Martian Time-Slip

Not too much to say about this Dick novel. Martian Time-Slip is set on a version of Mars where the hypothesis of martian canals from people like Giovanni Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell turned out to be correct. The few Martian natives that are left find themselves increasingly marginalized by struggling settlers from Earth. Here, the plumbers union is king, and those as the top function as feudal barons over the serfs that barely have enough water to function, even as the UN tries to convince more immigrants to make the journey. Mental illness and suicide run rampant through the lower levels of society, Autism being one of the main focuses of the book. The perspective of Martian Time-Slip rotates between a handful of different characters, including a repairman who suffers from latent schizophrenia, his bored housewife searching for excitement, the narcissistic water workers union leader, a vindictive psychotherapist, and an autistic child of a recently widowed family.

A central plot is essentially nonexistent through the first half of the book while Dick sets the scene, and the plot that exists in the second half I'm not even sure Dick convinced me to care about. Dick really ramps up the psychedelic nature of the novel as the time travel (or foresight) quality of autism is explored more, and as Jack begins to regress into his psychosis. It could be said that Martian Time-Slip, despite the rather outdated surface level views on mental health and learning disabilities, was progressive for it's time on the subject. We see these individuals being taken advantage of by the system, shunted away to the corners of Mars, despite the value that they clearly have as people. Dick criticizes our treatment of of people struggling with all manner of mental imperfections.

I enjoy the dour world that Dick painted on Mars. Corporate greed, land speculation, impersonal teaching, and an exploitative work culture prove that humanity may have advanced enough to colonize Mars, but we still haven't culled ourselves of the imperfections that hold us back from becoming something greater. Mars is in fact not immune to being a boring capitalistic dystopia, just like Earth.

Lackluster prose weights down Martian Time-Slip, and prevents it from being memorable. I can't say that I found any passage of text particularly profound, beautiful, or creative. It's rather dull in comparison to his other work that I've read. I also found most of these characters rather insufferable despite Dick's attempts to humanize their worse qualities.