phillipKD2

Strange World...2

Also intent on discovering Taverner's identity is policeman Buckman. Again, Buckman is not a typical hero. Where we expect perfect cardboard cut out virtuous SF heroes in other SF novels, Buckman as deeply flawed as Taverner. Buckman has been compromised by his wife, who is not only a drug user but in an incestuous relationship with him! To add to the unconventional nature of this relationship, Alys is also a lesbian.

Things get even queerer when a police search of a dilapidated building 'uncovers' a gay couple in bed. One member of the couple is a young boy (but of legal age-13!) and the other an older man. While the police find this distasteful the characters stand up to the policeman's homophobia. Considering that the book was written in 1960 this is a very forward looking passage. Conventional science fiction would have either cut this passage out all together or the characters would have been clearly classed as deviant and criminal. But Dick has not only made these characters a natural part of his story but has also made them stand up for themselves. Quite an impressive feat for fiction written in the 1960s.

"My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?'"
Philip K Dick

Equally unconventional is the Ending to Flow my Tears. A conventional ending to a science fiction novel would be a "hardware-style" ending. This would involve a space ship speeding across the galaxy, something being destroyed or a fight to the death between characters. This book, instead, ends with something low key but in many ways just as dramatic as a space race, a fight, or an explosion. Buckman, grieving for the death of his wife, lands his skycar at a petrol station (would skycars use petrol?) and sees a black man standing by himself. Buckman makes a non-verbal attempt to communicate with the man at the petrol pump, then gets into his car and heads back into the sky. Changing his mind he returns to the petrol station, goes up to the man and hugs him. In pre-civil rights America it would have been astonishing, if not unthinkable, to witness two total strangers, a white man and a black, embracing - particularly two men.

It is scenes like the above that have made Dick one of the few novelists who did boldly go where SF writers have not gone before. Instead of journeying into deep space to find other worlds, or yet another lost space ship, Dick turned his vision inward to discover the all to real human condition. By doing so Dick placed the word 'human' squarely back into the science fiction equation. Dick reminds us that science fiction is nothing without the human element.

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