THE READING RHEUM: "SECOND VARIETY" (1953)

 

I'm reviewing this lone Philip K Dick tale purely as a prelude to reviewing the 1995 film adaptation. Although "Second Variety" shows some of Dick's familiar tropes, it's mainly a gimmick story with a surprise ending. In a future where the US and Russia go to war, most of Earth is annihilated. The surviving American forces send a military detachment to their Moon base as a defensive maneuver, but the Soviets have a base there and do the same thing. However, Yankee know-how allows the Americans to stymie the Commie forces with a series of robots called "claws." Humans originally crafted these mechanical attack dogs-- which burrow beneath the ground and spring out to attack living things with sharp implements. However, over time the humans left the creation of the claws to automatic factories. As a result, the claws began to make improvements on the forms they take. These alterations include emulating the forms of humans-- a trope Dick would explore to much greater effect in 1968's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?                                                                                   

American soldier/ viewpoint character Hendricks-- who, like the other characters in the story, is a cypher-- receives intel that the Russian contingent wants a parley. Alone, he proceeds to the Russian moon base. On the way he's joined by a pathetic little ragamuffin, theoretically the survivor of some armed conflict. Once he reaches the other moon base (nothing is said about how the moon has been terraformed for human survival there), the Russians shoot the kid, who proves to be a new variety of "claw." Once Hendricks is inside the compound, he finds that the three soldiers, one of whom is a woman named Tasso, fear that they've been infiltrated by a "second variety" of human-mimicking robot, in contrast to the other two varieties that they can recognize. Suffice to say, they're right. There are a couple of other tropes Dick works into the story. One is the idea that the claws' relentless self-improvement is a form of evolution, hearkening their replacement of humankind, which does not transfer to the 1995 movie. The other is the idea that the robots are going to be just as divisive against their own kind, which does make it into the film, albeit in altered form.   

THE READING RHEUM: THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH (1965)

Despite sporting a great title, and having earned a Nebula nomination back in the day, THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH is definitely weak sauce from the illustrious Philip K. Dick.

I read the book something like 20 or 30 years ago, and though I remembered nothing about the story, I recalled a feeling of general disappointment. On occasion re-reading novels many years later can reveal new levels one may not have perceived earlier. Not here, though.

The plot includes all the usual Dick tropes: alien invasion via conceptual manipulation rather than martial attacks, drugs opening "the doors of perception," illusions that may be another form of reality, men with one or more divorces (like Dick himself), psychic technology, and questions about authentic experience. But PALMER fails because its characters are bland and uninvolving.

"Pre-cog" Barney Mayerson is the starring character, and like most of the others, he lives in a sort of futuristic version of Madison Avenue promotional concerns. Most of the other characters are significant because of their relation to Mayerson-- his boss Leo Bulero, his ex-wife, and his current girlfriend-- but in his best books, Dick has an unparalleled ability to flesh out the lives of even support-characters. But the monotony of the faux Madison Avenue milieu makes all of the characters seem flat and undistinguished. This particularly hurts the novel in Mayerson's case, for he seems just like an unfeeling jerk for the early chapters of the book-- but by the novel's middle, he experiences a great sense of guilt over an action he fails to take. Thus, when Dick devotes the rest of the novel to Mayerson's desire to atone for his wrongs, the emotion seems forced.

The one character outside Mayerson's sphere is the legendary explorer Palmer Eldritch, who has made contact with aliens in the Proxima galaxy and is attempting to market on Earth a hallucinatory drug made from alien lichen. But the hallucinogen has effects far beyond those of anything on Planet Earth, and Mayerson eventually suspects that Eldritch is either the pawn of an alien invasion, or a simulacrum of the original explorer. Like the androids of Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, Eldritch possesses three signs of his inhuman nature-- in Palmer's case, artificial eyes, jaw, and arm. The novel calls these "stigmata" only once, and they never take on any associations with what "stigmata" signify, either in ancient or mainstream Christianity. Despite Dick's liberal references to Christianity in PALMER, his character's religions crises fare no better than the characterizations, and on the whole I hypothesize that Dick wrote the novel without adequate planning. The previous year the author wrote the less heralded MARTIAN TIME SLIP, which despite its absence of critical approval is a superior work in every way.

RUNNING ON ABOUT BLADE RUNNER

In the essay TO THE POWER OF XYZ I said:

In contrast, when I review the 1982 BLADE RUNNER I don't doubt that I will judge it to be a combative work, wherein such characters as Rick Deckard, Pris and Roy Batty take on the aura of spectacular violence.

I have finally reviewed the "Final Cut" edition of the film, but noted in the course of the review that there were many aspects of this multidimensional work that I knew I could not analyze in one review.  One of those is the film's relation to spectacular violence.

Of the Dick novel I wrote earlier:

...in Dick's ANDROIDS, the violence is purely in the functional mode, even if the combatants are dueling with laser tubes.  It's rare to find megadynamic forces handled in a humdrum functional manner, though Dick's motive for so doing may somewhat akin to Heinlein's reason for not winding up STARSHIP TROOPERS with a big colorful battle.  In both cases, however different their themes, the authors sought to make their protagonists seem more "ordinary" despite their marvelous surroundings and/or resources. 

Of course, prose-authors can be as "humdrum" as they like with regard to potentially spectacular effects.  Authors attempting to craft dramatic works frequently eschew spectacular violence in order to communicate to readers the "seriousness" of their efforts. 

The same strategy appears in the medium of film, but it's rare in those films aimed at a mainstream audience. There can be little doubt that director Ridley Scott's aims in 1982's BLADE RUNNER were no less serious than Dick's.  But since Scott sought to please a mainstream audience of filmgoers, he surely knew that he had to give them spectacle to keep them interested.  The picayune scene of Dick's novel, in which Deckard and Batty shoot at each other with laser tubes, is therefore replaced by a long chase scene in which Batty injures Deckard's gun-hand, and then pursues the armed-but-awkward policeman, continually mocking Deckard's inability to kill him.  In one scene Deckard does get in a couple of good blows with a pipe, but in my system his ability is no better than "exemplary."  In my review I pointed out that Deckard is similarly enabled by darn good luck in his encounters with other replicants, in three scenes that resemble nothing in Philip Dick's book.

Scott's use of action-adventure motifs is certainly ironic. Deckard's supervisor calls Deckard a "one-man slaughterhouse," but in all four of the blade runner's encounters with the replicants, they all beat him down and are capable of easily killing him, and Deckard is saved only by contingent circumstances, not by his own skills or powers.

When I first viewed the film, I was particularly perturbed by the scene in which Deckard is almost killed by the acrobatic Pris.  In this scene she seems close to breaking the blade runner's neck, but for no clear reason she lets him go, retreats a few paces, and then tries another acrobatic attack.  This allows Deckard the chance to kill Pris.  The film gives no good reason as to why she breaks off her attack, so that I can only assume the writers did this to "save" the hero so that he would be alive to face off with Batty a bit later.

Nevertheless, even though Deckard's formidability never reaches the higher regions of megadynamicity, as with Harrison Ford's two most famous heroic roles, I would still regard BLADE RUNNER's demihero-protagonist to be a combative one.  I've stressed in other essays that it's not strictly necessary that the protagonist should win all of his battles in order to qualify the work as one in the combative mode, and Deckard's record in this regard may be one of the least successful ever seen in a mainstream-oriented film.  Nevertheless, the violence does go beyond the limits of the functional mode seen in the novel, and so even Scott's slight ironizing does not remove BLADE RUNNER from the mode of the combative.

TO THE POWER OF XYZ

In MEGA, MESO, MICRO PT. 2 I said:

I'm currently debating with myself as to whether the "meso, meso, micro" distinction applies across the board to all heroes. It's a possibility that it may that it applies principally to (1) naturalistic heroes like Dirty Harry, (2) uncanny heroes like Zorro and Tarzan, and (3) heroes whose marvelous abilities stem entirely from their weapons, as with (as cited here) Batman.

In other words, it may be impossible or just impractical to speak of such distinctions with regards to characters who possess marvelous intrinsic powers.

Later, I decided in THE MANY FACES OF MIGHT that the two marvelous characters cited-- Dream Girl of the comics-feature LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES and Ben Richards of the teleseries THE IMMORTAL-- qualifies for the "exceptional" level of power, my so-called "x-type," even if they might be on the lower level within that sphere of action.

...I wondered if this "lowest division of the highest level" rationale might also solve the conundrum I proposed at the end of MEGA, MESO, MICRO PT. 2. To what extent, I asked at the end of the essay, should one consider a character like Dream Girl-- whose future-forecasting power is essentially strategic in nature-- to be exceptional? One might say that she, too, belongs on that "lowest division" level.

I still affirm this.  Yet there do exist characters who possess marvelous powers or attributes-- whether "intrinsic" or in some added-on form-- who do not belong in this sphere.  Very recently in SHEEP, SANS ELECTRICITY ,my reading of Philip Dick's DO ANDROIDS OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, I determined that the book did not belong in the *megadynamic* sphere, because "in Dick's ANDROIDS, the violence is purely in the functional mode, even if the combatants are dueling with laser tubes."  In contrast, when I review the 1982 BLADE RUNNER I don't doubt that I will judge it to be a combative work, wherein such characters as Rick Deckard, Pris and Roy Batty take on the aura of spectacular violence.

But it's not enough to discriminate between functional and spectacular violence alone, since there also exist cases in which some characters have marvelous  attributes yet manage to remain essentially outside the sphere of direct combat.   In this essay I presented the microdynamic cartoon-character
 "Mighty Max," whose only "power" is possessing a cap that transports him to scenes of trouble.  Thereafter for the most part he either eludes the megadynamic villains or tricks them into defeat.

A better known character from DC Comics is "Ambush Bug," who from the first is meant to be more of a pest than a threat.  Ambush Bug's only power is to teleport, which allows him to dodge the assorted frustrated heroes who attempt-- and sometimes succeed-- in reining him in.  In the Bug's own features, his creators move him even further from the realm of spectacular combat-- not because comedy itself cannot be combative in nature, but because AMBUSH BUG seeks to be the opposite type of comedy.  The same is true of Dick's book: the fact that it is not a combative drama does not mean that drama cannot be combative.

And here's a "worthless" character introduced by the creator of such powerhouses as Superman and the Spectre in ADVENTURE COMICS #323 (1964).

With "Double Header" it's logical to assume that Jerry Siegel was having some fun with the
idea that not every super-power would place its possessor in the lofty position of the Legionnaires.  Thanks to a quick netsearch I've learned that some later writer actually brought back Double Header and put him in the Legion of Substitute Heroes, which in my opinion misses the point.  The Substitute Heroes were a lot like Dream Girl in that their powers could have megadynamic effects under the right circumstances, but that those circumstances were rare compared to the regularity with which the more powerful Legionnaires could achieve such effects. Like Dream Girl the Subs depended more on strategy than on sheer power, even as Dream Girl in ADVENTURE COMICS #370, when she and two other female characters use subterfuge to thwart the villain Mordru.

So these four examples of marvelous powers or attributes are, for various reasons, not "x-types." Those like Ambush Bug and Dick's humdrum android-hunter might be deemed "y-types," in the "fair-to-good" range, while Mighty Max and Double Header belong in the "adequate-to-poor" range of the "z-type."

I could just say that all four of them are subcombative, which they are.  But I want to work out another aspect of the types of dynamicity, which will appear in Part 2.

SHEEP, SANS ELECTRICITY

Having finished my reread of Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS and judged it subcombative in terms of its narrative values, I promptly launched into a reread of Philip K. Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, which like the Heinlein book had been adapted into a film very much in the combative mode.  Going on memories of previous readings I suspected that the Dick book would also prove to be subcombative, and I was correct, but for the opposite reason.  Most of the book avoids much in the way of direct combat, pursuing instead the internal conflict of android hunter Rick Deckard as he agonizes about the interrelationships of humans and their android creations.  Only at the very end does Dick include a "shoot-out" in approved Old West fashion, even though opponents Deckard and his foe, rogue android Roy Batty, are both armed with "laser tubes."  However, Dick's approach to the fight eschews anything like the spectacle one might expect in such a duel.  Thus ANDROIDS possesses the  narrative value of the combative mode-- but not the significant value. It's not enough that there should be two megadynamic forces that appear within the same film.  In my NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE essays, here and here, I stated that "the spectacular mode of violence" was "necessary for the manifestation of combative sublimity."  But in Dick's ANDROIDS, the violence is purely in the functional mode, even if the combatants are dueling with laser tubes.  It's rare to find megadynamic forces handled in a humdrum functional manner, though Dick's motive for so doing may somewhat akin to Heinlein's reason for not winding up STARSHIP TROOPERS with a big colorful battle.  In both cases, however different their themes, the authors sought to make their protagonists seem more "ordinary" despite their marvelous surroundings and/or resources. 

Having made that determination, I ask: what about Philip K. Dick's anxiety-filled, vaguely schizophrenic works has made them so amenable to adaptation into huge, spectacular SF-adventure thrillers?  I also recently reread Dick's short story "Minority Report," and though I have yet to rescreen the Tom Cruise adaptation, it's my recollection that the Cruise film, like Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, amps up the presence of spectacular violence by a factor of 12.  Indeed, the only violence in the short story is one man shooting another, albeit with a ray-weapon.  In future I'll probably reread the source stories for TOTAL RECALL, PAYCHECK and SCREAMERS, and see how the original prose pieces stack up against their cinematic manifestations.

So what makes Dick so attractive?  I don't get the impression that most Dick-derived films, aside from the original TOTAL RECALL, have been box-office winners-- and the first RECALL was also an Ahnold film during the height of his popularity.  BLADE RUNNER lost money on its first screening, though eventually it may have become profitable through the home-rental market, due to its fully deserved status as a "cult film." Dick may also impress filmmakers because of the fecundity of his ideas, or because BLADE RUNNER offers them a much-admired template to follow.  But in the end, the word I used earlier-- "anxiety-filled"-- may hold the key.   Dick himself, who was attempting to focus on the dramatic interactions of his characters, only used violence in a functional way, to punctuate crises in the lives of those characters.  But filmmakers-- who are known for resorting to all manners of spectacle to attract butts to stay in seats-- are able to use the paranoiac scenarios Dick invented, and then simply "add violence as needed."

That said, I want to reiterate, as I said in NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE, that the difference is not one of mere degree; it's one of narrative function.  A work in the subcombative mode, whose violence is merely functional, doesn't just change into a combative one purely through the injection of spectacular violence.  The spectacular violence is not epiphenomenal; it becomes part of the diegesis as soon as it's included, and it changes the nature of the narrative.  This distinction is comparable to a similar observation by Rudolf Otto. He opposes the idea that religious awe was simply different from ordinary fear in "degree."  For him it was clearly a difference "in kind." 

Thus, in NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE PART 2, I compare two monster-movies of roughly the same period: 1957's DEADLY MANTIS and 1961's REPTILICUS.  Both films include giant monsters that get shot at by soldiers, and even suffer attack by flamethrowers.  But the guns and flamethrower in MANTIS are different in "kind" from those in REPTILICUS, because of the way the filmmakers of each respective movie treats these human resources.  In REPTILICUS these naturalistic weapons become spectacular, megadynamic forces, but in MANTIS they remain functional and mundane because MANTIS as a film is less interested in sheer spectacle for its own sake.