Once again Philip K. Dick has blown my mind, and in less than two-hundred pages he says more than many genre authors do in multiple volumes. I am always surprised (although, by now, I shouldn't be) at just how much plot, characterization, and theme PKD crams into each and every page of his novels; it's breathtaking, and awe inspiring. With Galactic Pot-Healer, Dick, again, dons his futurist-theological hat and spins a science fiction tale dealing with a divine being, inter-planetary travel, ESP, a lost civilization, government conspiracy, dystopian societies, scornful cynics, and frustrated artisans.
Dick had a way of turning the mundane into the fantastic, and his best characters constantly struggle with their moribund lives. Joe Fernwright is a pot-healer; he mends broken pottery. This is a highly-regarded, but rarely called for talent. He doesn't just fix broken pots and vases, he can actually heal them back to new, not like-new, status. Joe soon finds himself behind on his bills so his holographic view-mirror has been turned off (thus eliminating his “view” of Big Sur), his hot ex-wife wants nothing to do with him because he has “nothing to offer anyone in the way of talk or discussion or ideas,” (he's a born loser in her eyes), and he's lost all of the quarters he was going to use to visit the Mr. Job booth, a computerized life-counselor that, if given enough money, might tell Joe exactly what in the hell he's supposed to do with his wasted life.
Needless to say, Joe's life has gone down the shitter. And so it is here, at his wit's end, that Joe is contacted by a divine being called Glimmung. Joe is asked to join a group of contractors on a journey to the Plowman's Planet in an effort to raise a lost temple from the depths of a vast ocean.
Dick is a master at peppering his stories with fascinating details, details that come and go seemingly without a second thought. He is a fine craftsman at injecting subtlety and nuance into his narratives and characters. We learn in Galactic Pot-Healer that robots have been outlawed on Earth. The government paid off a group of scientists to cook up a bunk report stating that the creation of robots was impossible. However, once on the Plowman's Planet Joe Fernwright is shocked to find a multitude of robots.
One of the robots Joe meets is named Willis, a robot interested in theology while pining to be a freelance writer. Little by little, the world Joe thought he knew comes crumbling down. However, this point is never hammered into our heads like it might be in a lesser sci-fi tale. These ideas are introduced in context, and then simply becomes part of the tale.
We also learn of a very special book, not completely unlike the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. This special book is published daily, and contains tidbits of information about the present and near-future. It is the best selling book on the planet because almost everyone, in hopes of reading something about themselves, buys a new one almost every day. Rather than actually living their lives, the people of the Plowman's Planet have become spiritual slaves to the ramblings of a book, a book that changes with each and every whim.
It is here that Dick crafts one of his most poignant ideas. Printed material is so valuable because it rarely, if ever, changes. There is a stability found in books, the knowledge that the book I buy today will be the same book I might need to re-buy in the future is comforting. Without the stability of print, of tangible, concrete ideas, truth becomes nothing more than a flight of fancy to be whisked away by the slightest breeze.
Pot-Healer is one of Dick's most humorous books, although one has to dig deep through layers of cynicism to find it. It is not, however, ironic or sarcastic. Dick does not screw with his characters in a cruel way in order to elicit laughs. He is beyond any such post-modern trivialities, and far too genuine to fall prey to mean spirited narration. After reading a portion of the book, Joe and the group of contractors find that their project is doomed to fail. Glimmung divinely addresses them saying, “You have met failure so often that you have all become afraid to fail...That's why I have brought you here. Self-knowledge; that is what I will achieve. And so will you: each about himself.”
He convinces them that even through failure they will ascertain self-knowledge, and that through this knowledge they will become stronger individuals. As bad as it can get in Phil Dick's universe, there is always, always an ounce of hope, and the hope always lies within the characters; it is never in technology, and it is never “out there.” Dick was a huge believer in the power of humanity and individuality, and Galactic Pot-Healer elucidates this aspect. Galactic Pot-Healer is top-tier Dick, a story told with brevity, and a narrative jam-packed with bristling ideas, interesting situations, and nuanced characterizations.
