P.K. Dick’s The Zap Gun
So, let’s just put this out there, I don’t enjoy reading Dick’s stories. After a lifetime of Twilight Zone and good stories his stories typically just anger me. I know, he was an important voice and did important things for sci-fi, but everything of his that I read was just… well… crap. He often insists on using a ton of dialogue, but never bothers to develop separate voices, so it’s like listening to carbon copies talk. Then there’s the BIG TWIST, which, for me, has almost no intellectual or emotional impact at all, so it leaves me wondering why bother.
The flipside is that I think it’s good to read things for their critical value, even if you don’t like them, even if they’re demonstrably bad. Like Lord of the Flies. As a story it’s terrible, as a depiction of the British world view, and the view of at least some of its citizens, it’s priceless.
So I picked this up at the library. It’s really rather enjoyable, I’m happy to say, both as a story and as a captured collection of viewpoints. Don’t read the back cover though, whomever wrote that must have just skimmed the book. The essential crux of the story is that of the Soviet/USA cold war dragging on so long that it’s become a culture unto itself, with weapon designers being the new fashion moguls. It’s a tough story to write, and at times that certainly shows, but worth reading.
Comparing this to the handful of short stories and other books of his that I’ve read, I think that what causes me to so strongly dislike his stories, typically, is because he was incredibly lazy. He makes wild leaps with no foundation, and instead of demonstrating what he wants to show you, he has a pair of clones describe it to each other. This book manages to largely avoid that, though sometimes just barely.
Go, read it, or tell me why I’m wrong.