Review of Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick

There are a few genre defining science fiction films out there, and one is The Matrix. About a man unknowingly living in a virtual world, one day he has the curtain pulled back to reveal the dark reality beyond. It is the poster child for brain-in-a-vat stories. The film is likewise candy for paranoids and conspiracy theorists everywhere. It's true man, it's true! And was there any more paranoid a writer in science fiction history than Philip K. Dick? Time Out of Joint (1956) says 'no'.

Time Out of Joint is the story of Ragle Gumm (brilliant name). Gumm makes a living in the most extraordinary way: he plays the lottery, guessing where a green alien will appear next, and does so with extraordinary success. He lives in a classic 50s American suburb and is friends with the neighbors around him. Considering his life dull and boring, however, Gumm starts exploring ways of making it interesting, starting with attempting an affair with a neighbor's wife. The attempt leads him to some interesting variations in reality—glitches in the matrix as it were. Gumm eventually notices enough of the variations to begin pushing beyond, to learn the whys. In doing so discovers why he is so successful at his job.

Time Out of Joint has a nice arc. Dick begins in 1950s Americana, and bit by bit, strangeness by strangeness, takes the reader to a bizarro Cold War future. The degree of paranoia Gumm expresses while taken on this arc is discomforting. There are echoes of our contemporary age and its dearth of influencers and other social media personalities who believe the world revolves around them, reality malleable in suiting their victimhoods. Time Out of Joint being fiction, however, Dick guides this self-centered tale through a complementary setting.

Looking at Dick's oeuvre, there is something to be said about the dynamic, poor quality of prose. But in Time Out of Joint he seems to have found a groove. The prose will not set the world on fire, but it is at least consistent, and, if I'm being perfectly honest, helps create one of the better pieces of PKD fiction I have read technique-wise. Most readers familiar with Dick shorten their expectations for prose when encountering a new book, which leads to a situation wherein this book may have the chance of, dare I say it, impressing.

One of the challenges of the novel is it's ending. Quite frankly, it resolves itself. It reveals itself to be just escapist fiction. Had Dick left matters equivocal, I can't help but feel the story would have transcended itself, to be commentary on the Cold War, or to be an exploration of perception and reality—to potentially be a brain-in-a-vat or to be something else entirely. But no, self-contained it is. This is not a sin. The novel is just not as effective as it could have been.

In the end, Time Out of Joint may be the quintessential Philip K. Dick book. There are other books in his oeuvre which are better, perhaps more singular in imagination or more consistent in delivery, but this one may be the archetype. Escalating nicely from 1950s Americana into... well, that is for the reader to discover, Dick proves that for as small as the brain is, it can have a lot of conceptions about the ultimate reality of reality. The book's ending has a lot of uncapitalized potential, but the journey there is good. All in all, this is one of Dick's better novels—at least of the dozen+ I've read.