Rating: 
Summary: Underrated, but one of his best
Review: Martian Time-Slip is truly one of Phil Dick's underrated masterpieces. This book's exploration of madness as a bridge to other realms, unlike some of his others, goes deep beneath the surface into a dark, moody realm that I found affecting in an extremely personal way. It is one of a few of his books that requires a little slogging at the beginning -- so many threads are starting that it can be a little off-putting -- but the payoff for that effort is huge. Considered within the context of his other work, Martian Time-Slip is unmissable -- and a herald of ideas that don't get seen again in a novel until VALIS. I strongly recommend it
Rating: 
Summary: intriguing
Review: Martian Time-Slip takes place on a Mars which has been rather poorly colonized by a desperate race of humans. Water is scarce on mars, and what few settlements exist are very close to one of the few canals. Plumbers, waterworkers, and repairmen are very valuable and in demand, since getting replacement equipment from Earth is very expensive. Jack Bohlen is a repairman, and a "recovered" schizophrenic. Jack is contacted by Arnie Kott, a businessman who is involved in land speculation. He seems to believe that a schizophrenic boy can somehow see into the future (slip in and out of TIME) on Mars, and Jack can help Arnie communicate with the boy, by building a machine that will translate the boy's gibberish speech into something Arnie can understand. Arnie would like to make a killing in land speculation, with Jack's help. Add to this: there is an aboriginal race of humans on Mars called the Bleekmen, who resemble Africans of very materially primitive societies. They wander the vast deserts of Mars, impoverished and disenfranchised, but hold the mystical keys to this time travel. It's a strange and beautiful novel. Action Sci-Fi fans beware. This novel takes a long time to get going. The first 80 or 100 pages are taken up with that stuffy writing goal called "character development," and you won't get many shoot-em-up scenes with spaceships etc. This novel is pretty typical of Philip K. Dick in that it's more cerebral than it is visceral. I found the first half of the novel fascinating but slow going, myself. After I was halfway through, I spent all of my spare time reading it until I was done. If you like Philip K. Dick, you ought to read Martian Time-Slip.
Rating: 
Summary: Tons of insight into Dick but experimental excuse for story.
Review: Next to reading "The Man in the High Castle", I was prepared to read something as deep and as drawn out as that Hugo winning quasi-science-fiction novel from the same author. "Martian Time-Slip" is described as being similar in nature to that style of writing. I also discovered "Clans of the Alphane Moon", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (Blade Runner), "Ubik" and "The Simulacra", all of which are 5 star reads, "Martian-Time Slip" comes highly recommended because it is in the top twenty science-fiction books, Orion Publishers and the SF Masterworks series listing it as #13 in their collection. Unfortunately I was surprised by how little I enjoyed any of it and in fact I hated a lot of it, however the author should be credited and published for creating this world, but as for reading it... well that is a totally different matter. This is an oddity, more for collectors than readers. I am glad to have it in my Philip K. Dick collection.... However, it is at the back of his collection.
Mars is populated by settlers from Earth, starting a new world there, with Bleekmen Martians, like primitive man, selling trinkets to earthlings, who mostly need clean water, which is owned by the waterworks manager, Arnie Kott, who has acquired a former mentally ill repairman, Jack Bohlen, to plug into the mind of an autistic boy, Manfred, who might be able to see the future and tell him why the UN wants to buy in on Mars soil. Jack's father arrives from Earth, turns out to be a prospector and Jack ends up double-crossing Kott, over and over again in alterative universes, until he figures what is going on and by that stage you just don't care because there is no ending, there is no science-fiction, the politics and extraterrestrial real estate scams became moot long ago, the penetration of the mysteries of being and time totally abstract to the point of meaninglessness anywhere else except in Dick's mind, then we get his over-excuse for adultery neatly wrapped in a package "Sleep with other people so that you get to know what your spouse is doing right and wrong", Dick who happens to have been married five times, really doesn't come across as that faithful to his characters and his alter-ego chews through them, mostly sexually, and quite disturbingly, ending up in a Dick book that doesn't quite have the same panache as anything I have read from him before.
Even though "Martian Time-Slip" puts forward some very interesting notions that make you think ah, here it comes, the plot or the twist, it never really does. Instead you end up with an extended soap opera on Mars, not that this is a bad idea, Dick writes good soap into his science-fiction ("Clans of the Alphane Moon" does it well), but the soap here pretty much envelops any science-fiction under all the smut and suds that come out of nowhere around page 100 and continue to dominate the later half of the book with the theories discussed in pages 70 to 100, never going anywhere, after the huge 70 page opening, yes many of you will be wasting your time, characters are introduced far too slowly, jacked around half way through the story and replaced by new characters towards the end, meaning what you have covered so far has been lost to the warping and bending of time in the story, unfortunately not working out as a good read, but maybe as good writing, and certainly Philip K. Dick can not be faulted for his literature skills, dialogue or introduction of descriptions that should have occurred towards the start of the book, we don't mind all of this, but the story thus is boring, without centre and does not deliver on a payoff like the last two or three pages of "The Man in the High Castle." It isn't like that work at all. This is a self-serving science fiction rant to explain the author's own problems with mental health and infidelity.
As many of you know Dick can be more suggestive than fleshing out those suggestions. Here he makes a suggestion that quite frankly we are not in the least bit interested in because of the way he puts it forward, that some people's mental illness can be confused with people who really have special talents, but the story boxes this concept into replaying a scene a couple of times over again in variation each time, the Martian Time-Slip explained by changes in people's perceptions, this concept comes up in the middle of the book, then takes a back seat to more suds and soap about adultery... and never emerges again. I am glad to be free of this book. That is not a good sign.
It hurts me to say this but... "Martian Time-Slip" stinks. Only get it to see into the mind of a science-fiction writer beginning to question the depths of the mind and reasons for his own unfaithfulness. If you want to learn more about Dick through his work, then certainly this has lots of insight, but the story, not even close to what he is capable of doing.
I am going to move onto "A Scanner Darkly" next. Hopefully that will go a bit better than this one did. Five stars all the way and then this bumpy ride. Only get this Philip K. Dick if you have read everything else. Comes nowhere even close to #13 place that Orion SF Masterworks gave it.
Rating:
Summary: Training grounds for the uninitiated
Review: Not bad at all, and in fact good enough for my wife to read it as her first PKD experience... to make her want more. I've read a number of his other books and consider Martian Time Slip as almost 'tame' compared to the mind trips in Ubik or others -- but still, a good read. Having worked with autistic children, I gained more valuable insights as to what may be going on in their world/time situations. Or, more confused? The characters are well developed, it has a seat-of-your-pants ending, and a good deal of twists and turns to keep it interesting. For those who really want to 'jump in' to the PKD experience, however, I'd recommend The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldrich to just cut to the chase and go nuts with it... gubble gubble!!
Rating:
Summary: An existential masterpiece, disguised as sci-fi
Review: Not one of the very well known Philip K. Dick novels, but still, this is a brilliant endeavour into the exploration of the depths of human nature, delivered with exceptional style and intensity. The fact that action takes place on mars, and the sci-fi element in general, are of secondary importance here. Dick talks about his favorite subject - reality and the meaning of it, but it also talks about love, greed, desire, and death.Dick was a giant of the 20th century American literature.
Rating:
Summary: Novel of ideas succeeds as art
Review: Of course Dick spins a fantastic yarn in lean and efficient prose. But infused into his plot there's a mind-bending metaphysical tension alongside the ringing of a profound alarm bell. What consequences on the psyches of our children this mad mad world we're creating? With this book I think you can find yourself any combination of entertained, puzzled or terrified right down to the whimpering core of your spiritual self. Has science fiction ever aspired to such heights?
Rating:
Summary: Novel of ideas succeeds as art
Review: Of course Dick spins a fantastic yarn in lean and efficient prose. But infused into his plot there's a mind-bending metaphysical tension alongside the ringing of a profound alarm bell. What consequences on the psyches of our children this mad mad world we're creating? With this book I think you can find yourself any combination of entertained, puzzled or terrified right down to the whimpering core of your spiritual self. Has science fiction ever aspired to such heights?
Rating:
Summary: A mature, humane book
Review: Philip Dick, like most science fiction writers, wrote enough action-oriented novels and stories to satisfy die hard genre fans, but anyone who has read Dick's work carefully knows that he came to be less concerned with action-adventure and more with very human issues. In Martian Time Slip, teaching androids are used in schools, one character is suspected of being able to see into the future, and, of course, the backdrop is Mars. Dick, though, uses this science fiction setting to explore aspects of the human condition, such as isolation, suffering, greed, hopelessness and cruelty, through the eyes of a number of characters who are all rendered with compassion despite their obvious shortcomings. The basic plot revolves around the efforts of Arnie Kott, a bullish big fish in a small pond, to determine if an autistic child named Manfred Steiner can see the future. It is then Kott's intention to use that knowledge to further his own self interests. Drawn into this story are several others that Kott needs to carry out his plan, and it is through their perspectives, their personal struggles that may not even peripherally relate to Kott's scheme, that the novel derives its impact. One section of the book, in fact, recounts a single evening from four different points of view. It's an amazing display of technique that seems a natural development in the telling of the story and manages to challenge the reader's own opinions about the characters involved. The novel's background detail is convincing as well, from the way Mars' relatively few surviving aboriginal inhabitants are portrayed as a race doomed long before humanity arrived, now lingering until probable eventual extinction, to the desolate nature of Mars itself and the attitudes and practices that have been transplanted from Earth. Much like the excellent Dr. Bloodmoney, which would appear the following year (1965), Martian Time-Slip is an ensemble story in a landscape that offers little hope aside from the comfort and love of other living beings which, I would like to believe, is what Dick is saying is the only hope of any consequence.
Rating:
Summary: Ultimately: Hope
Review: Philip K Dick has been accused as being the most depressing writer to ever grace the science fiction genre. In some ways, this may be true. However, Mr. Dick writes not only of depression, schizophrenia, and time... but he also writes of ultimate hope. Time and schitzophrenia seem like a strange course to take in a science fiction novel. And it would be for most ordinary writers, but Philip K. Dick wrote about the things he knew, and experienced and placed them into this fantasy about Mars. In this book, the very ending is a reminder that through our sufferings and losses there is hope for the future. Philip K Dick believed that and this book brings it out in a surprising way.
Rating:
Summary: a weird yet intriguing novel - typical Philip K. Dick
Review: Philip K. Dick (PKD) seems to be the type of writer who is overflowing with intriguing ideas yet, unfortunately, wraps them in rather far-fetched (read: weird) stories. However what makes his stories worth reading is the human element; he seems to effortlessly expose curious fractures in modern society. Martian Time-Slip is a story of the travails of a Martian settlement in 1994. His explanation of how Mars was colonized is rather implausible. On top of this an aboriginal tribe of Martian homo sapiens are a key element to his story (.. and yes, these Martians happen to speak English also). But playing on PKD's strengths, his story is an interesting mix of how colonists compete for power and fortune, and how these new colonists, in wanting to create the image of a perfect world, shun the mentally and physically infirmed. Martin Time-Slip is a worthy PKD novel, along the lines of Ubik and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? . Keep an open mind and don't take it all too seriously.
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