harder to come by today.) The thought of another species with a set of enhanced skills in one area that can supplant other, possibly superiod development is interesting. It has often been carried out in a smaller scale socially. (Betamax, anyone?) Could we see it apply to a species? However, the story was underdeveloped, and spent more time explaining the situations than actually presenting them for the reader to explain.

The Selected Stories of Philip K Dick Volume 2

This collections contains the following stories:
Colony
Upon the dull earth
The short happy life of the brown oxford
Faith of our fathers
The days of perky Pat
The variable man
I hope I shall arrive soon

Many of the stories deal with a post-apocalyptic world.  The Variable Man is the longest. In it, earth is planning to use a special faster-than-light bomb to defeat some intergalatic overlords.  The leaders depend on an odds machine to calculate the chance of winning. Unfortunately, another experiment accidentally brings a man from the early 1900s to the current day. This throws the odds all out of wack. The leaders try to have him destroyed. However, the scientist in charge of bomb-making "saves" him to assist him in the effort. Unfortunately for earth, this causes the bomb to fail to detonate, and the earthlings lose the battle. Fortunately, this also unlocked the key to faster-than-light travel, and now the earthlings can span the universe.


In Perky Pat (1963), most of the earth has been leveled, with a few people left. The adults spend all day playing a "doll" game, Perky Pat.  Some people discover that a nearby group has a different doll. They compete and win, but from that they are shunned out of town.

In Colony (1953), a planet is seen to be perfectly benign. Then inanimate objects start to attack. A local lifeform disguises itself as these objects to then consume humans. They think that the solution is to either annihilte themselves and the planet or try to escape without any inanimate objects. Since they will be naked, they ask for an unmanned spaceship to rescue them. It comes earlier then expected and they all board. Later we hear of the real ship coming and not finding anybody.  (And we wonder - did the lifeform sneak back to earth on the ship?)

"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980) deals with a man who cannot fall asleep during a long-distance space journey. He becomes tourmented with his childhood memories of persumed animal cruelity.

"Upon the Dull Earth" (1954), a girl is "taken" too soon. She comes back, but then consumes everyone else, destroying her universe.

In "Faith of Our Fathers" (1967), the great leader turns out to be an alien form that most people see as an old man. The main character takes an anti-hulucinatory drug to see him as who he is. It is not pleasant, and he thinks of him as good and evil.

In "The short happy life of the brown oxford" (1954), an "animator" is used to turn inanimate things alive. A shoe is turned alive, and then uses the machine to turn a girl shoe alive for it.

While the stories seem to espouse many sentiments of the time they were written. However, the stories provide some interesting fodder for thought - especially in the realm of human relationships.

Martian Time Slip

Martian Time Slip is a 1960s psychological novel that happens to be set on mars. The characters have a general outlook of unlimited personal freedom, often at the expense of others. However, there is sufficient collectivism to have a self-sustaining colony on Mars. The planet was not uninhabited when the colony was founded. However, the martians are a dying race, seen as inferior, and reluctantly supported.

The primary gimmick is psychotic characters that slip into and out of this world. They cannot tell if they are experiencing reality or some altered state. However, with some, the "altered state", may in fact be reality - just at an alternate point in time. Thus, one kid is fearful of his future reality of himself in a nursing home, and retreats back to his prior reality in the womb.

A black market operator commits suicide. His primary customer decides to take over his business, while also getting involved in Martian land speculation. The predictive abilities of the kid seem to be of great worth. However, the ability also seems to be able to alter the reality. He decides he doesn't like somebody connected with the opposition inland speculation, and decides to kill him at the first instance he meets him. However, instead he gets killed. Luckily, this was an alternate reality. However, he instead gets shot by a rival black marketeer (though he thinks that it was also just an alternate reality.)

What is real, and what it not? And does it matter? If we could see the long-term impacts of our short-term advantages, would we still undertake them?

The Man in the High Castle

The book takes place primarily in post-World War II San Francisco. Only things are a little different than the San Francisco that we know. Most critical is the fact that it is under Japanese occupation as the "Pacific States of America". The Axis had won the war and divided up the US, with the Japanese getting the west and the Germans the east, with the middle a veritable no-man's land.

The Germans had continued their technological acumen to continue to concur the world and going further to conquer the solar system. The empire even managed to survive a single change in leadership. (Though in the novel, a second leadership change seems to show the roots of the empire's undoing.) They continued their scientific and racial experiments, which unfortunately lead to the virtual annihilation of Africa.

And this is just the background where the story is set.

One of the key protagonists is a dealer in kitschy historical American memorabilia. The Japanese are obsessed with old historical American things, whether they be old Micky Mouse watches or Colt guns. Another protagonist (who is geographically separated from his wife) had been involved in the production of "fake" historical goods and is now working on machine-engineered jewelry. His wife is in Colorado, and has a run in with a nazi hit-man who is sent to destroy a "banned-in-Germany" novelist.

The novel created by the novelist provides a "counter-counter" history. In this history, the allies won the war. However, things were not quite the same as they were in the "real" history that we know. The woman ends up killing the hitman and tells the author about her experience. The author had lived with some security, but now decides that he will just be open and take life as it happens.

Also central to the story is the "oracle", an ancient Asian work that is used to gather omen's for the future. The oracle, in fact, had "written" the novel with the "alternate" history, and had provided various omens in the course of the novel.

The story is concerned primarily with the everyday life and worries of people in the occupied America. The prominent "officials" involved tend to have some influence, yet be outside the realm of movers and shakers. This also provides a somewhat sudden ending, with the characters just continuing on with their lives in an Axis empire that may be on the verge of collapse.

The use of a novel in a counter-historical novel provides a nice means of provided an alternate view to history. How would people have alternately constructed history if the main course was different?

Ubik

Ubik takes place in a very futuristic 1992, where everything from doors to appliances demand coins to perform their action. The principle character are employees of a "prudence" organization that have the ability to counteract psychic powers. The owner, Glen Runciter, communicates with his wife who resides in "half life", a post-death state that allows the dead to still communicate with the living. (However, communications gradually cause the half-life to fade.)

One day a new recruit is brought in that has a special "anti-precog" capability that allows her to go to "change" the past. She along with some of Runciter's best employees go on a mission to Luna which ends up being a trap. They find their world mysteriously regressing backwards. They also find strange communications from their boss showing up in odd places. They blame the new girl for this problems. However, they eventually discover it is another half-lifer that is "eating them". Luckily, some half-lifers have come up with a counter-measure, Ubik.

Like Dick's Flow My Tears the Policman Said, Ubik has an odd approach to "personalized" time travel. In Ubik, it initially appears somebody is purposely regressing people in the past until they whither away. However, it is later revealed that almost the entire world was created in somebody's mind, and that time period just happened to be a convenient one for them to be in.

The novel continues to build up interesting twists on existence itself, and eventually ends with a quasi-biblical quote. The "half-life" world has strong forces of good and evil that are trying to steer people to their side. They give messages and hints of the best course of action, and even occasionally try to assist. However, the end result is dependent on the will and actions of the half-lifers themselves. They eventually gain the ability to distinguish the good from the bad, and use that to be able to continue their existence. (and meanwhile, they still continue their limited ability to communicate with the "real" living.)

Ubik also provides strong contrast between an overly commercial world of the future with the "half-life" world. Each have their own challenges, and at times, people are unsure where they belong.

Altogether, it is a good science fiction book that explores many different aspects of life of the 60s when it was written as well as humanity in general.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

A famous musician/television show host suddenly finds his identity missing. He attempts to get a fake id and run from the law, but eventually gets apprehended. Once there, he meets the druggie incestuous sister of the police general. They both take a drug and find the world gradually return to normal. However, she ends up dead from an apparent overdose. It turns out that the drug causes a space-time continuum alteration in the world of everybody involved.

The book seems very dated within the early 70s culture, with tiring vulgar language, drugs and morality. He foresees a future of 3d tv, flying cars and video phones - yet still with LP records and the same big record companies and TV networks. Oops!

The premise is also fairly bizarre. A drug causes the taker to have an altered state of reality. However, this "altered state" is in fact "reality" to everybody else around. Thus, everybody else ends up perceiving the world the same way until the drug wears off (or in the case here - the user dies from the excessive strain of the drug.) This could get really strange if intersecting people started taking the drug.