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Summary: If you do not like this book you do not know PKD!!
Review: If you do not like this book you do not know PKD. This is Dick's existence when he was attempting to life a 'normal' life, the life of a family man. If you know anything about PKD and have any insight you can see that this book, as are most of this novels, is a chunk of his life projected on paper through the lense of his mind. The characters thoughts and feeings are all part of Dick. Don't look at what the characters are doing and going through but what they feel and perceive.
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Summary: Good Old-Fashioned Made-In-USA Magic Realism
Review: In my opinion, this novel is right up there with Marquez and Borges. It speaks of an alternate post-nuclear-holocaust world where thought is often deed (a paranoid 'Dr. Strangelove' like character 'imagines' another nuclear exchange into being). It is full of radioactively altered creatures who, at books end, give us a sad but hopeful view of a future where intelligent rats wheeling carts play the nose flute for alms. It is one of PKD's most gentle works, a fable or parable for adults that is simultaneously mature and yet simple and fairy-tale like.
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Summary: the perfect Philip K. Dick book for beginners...
Review: Philip K. Dick (PKD) is known for writing very clever, often times too clever, science fiction novels. I find his work to be engaging even when he really goes off wild tangents, mostly because I'm in awe of his creative mind. He also is very good storyteller. Dr. Bloodmoney is non-standard PKD material in that it is extremely readable and, surprise!, understandable. It is a rather curious story of survival in the bizarre, mutant-rich world of post-WWW III (nuclear war) San Francisco bay area. Yes, there are weird creatures and a fair amount of metaphysical shenanigans (..PKD trademarks). But PKD is remarkably controlled in telling this story, and it scores well on the believability index. Bottom line: Philip K. Dick goodness in controlled, measured doses. Certainly not his most creative work, but perhaps his most accessible. Recommended.
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Summary: the perfect Philip K. Dick book for beginners...
Review: Philip K. Dick (PKD) is known for writing very clever, often times too clever, science fiction novels. I find his work to be engaging even when he really goes off wild tangents, mostly because I'm in awe of his creative mind. He also is very good storyteller. Dr. Bloodmoney is non-standard PKD material in that it is extremely readable and, surprise!, understandable. It is a rather curious story of survival in the bizarre, mutant-rich world of post-WWW III (nuclear war) San Francisco bay area. Yes, there are weird creatures and a fair amount of metaphysical shenanigans (..PKD trademarks). But PKD is remarkably controlled in telling this story, and it scores well on the believability index. Bottom line: Philip K. Dick goodness in controlled, measured doses. Certainly not his most creative work, but perhaps his most accessible. Recommended.
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Summary: Prejudice, Paranoia, and the Bomb
Review: The first image in this novel is that of a black man named Stuart McConchie sweeping the sidewalk in front of a Berkeley TV shop, eyeing the pretty girls on their way to work and indulging in some contempt for the approaching patients of the psychiatrist across the street. In any ordinary novel, that image would tell you that the book is going to be about that black man and those patients. In PKD, the image tells you that the book will be about prejudice. The average author, to tackle that theme, would provide us with a group of unprejudiced characters battling a group of prejudiced ones and make it very clear which are the good guys and which the bad guys. PKD was always a little too smart for that. Just about every character in "Dr. Bloodmoney" is suspicious of pretty nearly every other character he or she meets at one time or another. That includes several characters who have good reason to be suspicious - Bruno Bluthgeld, for instance, the Dr. Bloodmoney of the title, who believes himself personally responsible for the nuclear exchange that brings the world to its knees. Hoppy Harrington, too, has good reason for his suspicions - he's a telekinetic biological sport with no arms or legs at a time when atomic radiation has produced talking dogs and musical rats, so everyone's been looking at him funny his whole life; he's not just imagining things. However, the culture of suspicion even affects little Edie Keller and the undeveloped but quite powerful twin brother in her body. The culture of suspicion gets to Edie's father, George, who thinks his wife is cheating on him (he's right). It affects everyone, even the best of men and women. About the only character with no prejudice to speak of in "Dr. Bloodmoney" is Walt Dangerfield, left stranded in an orbiting satellite by the outbreak of war, and his lack of suspicion eventually leaves him the most vulnerable of all. The good guys, in other words, are highly intolerant of anyone or anything new. PKD makes good use of the irony that this xenophobia blinds the people of West Marin County to the dangers that Bruno Bluthgeld and Hoppy Harrington pose to them directly, simply because both men have been around them for awhile. There are plenty of mainstream novels which deal with that very subject - you could name ten or more in less than five minutes - without the necessity of dragging in nuclear war and mutant mental powers. In short, this is maybe the least SF that an SF novel could possibly be. This is not necessarily a criticism, of course - in fact, it would make "Dr. Bloodmoney" an excellent entry point into the works of PKD except for one thing. The story doesn't really get moving until about a third of the way in. The novel is one of PKD's longest, and he spends a good bit of time on the events of the day the bombs come down. The story proper, however, begins seven years later, when a worldwide culture of semi-rural enclaves has settled into its routine, loosely knit together by communications from the man in the satellite. The opening events have little or no connection to the main plot, although there's a nice description of World War III as seen through the eyes of a man who just knows it's all a figment of his imagination. Nevertheless, as nicely written as those passages are, I found myself thinking that "Dr. Bloodmoney" could have used a little tightening up. Take the passage where a mushroom hunter watches Hoppy Harrington nearly get run down by a wood-burning truck. Now there's a good opening scene, I thought - why not start here and add in all that backstory during the main plot instead of making me wait all this time? So, one star off for some loose-jointed plotting. Why not two stars off? Because those first pages, although they dangle from the book like a participle, do not strike me as unnecessary. Far from it - those pages contain some critical information, so critical that by the time the story proper kicked in I was thoroughly hooked. They just needed to be woven in more tightly, that's all. And PKD was notorious for writing fast and furiously - he needed the money. One more crime to chalk up to the American publishing industry, I suppose. Then again, they did publish "Dr. Bloodmoney", warts and all - let's be thankful for what we've got. And, to return to the point we started with, let's hope that "Dr. Bloodmoney" teaches us what life can be like when, like most of these characters, we lay aside our prejudices and work together to build something good. Benshlomo says, Some good art, like some good life, is messy.
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Summary: Either Too Long Or Too Short
Review: This book contains a lot of great PKD-style inventions, and he also makes some good points about who we trust and why. A lot of the human interactions in this book are well done, and that is not as common in PKD books as we all would like. However, he introduces too many plot threads and characters. While he has merely a complex cast of characters, the plot goes through way to many twists and turns, and the two interact badly. Either one would be fine, but together, I feel this book would be a lot better if either about twenty-five unneccessary pages were edited out or another fifty pages to use these characters or ideas were added. Don't get me wrong- PKD did a lot of stuff right in this one. His characters behave like people, when he's looking at the main plot, it shines, and using a disc jockey as the closest thing to God and the U.N. makes for a good book. However, it took a few readings for me to discover what he did right, and at first I was very frustrated with this book. I see that some characters or ideas might make the book feel more detailed, and make the post-holocaust world that much more vivid and gripping, but not to excess. At a point I stopped paying attention to the throwaway characters because their presence served no purpose. If PKD was better known, then maybe people would be forwarned about the plot, and be able to handle it. I'm not saying that the average reader shouldn't buy this book, I'm just suggesting that the reader have either a background in PKD (you don't need it to understand the plot, but it helps with the general weirdness), a lot of tolerance for a plot that manages to be roundabout without leaving California, or the patience to read this book a couple of times to get a handle on it. Or maybe two of the three.
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Summary: And a river (of Life) runs through it
Review: This book in which author Philip K. Dick is least like his usual self is perhaps (along with Man in the High Castle) the most worthwhile read of all his books for non-Dick or non-SF fans. Not so much for the quality of the story or the writing (which are "merely" above average sci-fi level) but for the interplay of the four almost mythopoeic figures in the book (a couple of which Dick seems to have invented all by himself): Bruno Bluthgeld, the human Madman, is eclipsed by Hoppy Harrington, the Madman In The Machine, the childish mind who then mounts an assault on Walt Dangerfield, the sane and unifying Voice Of Humanity In The Machine, only to be finally thwarted by Bill, the Innocent Child in the withered old man's body, who is in communication with all of the Dead. Life affirming Archetypes for the technological age
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Summary: One of the easiest of PKD's Books
Review: This is one of the easiest of PKD's books to read. While still maintaining the depth of thematic apperception, as well as the plotting and ideation that is characteristic of PKD's best novels, this book also is well written from a stylistic standpoint. I had a sense of deja-vu when I read this; I realize that I read this about 25 years ago, although I don't know where. Definitley a must for fans of PKD.
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Summary: There's hope for humanity after all....
Review: This is probably one of PKD's easiest reads, so save it for the day when you don't want to confront life's difficulties.... despite all the problems the characters face, there is a happy, almost upbeat, ending (well, as happy as any of his novels gets). The writing/theme/characters/etc reflect as usual his alternative approach, which may not appeal to all readers. But for me, a dedicated reader and fan since the 60's (starting with The Game Players of Titan at age 12?), this book represents the apex of classic "After-the-Apocalypse" novels about realistic (as opposed to "Garden-of-Eden") human survial, plus the good guys win and the bad guys don't. What more could you want? I really recommend you add this book to your PKD collection as light relief to some of the heavier stuff eg A Scanner Darkly.
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Summary: Do NOT buy unless you have everything else PKD wrote.
Review: This isn't very good. PKD at his worst
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