Rating: 
Summary: Let me put in my 2 crumbles worth...here goes...;)
Review:
This book is difficult to describe. Although it is found in the SF shelf, I wouldn't be able to label it as SF, pure and composite. This one falls in the PKD theological mind frame novels. It's like the softer shade of what was to come in VALIS. The other funny thing is that this novel borders on the flimsy line, one side of which, it could be called the classic PKD theological-SF which we come to expect of PKD and on the other side could as easily be labeled as some kind of weird otherworldly fairy tale with shades of fantasy. Just because there are ET's, spaceships and otherworldly planets doesn't make it SF, neither does this one really fit as fantasy, because pure and simple it is not fantasy. So what is this novel...hard to describe. From my recent research and interest in PKD, I feel, that this novel says something deeper than just a different kind of so-called SF story. Funnily PKD in the classic book, which I recommend to everyone, says in one of his interviews at an SF meeting, that SF stories don't need to have a moral. Although this story doesn't have a moral, but it tries to say something about GOD, or at least something akin to GOD. So does PKD contradict himself here? A message or real word meaning is very close to a moral.
Background on the story: There is a planet called Plowman's Planet which is inhabited by just one being called "The Glimmung" which among other things, weighs 10,000 tons, is very large and can fall 10 floors down to the basement. It can take quite a few shapes. At most times it looks like a hoop of fire and a hoop of water, at right angles to each other, each rotating about its own axis, with a face of young girl in the 3D center of both hoops with a floating shawl, hovering behind the twin hoops, I'd be freaked out if I men some thing like that. Plowman's planet was first inhabited by humorously named "The Fog things of antiquity" after which the only indigenous species which remained on Plowman's planet were the spiddles, wubs, wejes, klakes, trobes, and printers. Also on the whole planet there is only one book ever published and which keeps getting published. You can get many copies of it and the book keeps changing everyday, but there is essentially only one book called the book of Kalends written by the Kalends, which are like dark shadows who watch over you and can predict the future. So the future is essentially written in the book and the future keeps getting updated in the book so you can book the updated versions, as the kalends keep adding stuff.
There is only one Glimmung on Plowman's planet and this Glimmung summons the best people in their own fields, from different sol systems of the universe to this planet to partake in a very important mission which involves the "Raising of the cathedral" called Heldscalla which has sunk to the bottom of the oceans of Plowman's planet, where all things decay and rot. Glimmung along with the rag tag group of flipping and flolloping members, which includes a human member, Joe Fernwright have to succeed in the mission of restoring the Heldscalla to it's original glory, that is bring it to land and remove the decay that it has undergone by being in the dead ocean of Plowman's planet where all things rot and decay. Joe Fernwright is a pot healer, his specialty being ceramic pots and there are probably lots of those which need restoration when Heldscalla is raised and since most of those pots will be in bad condition, in comes the job requirement for Joe.
Joe is a low lifer and earth has becomes commercially so unstable with relation to galactic trade that the monetary worth of terran currency oscillates from a little to a zilch within the duration of one day. Basically it's as volatile as the stock market. And the people on earth have become poor and without enough jobs live like rats in a police state and while away their times playing strange word games. This involves, basically, submitting an English phrase converted to Japanese by language supercomputers and then reconverting it back to English, creating a wholly different phrase than the actual source phrase. So it's like solving a riddle where one offer, the reconverted phrase in English and asks for the actual source phrase before conversion.
Joe gets a job offer from Glimmung. The offer manifests itself in quite a strange manner in the form of a paper in bottle, floating in the water closet of his toilet. Joe is offered 35,000 crumbles, a crumble being the unit of currency in Plowman's planet and according to the exchange rates of the "Interplanet corn and Wheat People's collective bank", 1 crumble = 2 * 10 to the power 44 units in terran currency. Off course, just like Joe, everyone one who has been made to assemble at Plowman's planet has been offered such profitable inducements. Also there is a very humorous robot called Willis who escorts the team at Plowman's planet. This story is a very funny story. At times it feels like a very amateurish effort, because of its theme. But at the same time, we know that only PKD could have come up with the odd names, characters and the very costly crumble. I can't place this book; it is a very odd experience. The story if seen with just the external husk will have no meaning, but gathers some meaning only if you see the inner meaning of the story.
PKD here is trying to visualize GOD as essentially human and that the energy we call GOD is in each one of us. GOD listens to what all of us has to say and we can listen his talk if we are perceptive enough to pick it up; this might be our good conscience. Each and every one of us just like the characters brought by Glimmung to Plowman's planet, we too have been brought into existence because each and every one of us has a purpose for being here. Each and every one of us has skill which will further the cause and aid in that purpose.
The book is good, if you can catch that meaning with a bit of Y B Yeats, Goethe, Western classical music commentary, and Theology thrown in, in this classical concoction which only PKD could have come up with. It's quite a few crumbles worth!!!
Vikram
Rating: 
Summary: Extraterrestrial Archeology
Review: .KD.'s secretly cerebral novel whose protagonist, an average Joe named, appropriately enough, Joe Fernwright, is a sound showcase for his usual talents. The bizarre story begins with Joe bored out of his mind at a desk job in the future-2040s, which was the future in 1963, when this book came out. Recently divorced (he half-heartedly longs for the company of his estranged wife, whose intelligence he respects), his boredom at his desk job is alleviated only by long-distance games such as guessing film titles from metaphorical rephrasings and telling jokes based on computerized translations (similar to Google's German translation program). The book's plot takes off when Joe is recruited by a huge alien intelligence known as Glimmung that uses the unusual expedient of leaving a message in the water closet of his toilet. (Later the Glimmung, on its home planet, will communicate from the bottom of the sea by means of messages on bottles.) Joe is recruited because of his expertise in ceramics and their reconstruction. The extraterrestrial monster seems to have a good heart but is intent on raising a cathedral from the bottom of the sea and reconstructing its shards, to which end the Glimmung-manifesting most reliably as two spinning rings, one of fire, the other of water, and sometimes a giant young female face-has recruited depressed and suicidal aliens (many of whose species Joe has had the privilege of eating) from all over the galaxy. The planet upon which they congregate affords Joe time for a dalliance with an ambitious humanoid female, who proves to be his confederate, along with an intelligent robot (who is funny, and has a tray table with phone built into his chest), as events unfold. The water-steeped planet has a long history of warfare and alien take-overs and is susceptible to Solaris-like manifestations, such as Joe's striking encounter, underwater, with his own future corpse. There is also the Book of the Kalends, which is said to correctly predict all future events, including Joe's destruction of the Glimmung (thus foiling the very purpose for which he was recruited to the extraterrestrial planet's surface). Tension mounts as the Glimmung's equal and opposite foe the Black Glimmung engages it a battle to the death. The foreign workers grapple with the meaning of fate, the choice between exciting danger and boring work at home, and the metaphysics of fate. At one point the Glimmung engulfs all its recruits in its own body, allowing them a closer consciousness of both each other and the entity that surrounds them-endosymbiosis with humans as the symbionts of a higher power. As always, Dick's pulp provides the commercial rationale for a mediation on evolution and metaphysics. A fun book whose alien archeology project reminds us of the preciousness of handicraft in age of mechanization.
Rating: 
Summary: Humorous philosophical SF story about a religious mission
Review: A fallible alien deity summons a group
of Earth craftsmen and women to a remote planet to raise a giant cathedral from beneath the oceans. When the deity begins to demand faith
from the earthers, pot-healer Joe Fernwright is unable to comply. A polished, ironic and amusing novel.
Rating:
Summary: No glue required
Review: According to the author's biographer, Laurence Sutin, Dick didn't much care for this book. I can't imagine why, except that in his more determinedly resolute moments he may have considered the ending too patly pessimistic. I agree with Sutin's rating: Pot-Healer is a gem. Rarely for Dick, it has only a single point-of-view character, the pot-healer (not mender), stranded in a Stalinist USA of the 2040s, who is somewhat circuitously approached by the Glimmung - a possibly divine, certainly whimsical entity of faraway Plowman's Planet. The Glimmung is putting together a collaborative enterprise of life-forms from around the galaxy in order to raise a sunken cathedral, and along the way our hero meets with some spectacular inconveniences, including his own corpse and a book in which his future (or one of them) is inscribed (possibly), occasionally in language he can understand. This is one of Dick's funniest and most enjoyable books, putting a light touch to many of his favourite issues. It's as packed with energy and invention as any of his more famous works and, perhaps because of the single point of view, feels more focused and coherent than many - and this in spite of the fact that its epic plot and impressive special effects all take place within the space of less than a hundred and eighty pages.
Rating:
Summary: Profound, unique and extremely bizarre.
Review: Don't hold out for the film version-- this story one will never be made into one, though it's one of Philip K. Dick's most interesting and bizarre novels. The story begins on a freedom-challenged earth of the future and travels to a distant planet where an oddly limited godlike being is on a mission to resurrect a mythological city. Between the variety of aliens, the psychics and their book of sometimes misleading predictions, the (supposedly) living dead, and the ambiguous "god" and his evil counterpart, this is more a religious allegory story than science fiction or fantasy (as Dick's work is sometimes mislabeled) and it raises a lot of questions. Philip K. Dick's symbolic story veers miles away from the comfortable good versus evil and faith versus fear struggles other authors offer. (Remember this is the guy who for years received messages from God and/or aliens through a pink beam of light.) There's no tidy ending here, but as always it's the ideas and their implications that are the heart of Philip K. Dick's novels. Those will remain with your long after the story is over.
Rating:
Summary: Don't miss this one if you enjoyed PKD's other works.
Review: Galactic Pot-Healer is my favorite of all PKD's works. Although stunning philosophical works like the VALIS Trilogy get front-rate press, GPH is sadly neglected. It is interesting, humorous without being slapstick, and curiously touching. This story of a Glimmung and the "pot-healer" he calls upon is a wonderful reworking of the too-human theme of the man called to prophecy - in this case, with a heavy touch of wit and a delicate sensibility. Don't miss this one if you enjoyed his other works.
Rating:
Summary: Dick attempting to reconcile the nature of God
Review: Here Dick explores the theme of how a god can be irrational and somewhat malevolent, like the Old Testament Yahweh, and still be a god. On another level, this book is saturated with sadness, a sense of loss. A godlike entity known as the Glimmung has summoned a group of colonists, typical PKD average Joes and Joans, to a far off planet called Plowman's Planet. Each of the people summoned possesses a unique ability, a talent, that is desperately needed by Glimmung for some purpose which is not readily revealed. Joe Fernwright is the PKD everyman, and his talent is healing pots, that is, he is able to repair ancient clay vessels by essentially feeling how they were and how they want to be repaired. Joe is of course attracted and repelled by a dark haired girl, Mali. Both become pawns of the Glimmung in his/its quest to raise an ancient sunken temple called Heldscalla from it's watery grave. Here the tale twists. Up until now, there are plenty of PKD ruminations on religion and relationships, but suddenly the story takes on an almost Cthulhu-like tone. There are other forces at play, and the Glimmung may or may not be what it claims. Dick as usual is commenting on the relationship between reality, what we believe, and how we have arrived at our individual version of reality. Here he seems to be going on at length on the issue of self-worth, and finding one's humble gifts worthy in the grand, galactic scheme of things. Dick invests Joe with a modest skill, repairing pots, but then does an about-face by making this pedestrian job one of great importance, on par with restoring great paintings. As the story evolves, Joe becomes less of a sad sack and more of an existential soul adrift. Joe's world becomes filled with paranoia and dread the more he learns about Plowman's Planet. Alongside Dick's other sci-fi novels, Galactic Pot-Healer is less frivolous in tone than most of his other books (no Lord Running Clam here, folks), despite the title. The love relationship between the male and female characters is also one fraught with angst and emptiness. Yet somehow in the middle of all this bleakness, Dick reigns in his story and refuses to be overwhelmed with despair. One gets the sense that Dick ended writing a different novel than he had intended and with a different ending than he originally had in mind. It's also a variation on the theme that crops up in "The Divine Invasion", "A Maze of Death", and some of his more theologically inclined short stories. This book is more unsettling than most Dick novels, and darker themes are touched on that leave an odd, haunting effect. It's a strange novel. Galactic Pot-Healer is in many ways a companion novel to "A Maze of Death" and also "Flow My Tears...". Similar in the emotional range of the story and the interactions between characters. It is less philosophical than "Man in the High Castle", yet contains a provocative view point.
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Philip K. Dick
Review: I've read between 15 and 20 of his novels and this one is absolutely my favorite. The paranoia and psychosis found in almost all of his fiction is present here but in with less frenetic effect on the reader. Instead of dominating the story, delusion and anxiety eventually resolve themselves into a wonderfully mythic vision of the pain and beauty that are part of individuality. It also happens to be one of his funniest works.
Rating:
Summary: Science fiction as myth
Review: In Galactic Pot-Healer, Dick's attention was more on creating a myth than on writing a novel. The characters are relatively undeveloped, and the science-fictional conceits are used rather casually as vehicles for archetypes; the work is almost a Jungian allegory. It does not lack Dick's characteristic humanizing touches, but its tendency toward myth makes it unique among his novels. It is certainly as dense with themes and ideas as any fiction he ever wrote. Joe Fernwright, the main character, is found at the beginning in an oppressive future dystopia where policemen stop people for walking too slowly, all phone calls are monitored, and everyone is programmed to have a common dream every night. He is a pot-healer; that is, he has the skill of not just mending but restoring broken pots to their exact original condition. A godlike extraterrestrial being called the Glimmung enlists him on a team made up of species from throughout the galaxy to help raise a sunken cathedral called Heldscalla on the Glimmung's home world, Plowman's Planet. From this Faustian undertaking, Joe experiences an awakening to self-knowledge. This is a story of hope and ultimately religious transcendence.
Rating:
Summary: Underrated Classic
Review: It's beyond me why this isn't one of PKD's best known novels. Admittedly, the characters don't possess as much depth as they do in his other works, but the sheer amount of weird situations - most made possible by the near-omnipotent Glimmung - is mind-blowing (my favorite being when Joe Ferwright first meets Glimmung). But besides being a mind-trip novel, a strong individualistic message runs through GPH. When you have to choose between being completely lonely or sublimating consciousness with others, what do you do? Both choices have rewards, but the repercussions may be more than most can handle. The ending is ironically sad, but completes the novel perfectly. Highly recommended.
|
