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Book Review: Martian Time-Slip by Philip K Dick

Martian Time-Slip 

By Philip K Dick


Published Year: 1999

Page Count: 246 pages 

Medium Used: Paperback 

Genre: Mental Illness, Schizophrenia, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mars, Space Opera, 2024-read. 

Rating : 5/5 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳



I have enjoyed reading this story .. it is tense and heart pounding. It involves time travel, some ancient God magic, memory altering reality and some amazing silly robotic tutoring! 


Reading Philip K Dick's books gives me a warm, smug feeling. He tells a lot while seemingly telling little. Like his other books, this one doesn't disappoint. He transported me into his reality of planet Mars with its strange native, aboriginal inhabitants, migrants from Earth and children (mostly normal,some anomalous) born on the planet. Seeing the world through his eyes and reading what it means is an absolutely amazing experience. 


How powerful and strong is the characterization of Arnie Kott, the man who plays the negative shaded villain. His stream of consciousness has held me in rapture and I couldn't put the book down - especially, the last few pages. The whole plot has a dreamy quality to it. A very young boy, autistic and with unique abilities to morph time - - can take a plunge into the past or the future and draw others along with him, for the ride. He can peer into the future/past and see/control it according to his most persistent and prominent thoughts/feelings which are bleak and dreary, dark. 


Humans have colonized Mars and there are many settlements established there. Children who are born with physical or mental defects are sheltered at a rehab facility in New Israel community. One of the inmates is a young autistic kid Manfred Steiner. He has a weird ability to pull/suck others around him into his reality and make them see his visions/thoughts. He is never still on his feet, doesn't talk a bit, doesn't look at anyone at all and has a lot of strage quirks. Into his world, a former Earth Schizophrenic, Jack Boheln enters on the commission of a business man Arnie Kott. Arnie wants to employ the kid's time altering/predicting capability and use it to make a profit. Everything goes wrong for the business man when he steps into his past, through Manfred's psychosis,  that he so desperately wants to alter. All his experiences are sent into a whirl and he can't recognize what has happened in that past and what is changing now. He couldn't change his reality but emerges out of this experience, a changed man.


I didn't see the end coming. There are many morals and pieces of wisdom the characters learn towards the end. I love this book which expostulated to me, in detail, the many struggles and troublesome experiences of active Schizophrenics! 


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