It's 1982. "The U.S. has a permanent moonbase, Richard M. Nixon is in the fourth term of the 'imperial Presidency', and an obscure novelist named Philip K. Dick has just died in California. Dick was the author of such well-regarded works as In Milton Lumky Territory and Confessions of a Crap Artist, but late in his life a number of strange manuscripts by him, unpublished, rejected everywhere, get into samizdat circulation, works of science fictional satire and social allegory that mean a great deal to their underground audience. Dick is a hero to them — and now he's dead."

So sets-up science fiction author Michael Bishop, a Nebula Award Winner and nominee for both the Hugo & Philip K Dick Awards, in his 1987 novel, A Secret Ascension; or, Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas. A wonderfully Phildickian-styled alternative history tale where the U.S. achieved victory in Vietnam in 1974 and the impact this had on the continued efforts of the space program to the moon. It's America, just a slightly different Amerika.

Besides the novel's obvious premise homage to PKD, Bishop follows PKD's lead for all it's worth utilizing other Phildickian techniques such as multiple third-person narrative structure, characters experiencing reality breakdowns (or break-throughs, if you prefer), and as the "real" PKD was apt to do in his VALIS cycle, Philip K. Dick features as a major character.

The book opens, as the title laments, with Philip K. Dick dead. Well at least his body is dead after a massive stroke. Dick₂, his ghost, or pre-ghost, soul — whatever — isn't quite so dead... yet. He's got a second shot at life, well after-life, and aims to take it. This time, The Empire Really Never Ended.

Required reading for all PKD fans.


Michael Bishop Resources

• Michael Bishop Homepage
  
  
• Michael Bishop Wikipedia
  
  
• Michael Bishop Bibliography
  
  
• Michael Bishop Interview by Nick Gevers
  
  
• Night Shade Books Discussion: Michael Bishop

Books | Philip K. Dick | PKD | A Scanner Darkly
Michael Bishop | The Secret Ascension | Richard Nixon
Reading | Grouchogandhi

Delivered unto you by Grouchogandhi precisely at 11:20:00 PM