re:mote voices

Title: The Zap Gun
Author: Philip K Dick
Publisher: Granada

It is 2004 and the cold war is still going strong – the arms race demanding ever more powerful and threatening weapons with which to intimidate the enemy. Except that at the end of the second world war the powers that be were so appalled by the power of the nuclear bomb that they swore “never again!” Over the years the East and West have negotiated a deal, where the stand off is maintained to the satisfaction of both sides. Society is split in two, the cogs and pursaps, the cognoscenti know what the real deal is and are in control, while the pure saps are kept happy with the fabrication.

To this end, each side has a “weapons fashion designer”, who makes up threatening weapons, which are demonstrated to the public thanks to special effects. Things are fine like this, the whole process driving new technology and finding every day usage. But then a satellite appears in the sky, which apparently doesn’t belong to either side, and is soon joined by others and attacking the Earth. And this is it, the Earth stands defenceless, making it a race to create a weapon before the aliens have zapped all our cities.

Prime Dick, taking the environment of the 1960’s, when this novel was written, and extending. Sure there is the arrival of the aliens, a dose of time travel, and the fact that the weapons fashion design involves a trance state that transports the designer to “another dimension”. But most of that is actually background detail, The Zap Gun having more to do with East vs West, those in the know vs those kept in the dark, and on one level men and women.

One thing I am particularly reminded of reading The Zap Gun is Alan Moore’s The Watchmen. A multi-layered graphic novel which at it’s core had a similar theme of cold war tension and paranoia, extending from the 1980’s rather than 1960’s. Ironically, one of the sub themes of The Zap Gun is the discovery of a comic book series, which makes use of the imaginary weapons. A comic referenced within a novel, something else with particular resonance to The Watchmen.

One has this image of Philip K. Dick as a science fiction writer, and the clichés that go with that. This kind of thinking particularly comes from the cinematic interpretation of his work. But each time I read another of his novels I am reminded how unique his work really is, how for all the trimmings that make this science fiction it is the human stories which make his work so remarkable.