Dr. Bloodmoney and Fallout

As I mentioned on the discussion board, I kept thinking of the Fallout games while I was reading Dr. Bloodmoney. While I mentioned in particular Fallout New Vegas, I actually had fonder memories of Fallout 3 (which is set in post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. instead of New Vegas' more applicable California and Las Vegas setting).

In both Bloodmoney and the Fallout games, government plays a secondary role as people are trying to survive locally rather than worry about the country. It only makes sense, as a post-apocalypse life adjustment would only bring humans back to their basic survival skills of forming small alliances if it serves your own survival. Everyone is competing for a limited number of resources, so one can understand why the Keller clan would turn to murder someone if that someone was trying to compromise them by exposing one of their own.

However, unlike in the Fallout games, there seems to be a conspicuous absence of guns and other weaponry. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I suppose adding guns to the story can take away some of the story's focus on survival and the relationships between each character.

Nicole the Matriarch

As is made clear in the novel, Nicole is the ultimate matriarchal figure throughout the novel, despite her youthful appearance. For most of the novel, she plays the authoritative voice, to the point in which the reader believes she is evil. Later on, the reader sees the doting side of her, thereby penetrating our guard against her, as scornful mothers can often do.

Perhaps the best example of her showing both sides comes with her relationship to Kongrosian. Even at the end of the novel, we see a microcosm (and shortly before the climax of the story) of both sides of her matriarchal relationship with Kongrosian. As her reign crumbles all around her, Kongrosian enters to wail his problems. At first, Nicole coldly tells him to leave, as she's been wanting to do throughout the novel. But, seeing that she can replace Pembroke with Kongrosian, she significantly changes her attitude, and offers him the top security post.

In return, after Pembroke looks like he is about to execute Nicole, Kongrosian steps in and kills him with his ability, and then uses that ability to send Nicole to a safer place (his house out in California). Within the novel, culminating with this action, we saw the typical mother-son bond play out through time. Nicole went from being the protector of Kongrosian to being protected by him, much as young child transitions to the role his mother occupied as he gets older and stronger while she gets frailer and needs someone to look out for her as time goes on. Of course, Nicole is not as helpless as that quite yet, but she does have a target on her back.

The Simulacra

As I commented on the discussion board, the themes of government control and interplanetary travel have been consistent throughout Dick's works. In a way, that's kind of annoying, as it feels like a simple copy and paste job, just with different characters and plot lines. Yes, the government is bad, but does it have to be a theme in every story? Same thing goes with interplanetary travel.

If we got more of a glimpse in traveling to Mars than we've had so far in these works, it would be more interesting. Instead, Mars has always appeared as merely an option in which select people go to. The setting is never explored, preferring instead to focus on the dystopian Earth climate, this time with the threat of Nazis! All right, I'll admit, if Nazis appear in this book, that will be interesting. I just hope they aren't merely alluded to as a possible option, just like Mars.

Beyond Lies the Wub

"Beyond Lies the Wub" tells the story of a man having an intellectual conversation with a pig-like creature called a Wub. The Wub discusses how his culture also has a variation of The Odyssey like the humans do. Then, the Captain kills and eats the Wub, thereby allowing the Wub to express itself through the Captain.

In my opinion, the point of the story is Dick establishing the ideas that, however abstract, science fiction has roots in classic mythology. Many of the elements that may seem futuristic do in fact have some roots in the classical. For example, the themes of government control can be traced back to Machiavelli's philosophies in The Prince. In Machiavelli's work, he sets the ground rules for an effective leader who has the ability to carry out violence to solidify his rule, yet should appear compassionate to his subjects in order to carry out this violence and not risk a revolution.

The nature of interplanetary travel can be traced back the Odysseus' journeys from island to island, where he encounters creatures he has never seen before. So far, Mars in Dick's works hasn't been explained too thoroughly, yet we get a sense that it is quite foreign to Earthlings, as the islands were to Odysseus when he traveled to them.

Tyranny in PKD

If there was a dominant theme that connected the short stories, it's the idea of systematic tyranny perpetuated by the government. In The Golden Man, a remarkable man gets abducted by an organization in the vein of the CIA. There really is no basis for his abduction (not really an arrest), other than the fact that there may be a miniscule chance he may use his powers to disrupt the order of things in this manufactured society. Obviously, the government is presented in a very negative light, as Dick has so far presented a very bleak future in all of his stories. Even though I did not read Minority Report, I have seen the movie a couple of times. Again, Minority Report goes back to a shadowy government agency practicing tyranny under the guise of good. But it's not just Minority Report that we see this in Dick's works. The Golden Man has been well covered. But we also see a variation of it in If There Were No Benny Cemoli. Here, we see the government in a shadow state inciting fear among the people by spreading propaganda about the big bad invading force. This keeps them in power even though they are a faceless entity. It is hard to deduce why Dick always presents such a bleak world in his writings. I suppose it is a product of the times, where distrust of the government really started to take hold in his era. And also, everyone loves a good conspiracy story.