The Game-Players Of Titan
(1963)
The quality and / or success of a Philip K Dick novel could
well be measured in how many of its ideas have worked their way into popular
culture, or have simply been stolen by other writers. That is especially true
for TV (the more I read, the more is see what a PKD fan Stephen Moffat must
be). The Game-Players Of Titan is
interesting in that it now feels like a development in progress that Dick
himself pilfered from later in his career.
Structurally it bares some resemblance to earlier works, in
particular Vulcan’s Hammer in that a
vast, sinister plot is slowly revealed in fairly pedestrian, human terms. As
ever with Dick’s work, these events happen to seemingly normal people (though
with severe paranoiac issues, naturally) but the looser style of his later
years has not yet developed. The narrative is held pretty tight throughout, bar
later scenes that do resemble the unsettling, beyond reality experiences
encountered by characters in stories like A
Scanner Darkly or even VALIS, but
they are merely hints. It is in this sense that it works as an interesting
prelude to his later, greater work.
The plot itself revolves around a decimated
post-intergalactic war torn Earth, in which certain parts of society play The
Game, a board game of sorts that requires players to bluff one another. The
stakes, that we witness, are large stretches of a derelict America , now
overseen by the victorious, but oddly unobtrusive Titan race. Sounds a little
B-Movie esqe, admittedly, but a lot of PKD stories do, when laid out. This idea
of bluffing is played out nicely across the narrative as various sci-fi traits
- people with telepathic and pre cognitive skills and an alien race able to
take human form – are added to the mix, drawing out the typically Dickensian
paranoia and mistrust centrally to many of his plots.
The Pre-cogs in particular tie this book closely to the
superior Ubik released six years
later. In that, various combinations of PSI people are used to a similarly
disconcerting effect and the general sense of a world not seeming to be exactly
what it is – as with almost every PKD book – is completely evident. The only
real difference here is that the central idea is not as complete as something
like Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?.
The plotting is sharper, with more distinct beginning, middle and end sections
but it loses some of the wild abandon of later works. So, whilst being
interesting in its own right, it also feels transitionary.
The most striking images from the book are of the empty
American landscapes. Very much a book of The Cold War, part of the narrative
has it that the ‘Red Chinese’ released a biological agent that rendered the
majority of Earth’s population sterile, meaning it only holds about 2 million
people in total. So we get lots of scenes of characters flying over empty
cities and states, whilst trading Salt Lake City
for Las Vegas
in The Game like they were bottle caps. It reminded me most of the affective
scenes from 28 Days / Weeks Later of
a disserted London .
It is very different from other PKD works, which rely on a claustrophobia of
space or technology.
It’s odd to say it, but perhaps the only problem with The Game-Players Of Titan is that it
isn’t crazy enough. Or perhaps not human enough. The central conceit doesn’t
quite tilt your perspective of the world the way his best works do. But, with
all the hallmarks of a typical PKD book, and his easily flowing style intact,
it is engaging all the same and is recommended to fans, though not a classic;
more a sign of things to come.
Dean Freeman
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