Lies, Inc by Philip K. Dick
In the early 21st century, Earth has become overcrowded and has begun to look toward space as a potential new home. Only one habitable planet has been found — Whale’s Mouth — and it’s said to be a paradise. Rachmael ben Applebaum’s company has developed a spaceship that will take settlers there, but the trip takes 18 years. Just as business is about to begin, it’s undercut by Trails of Hoffman, Inc., a company who has developed a new teleporting technology that will get settlers to Whale’s Mouth in only 15 minutes. The only catch is that it’s a one-way trip — once you leave, you can’t come back. Ben Applebaum, whose company has been financially devastated by this new technology, discovers that the videos of happy settlers have been faked and thinks there’s something nefarious going on at Whale’s Mouth. After all, Trails of Hoffman is run by Germans, and their eugenic ideas have not been forgotten. Ben Applebaum also believes that the United Nations, also led by Germans, might be in league with Trails of Hoffman. With the help of a company called Lies, Inc., ben Applebaum sets out on the 36-year round-trip to investigate and inform the world about what’s happening in Whale’s Mouth.
Lies, Inc. is the most inaccessible PKD work I’ve ever read. It actually starts off well — I loved the premise and couldn’t wait to find out what was going on at Whale’s Mouth. (Except that I still have no idea what was up with the rat in ben Applebaum’s head.) But just as ben Applebaum sets out, things get really weird. Too weird. In the middle of the novel, ben Applebaum gets hit by an LSD-coated dart and most of the rest of the story is one big time-warped acid trip for him and for the reader. There’s talk about paraworlds, hypnagogic experiences, paranoia, bad psychotherapy, and the illusion of reality. None of this is new for a PKD story, but this time the reader has no idea where or when the characters are. The plot jumps around in time and space and is so disorienting that the reader doesn’t know what’s going on. I think perhaps that if I read it a few more times, I could make more sense of it, but I really don’t want to.
Suddenly at nearly the end of Lies, Inc., things get back on track. At that point, I said to myself, “This feels like someone dropped a huge acid sequence into the middle of a novella.” After a few minutes of investigation on the internet, I found an afterword by PKD’s literary executor, Paul Williams, explaining that that’s exactly what happened. Lies, Inc. is an expansion of Philip K. Dick’s novella The Unteleported Man. The huge awful chunk in the middle (you can tell exactly where it begins and ends) is an addition to the novel that was originally rejected (with very good reason) by Don Wollheim at Ace. It gets complicated after that, but basically it was added back in after Dick’s death and patched up a bit by SF author John Sladek. The result is that a really cool novella was turned into something quite unreadable. I can recommend it only to PKD completists who want to know how weird it can get. To others, I suggest reading The Unteleported Man instead.
I listened to Lies, Inc. on audio. Brilliance Audio has just produced several old PKD works, and I’m excited about that! This one was read by Luke Daniels, who is fast becoming one of my favorite readers. His narration actually made the acid trip bearable — it’s probably the only reason I didn’t quit Lies, Inc.
~Kat Hooper
Of all the sci-fi novels by cult author Philip K. Dick, The Unteleported Man — in its later, expanded version known as Lies, Inc. — has the most complicated publishing history. Those who are interested in the minutiae of this nearly 40-year saga are advised to seek out Paul Williams’ afterword in the currently available Vintage edition. In a nutshell, let’s just say that The Unteleported Man first saw the light of day in the December ’64 issue of Fantastic magazine and then in one of those cute little “Ace doubles” in 1966. It wasn’t until 1983 that the expanded edition appeared, incorporating 100 pages (around 30,000 words) of Dick’s manuscript that had been previously rejected by Ace editor Don Wollheim, but with some missing sections still. The Vintage edition now in print reinstates Dick’s original vision of the book… or, at least, as much as he could arrange before his untimely death in 1982. The result is one of Dick’s most challenging books, with those extra 100 pages (pages 73 – 173 in the Vintage edition) having served as a bone of contention among Dick’s fans for years now.
In the novel, we meet a young man with the unusual name of Rachmael ben Applebaum. His family’s interplanetary shipping business has recently been made obsolete by the one-way teleportation device of the outfit whimsically known as Trails of Hoffman, Ltd. With this new device, colonists can make the 18-year journey to the distant planet of Whale’s Mouth in a mere 15 seconds. The only catch: They can’t return the same way. Rachmael, suspicious of just what might be going on on Whale’s Mouth, decides to venture there the old-fashioned way, proposing to make the 18-year trip by himself. But what he finds when he ultimately DOES reach the colony world certainly pulls the interstellar rug out from under him… and the reader! Those 100 pages of Whale’s Mouth material, absent from the original novella, comprise some of Dick’s most way-out speculations on the nature of objective reality; as brilliant as they are hopelessly frustrating, they represent Dick at his most extreme.
Incorporating a very hallucinogenic LSD trip, hypnotically induced “para worlds” AND a time-warping device, this section is somewhat difficult (to put it mildly!) to get a handle on, and can almost be seen as one big psychedelic red herring. Skipping those 100 pages (in other words, jumping from page 73 to 173) and reading just the original short novel may be more satisfying for many readers, but even read this way, some mind-warping dilemmas spring up as regards time paradoxes. I have read Lies, Inc. twice now and continue to be baffled by it. The Byzantine plottings of the two warring factions and the significance of the initial computer snafu on page 3 remain elusive to this reader. I can almost barely put the darn thing together in my head, but please don’t ask me to explain it out loud. Let’s just say that Dick fans who thought the plottings of The Simulacra and The Penultimate Truth to be complex, and those who thought the drug-induced reality bending of The Game-Players of Titan and, especially, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch to be a bit headache inducing, are really going to be in for some tough sledding here!
But perhaps I am being a bit too harsh. Although I do agree with British critic David Pringle when he calls the novel one of Dick’s “least satisfactory books,” and with Dick biographer Lawrence Sutin when he says that the novel is “damn weird,” I still maintain that even a failure of a novel from P.K. Dick is more fascinating and readable than a “success” by many others. Lies, Inc., though ultimately largely incomprehensible, remains eminently readable and entertaining. It exhibits the influence of the then hugely popular spy craze, features an excellent acid trip depiction, contains what might be the first use of the word “psychotronic” (sorry, Michael Weldon!) and foresees the unification of Germany a good 25 years before the actual event. (If only Dick’s prediction of a Federation of Semitic Peoples could come to pass!) And yet… is it a mistake on Dick’s part that on page 85, the “white-oak blonde” is referred to as Gretch (Borbman), and then on page 92, she becomes Sheila Quam? Or is this just another cerebrum-twisting aspect of the acid trip in the para world undergoing a time warp? Take two Excedrin, read the novel and get back to me…
~Sandy Ferber
Your description of an acid trip plopped into the middle of the novel is great — I feel like I know exactly what to expect if I were to ever read this!
AAAAGHHH!!! .. oh sorry.. I thought that red cover design was bleeding off my screen.. but I’m just having a bad trip. ;)
Flashback, Greg?
Kat-Yeah,, they say some of that stuff never leaves your system. ;)
But you know what? You made me kinda want to read this just to see where the LSD kicks-in. ;)
All copies of this book should come with two Excedrin….
Or, better yet, a hit of LSD.
I picked this book up (Lies Inc version) from the local library on CD. As luck would have it, the 1st 2 discs were pretty scratched up. Still, I’ve really been liking his works, so I decided to trudge through it. The scratches clear up as the LSD scene comes in, so I spent the next 2 discs very confused. Now that I’m toward the end, I’m piecing it back together, though I doubt I’ll attempt it again.
I haven’t read all of PKD’s novels, but of those I have read, this is the worst, which is really disappointing because it seemed so promising at the beginning.
Book started OK, but it fell apart.
Instead of riding in his ship he suddenly opts for the teleporter, and for reasons that were not in the plot. Then he gets drugged and the whole thing just falls about. In a nutshell, the reader has to hold all of the second half of the book in separate pieces until the end… and then guess at how to put the pieces together. And they don’t fit.
BTW, whatever happened to Abba the rat?
There is too much excellent, good, and passable science fiction in the world to waste your time with this book.
Agreed, Richard K.! Which is why our motto is “Life’s Too Short to Read Bad Books!”
Yep, I’ve found it to be very confusing. I got to your review because before page 100 I’m totally lost. I’ve read close to a dozen PKD novels and I’d agree that this one is the least accessible, although there’s a few where I’ve been confused.
Confusion is certainly a common response, Kendra!
PKD is guy that introduced matrix/simualcrum and question of counciosness in SF long before everybody.
Before that most authors were occupied by rockets , phisycs of space or robotic laws. This is just boring to everybody who knows that only and greatest enigma is who are we.
So i dont believe that any PKD boook can be losing of time.
But i admit i will read nevertheless read shorter version..
“But i admit i will read nevertheless read shorter version..”
Funny, monsterfromid!
I agree that PKD was more interesting than most of his contemporaries. I think we can all agree that Lies, Inc is not a good place for newbies to start with PKD!
I am shocked –shocked, I tell you — to discover that Dick incorporated drug use into one of his novels!
Marion, for a woman, you do a VERY good Claude Rains impersonation….
[Bats eyelashes] Why, *thank* you, sir!
Just the other day, I was trying to remember which PKD books I haven’t read. Your review reminded me that I haven’t read this one, and exactly why. It’s weird and confusing even by comparison to his other work!
Jana, “weird and confusing” is putting it mildly….
The real question is, is this book more tripped-out than the VALIS trilogy or not? I’m saving them for the end of this year, having read and been profoundly moved by VALIS last year.
Couldn’t say, Stuart…I’ve yet to read that final trilogy, as I still have four or five of his other books still unread. I will read that intimidating trilogy last. Looking forward to your comments on it….
I am reading this book, sometimes sober sometimes not. When the lsd dart hits him and I failed to follow through with the description of the soldier and weird support group Rachmael finds himself afterwards, I just thought I missed something and reread starting from Freya’s encounter with Al. I have now done this twice and still have no fucking clue why Rachmael didn’t take the Omphalos out or if he is on Whale’s Mouth or what the hell happens to Matson or Abba.. this is very frustrating especially because the first part of the book got me hooked. Can anyone clearly explain what exactly the Germans are doing to people once they pass through the telpors?
Hi Miguel, unfortunately I have no idea what was going on either and I don’t want to try again. I suggest dropping some acid and giving it a re-read. Let us know if that helps. :)
As far as I can tell it’s a plot by trails of Hoffman to create a massive army on newcolonised land, and to then transport the army back and otherthrow the UN.
Like others have said it started off so well, with some brilliant ideas.
I’ve read this book twice in a week to try to understand it, what’s wrong with me?
A shame it’s so inaccessible. I know that The Man In The High Castle was already pretty inaccessible to me, although a lot of people loved it.
“The Man in the High Castle” was a piece of cake compared to this one, Evelina!
Great premise for a story, where have the colonists been sent? is it all fake? Ben goes to investigate.
Until god knows WTF is going on. Ben doesn’t fly he takes the telephor. No explanation, the paraworld bull literally gave me a headache and nausea to read and all for a final section that then read normally.
Turns out Ben is back in the Omphalos and goodbye paraworld oddness.
There should be a foreword warning people that the middle section contains pages of drivel that serve only to enrage, nauseate and confuse the reader. I have loved every PKD book iv read but this one was a definitive faeces baguette with no incredibly cool Ubik ending to fight through to reach.
Don’t bother.
It sounds like we are all in agreement!
All the comments I’ve read here are true. This is a most difficult read. I would like to point out a detail that some readers may have missed.
Rachmael ben Applebaum employs a time-warping device in the middle of the book. He isn’t given the device until the end of the book. The authors deliberately edited the book to be as disjointed in time as the characters experienced, drawing the reader into the confusion.
Judging from the comments, I’d say they succeeded in that.
Yeah, so here am I, on chapter twelve, trying to find out if there’s any point continuing, without inadvertently reading a spoiler if there is.
Hm.
Well, I’ve been reading PKD since the early 70s – when the guy was still alive! I bought A Scanner Darkly when it was recent and it blew my mind. Never did finish Valis. The best you can say about Valis is it’s an opportunity for voyeurism.
Lies, inc started out as fascinating for me, because having just reaf Primo Levi’s Holocaust works (and prior to that, Hannah Arendt), looking through the PKD archive for something I hadn’t read, the initial subject matter seemed uncanny.
Trails of Hoffman is an obvious LSD reference. Just sayin’.
I think I probably tried to read Scanner, back in the day, on acid; that that was the one where I found out the letters kept moving about and falling off the page. Black hash was much more satisfying.
I think I’m gonna give up on Lies, now. I’ve never been much interested in posthumous stuff anyway. Great description of an acid trip, though! Shame about referring to it as Lysergic Acid though; almost as annoying to me as authors who call ‘magazines’ ‘clips’.