The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick. Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings by Philip K. Dick

When he reaches REM Corporation’s Los Angeles branch and applies for job 20583-AR he discovers what it is. Designing rides for what is called an “amusement park,” something that he has never even heard of. The personnel manager of REM, however, assures him that he is the man for the job (Joe Protagoras has given the personnel manager the same resume he gave Mr. Job). “You’ll do just fine,” Mr. Bean assures him, and leads him to his bright, modern, high-class office. He is to begin work right away. Historical texts and technical manuals dealing with amusement parks are already in the office; Joe Protagoras begins to read, and we leave him. But before we return to the schemes of Art Self, we see Protagoras making an interesting inquiry. What is REM Corporation’s product? What is his job for? He gets no answer from his new superiors; they know but won’t tell him. “Just design good, scary, fun rides,” he is told. “Pay special attention to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride from the twentieth-century amusement park called Disneyland; that is your prototype. Update it and you’ll be on your way.”

We of course know what REM Corporation is producing: the fake alternate world supposedly for Self’s benefit, but actually for Mrs. Stonemerchant’s personal purposes. In any case, Protagoras, the “little” protagonist, is now linked to Art Self, the “big” protagonist, as well as Mrs. Stonemerchant, the third force at work on the world stage, or rather inter-worlds stage.

At this point all the characters will have been introduced. These are:

Elderly despot: Simon Herrlich

Aspirant: Arthur Self

Director of REM Corporation: Mrs. Cynthia Stonemerchant

Craftsman little protagonist: Joe Protagoras

Girlfriend of Protagoras: Abby Vercelli

Girl, party zealot for Simon Herrlich: Marleen Poole

Hatchetman thug for Herrlich: Patrick O’Connell

Tough goon for REM Corp: Mike Fox

Group of top officials loyal to Herrlich: Calvin Gold, Dan Hastings, lan Kain

Spy and informer for Art Self: Demeter Troll

Wife (young) of Herrlich: Aulikki Mildmay

The plot continues as follows. Briefly, it’s this: While REM Corporation is building the fake capitalist alternate world, Nick Edel’s research workers stumble onto a genuine capitalist alternate world. This pleases no one; that is, neither Art Self nor the old despot (it would please Mrs. Stonemerchant, of course, but both Herrlich and Self keep this startling information top-secret). It is a better world than any other alternative — including their own. This is one possibility that neither Self nor Herrlich anticipated; wrapped up in their Communist ideology, they were absolutely certain that if a capitalist alternate world showed up (which in itself is considered by both of them unlikely), it would, of course, be awful.

Art Self crosses over to it, spends time there skulking about incognito, then returns to his own world. And, back in it, encounters almost at once a fake fake object!

What does this discovery mean? Two hypotheses are possible. (1) It — his own world — is real and someone has planted fake fakes there, as he himself has done in the alternate worlds; for instance, Mrs. Stonemerchant, who may have learned about the real alternate capitalistic world. Or (2) his own world is entirely fake, and he has a false memory grafted into his brain by someone unknown to him but who is obviously out to destroy him. This someone could be either Herrlich’s supporters in the party apparatus or Mrs. Stonemerchant’s technicians. Hard to tell.

The maximum host of perplexities is now at its peak; from hereon the plot will unravel.

A. Protagoras is doing a strange sort of task for a purpose he does not know and for a corporation whose product is kept secret from him.

B. Mrs. Stonemerchant may or may not know about the discovery of an authentic capitalistic Earth. If she does find out, what will she do?

C. Art Self has found what appear to be fake fakes in his own world. What does this mean? Who put them there and why? Or is everything fake?

D. The old man, Simon Herrlich, has seen his hopes and dreams shattered, here at the end of his life, by the discovery that a capitalistic world would have been — is, in fact — far better than anything he and his world-revolution takeover can come up with. What should he do now? Renounce his own totalitarian society and attempt to bring capitalism back — with Mrs. Stonemerchant’s help and that of other industrial directors who share her attitude?

The novel is resolved in this way. A team working for REM Corporation is discovered, by Self’s personal police, planting fake fakes in his own world. That answers that. His world is real, and Mrs. Stonemerchant has tried to do to him what he did to Herrlich. Self therefore has his thugs kill Mrs. Stonemerchant (after a heavy pitched battle with her company goons), since he knows for a certainty that she is, in totalitarian jargon, plotting against him, obviously with the idea of undermining their socialist state. However, Mrs. Stonemerchant has made certain arrangements; the instant she dies, an automatic instrument goes into action; it drops into a mail slot many, many copies of a full statement of REM Corporation’s activities, its creating of fake fakes at Self’s command. This letter is addressed to every powerful official loyal to old Simon Herrlich, and within twenty-four hours the elderly despot learns what Self has been up to.

Self becomes, at once, a hunted criminal in a society where escape from the government police is impossible. He knows he can’t escape Herrlich’s agent, but at least he can take revenge vis-a-vis REM Corporation — which, he reasons, has brought about his downfall and certain death. He therefore, with all the resources he can muster, attacks REM Corporation’s various branches, and, in a matter of hours, reduces most of them to rubble. . . killing the majority of the corporation’s employees. Or so he thinks. Actually, Mrs. Stonemerchant had anticipated exactly this; upon her death, REM Corporation’s employees began passing across to the alternate capitalist world via a pirated duplicate of Nick Edel’s mechanism.

Again the novel focuses on Protagoras, who believes himself safe in this capitalist alternate world. However, he very soon makes a hideous discovery. This is not the authentic alternate capitalist world at all. Something — at least in his case — went wrong. This is the mere partly completed fake that REM Corporation was building for Self up to the time that Mrs. Stonemerchant learned of the existence of the real one. Here he finds, for example, the not yet functioning “rides” that he himself designed: a ghostly, lonely, echoing “amusement park,” of which he is the sole patron; he is alone in this ersatz world, with no way to get back out.

The ending is not downbeat, however. REM Corporation has not removed its machinery, the autonomic building rigs by means of which they were constructing this “world.” At the end of the book we find Joe Protagoras starting the great elaborate autonomic machines once more into action; if he can’t leave this ersatz world, at least he can complete it — make it pleasant and habitable, including the building of ersatz “people” to keep him company. He is emperor of an entire landscape, and he is happy. Of all the major characters, Joe Protagoras came out the best — which the reader will agree is as it should be.

In this ending, the questions What is real? What is illusion? are answered (or anyhow the attempt will be made within the context of the novel). Joe Protagoras has gone from a “real” but unsatisfying world into an “unreal” but satisfying alternate. The test will be purely pragmatic. If this half-completed ersatz world is capable of answering Joe Protagoras’ needs, then it is real — in the sense that it provides the material out of which he can fashion a reasonably tolerable life. In fact, the issue of “real” versus “unreal” is itself false; the authentic issue is: What will sustain life? What will permit a living organism to function? In answer to this, the ersatz, half-completed world is advantageous, because, among other things, it gives Joe Protagoras a field in which to work creatively (i.e., as he personally completes it). Instead of a bureaucrat he is now an artist, and this ersatz world is the lump of clay out of which he will fashion his own, idiosyncratic reality. Which, we realize, is the finest reality of all.

“Plot Idea for Mission: Impossible” (1967)

The mission is to take place in a Latin American country that is an analog for present-day Cuba. Formerly a hedonistic, self-serving dictator ruled, but a year or so ago he was overthrown and killed by a young, idealistic revolutionary. However, this left-wing revolutionary has allied himself with “the other side” — i.e., the Communist states of Eastern Europe and Asia. The United States would, of course, like to see him deposed, but assassination is out of the question; the revolutionary’s followers would know that the CIA had done it, and would become even more fanatical and anti-West. So the mission is this: to find a way by which the revolutionary leader can be induced to come voluntarily to the United States — which will not only remove him from power in his own country but also will undermine the Marxist-oriented followers and demileaders backing him. But how can this be done?

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