Customer Reviews

Game-players of Titan

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book has it all: the usual PKD's theme about the nature of reality and the human perception of it and the fragility of the human mind, plot twists that keep you from putting the book down, interesting characters and character interaction -everything that shuold be in a great book can be found in "The Game-Players of Titan." If you are new to PKD, I suggest you start with this book or "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich." Both are must-reads.

I'm having a hard time writing about Game-Players of Titan, and I think I've finally figured out why. It's quite a good PKD novel, but it veers off in so many directions it's hard to get a grip on.

In his best stuff, PKD's focus can be truly awesome. Even throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, his stories move. Either everyone's racing toward the same goal, or everyone's under the influence of the same drug, or the actions of one person will save the world or end it - something. What we've got here are good pieces of four or five different novels, and they don't really gel into one story until about two-thirds of the way through. Once that happens, the novel improves real quick, but the ability to build a story from widely separated elements is a difficult trick and one that PKD didn't master until a little later in his career.

Granted, the same group of people remains more or less intact throughout, which helps the cohesion a lot. They are all California landowners on an Earth where some wartime disaster has depleted human fertility. They spend their time playing a game imported from the alien species native to Titan, which forces losers to trade spouses and land holdings. Fine, but how are you supposed to identify with the group's struggle when the struggle keeps changing?

Story Number One is a thriller in which the group members try to stave off a hostile takeover from an East Coast conglomerate. Story Number Two is a murder mystery in which they all realize that they have no memories of the time at which the murder took place. Story Number Three is a conspiracy fantasy in which they confront a cabal of Homo Superior out to destroy them. Story Number Four is a paranoid nightmare in which they must return to their game, this time against the Titans, for the Earth itself. Game-Players of Titan is less a science fiction novel than a 200-page science fiction library.

Nevertheless, despite the patchwork, Game-Players of Titan is a greater piece than other PKD novels with similar flaws. What saves it this time out is the author's attention to fleshing out his characters. It's not perfect, but by the time the story is over the reader can recognize most of the members of the original character grouping just by their actions and manner of speaking - that's how you can successfully identify with them, not through the plot. The original group consists of about eight characters, and five or so of them are fully three-dimensional - an excellent batting average, and one which PKD would improve upon later.

What's more, underneath all of the plot machinations is a genuinely inspiring story about a man contemplating suicide who recovers his love of life through meaningful work and a good relationship with his wife. Pete Garden is an irritating whiner on the first page, a charismatic leader on the last, and that's a dramatic story well worth anyone's time. You've got to dig for it, though.

So Game-Players of Titan is really a cheer for the guy who struggles unsuccessfully and comes close to despair, but goes out and fights again because his friends help him. Regular readers of PKD's work will recognize this theme as the same dealt with so successfully in classics like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Now Wait for Last Year. Once again, the author proves that he's at least as much interested in love as he is in paranoia and the nature of reality, his better-known concerns.

Benshlomo says, Here's to the ones who don't stop when things get tough.

I cannot claim to know much about Philip K. Dick as this is, thus far, the only one of his novels I have read. But based on a reading of The Game-Players of Titan, it will not be the last. The premise of the inhabitants of Earth playing the game, Bluff, for spouses and land is wonderful and the story only grows weirder and more original with each passing chapter. The only small quibble is the ending is somewhat anti-climatic after the strongly built, witty, creatively heightened build up but this book is about the journey and one could have no better guide than the author for this unique trip.

In criticial estimation, The Game Players of Titan suffers by comparison with Dick's masterpieces The Man in the High Castle, Martian Time-Slip, and Dr. Bloodmoney, also written in the early 1960s, because it does not have their serious themes or strong sociological dimension. Nevertheless, this book partakes of the brilliance of the overall concept that runs through Dick's work in this period. What's more, it is a very funny novel. The vugs, whose natural form is that of amorphous, gelatinous blobs, have occupied Earth after winning a war in which humanity nearly managed to sterilize itself through radiation exposure. Vugs have the capability of controlling humans' minds or simulating their form, behavior, and memories, often taking names such as U. S. Cummings and E. B. Black. The plot revolves around the game of Bluff, which is somewhat akin to Monopoly, which is used to decide mates and property rights. The plot culminates with an interspecies game of Bluff between the humans and vugs, who have the advantage of psychokinetic powers, which they use to change the values of the cards as they play. There are mind-altering drugs, psychosis, talking cars, and crazy humor. In short, a feast for the Dick fan.

It appears that there is consensus on this Amazon forum -- and in most other forums -- that TGPoT doesn't fall within the realm of PKD's greatest works. But it's still a worthwhile read for the following reasons...
1) PDK employs some tricks, that he's finely honed, to make the reader feel as disconnected from reality as the characters are. He is so good at this that I actually felt off balance at times -- it's as if he were able to translate his mental illness, through the main character, right onto the pages of this book
2) In addition to his mental illness, PKD also instills the book's protagonist, Pete Garden, with the other troubles from which PKD suffered: alcohol and drug dependency and a patheticaly poor ability to manage relationships. I believe the very personal nature of PKD's experiences with the problems of the main character are what make the book so well paced and delivered
3) More than any other Sci-Fi writer, PKD is willing to have his soul reflected onto every page he writes; and true to his nature, in TGPoT, PKD provides us with yet another window into his very distrubed and talented mind -- for me, this title slams home the fact that PKD is truly the Van Gogh of Sci-Fi
4) In TGPoT, PKD empowers his characters with novel and unique precognitive and telekenetic powers that enables him drive the pace of the book.

I took away 1 star because...
1) True to the pulp nature of his writing style, you can literally feel PKD furiously typing to get to the end of the book so that he can, in a mad rush, sprint to his publisher to, just under the wire, fling the manuscript onto his harried publishers desk, then with a quick but poorly executed pivot, tear away with his ridiculously small check, only to barely make the close of his bank in a hastening effort to convert it to cash, so that he can jump in his old peice of $%&^ car and speed to the nearest bar to plunge into a bottle of rot gut and eventually drink and whore away his money, so that he is forced to start the cycle all over again with his next flash of brilliance
2) The game itself is probably the most uninspired concept I have seen PKD put to page. He does though, use it as an effective tool for railing against capitalism (another common theme of PKD's works).

Net/net: if you like sci-fi, read it!

The Earth has been taken over by the Vugs and humanity is reduced to gambling for money, property, and marriages. Players who are good at the Game (which is some wierd combination of poker and monopoly) get the chance to reproduce and live in the lap of luxury. The story follows the usual PKD lines (if the word usual can ever truly be applied to him!). We have paranoia, astral teleportation, strange aliens, pre-cogs -trying to cheat in the Game- and a whole lot of sarcastic humour.

There are also the usual PKD failings, lack of characterization and long bits of non-plot-related ramblings. Of course, anyone who is familiar with his work will know that these are not reasons to avoid the book. He more than makes up for any deficiency by sheer genius and imagination.

But the main reason to read this book comes toward the end (so I won't spoil it by telling you all about it) where you, the reader, can see how the vugs view the humans. I think this is the best piece of Dick's writing that I have ever read. These few pages are worth the book's price alone.

This is early PKD, and I recommend it to any fans out there. It is a fast read, and it gives you plenty to think about. If you are new to this brilliant author, I would start somewhere else, though. Perhaps with some of his more accessible works, like Ubik or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

This review is for people that know P.K.D. It's not about the plot ,because plotwize ,it's typical; Paranoid protagonist ,reality-distorting drugs ,telepaths ,pre-cogs ,unexpected plot-twists ,and the usual unusual originality.

What makes this book stand out ,EVEN in P.K.D's portfolio is the excellent balance: The protagonist is very well-drawn ,as well as his surroundings in a paranoid-enaugh way yet somehow the book is NOT too dark and gloom. It's a trait that I cannot explain easily. But if you've read more than one P.K.D book ,you know what i'm reffering to.

Earth ,described through the subjective reality of the protagonist ,is in a bad shape ,yet ,in all ,the FEEL is'nt pessimist. In that aspect ,the book reminds me of "our friends from frolix 8". I think you'll agree with me ,that when finishing a P.K.D book ,you can't really put the finger on what made it SO good ,in this case ,I think Have come close ,not to what makes it Excellent in itself ,but to what makes it better than others. If it was possible ,i'd give it 10 stars.

There are certainly seven, and maybe a dozen, books that have rightfully made PKD's reputation (THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, MARTIAN TIME-SLIP, THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, UBIK, A SCANNER DARKLY, VALIS, and to a slightly lesser extent, EYE IN THE SKY, TIME OUT OF JOINT, CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST, DR. BLOODMONEY, and THE TRANSMIGRATION OF TIMOTHY ARCHER). But many of the others are nearly as fine. This is one of those, a wild, out-of-control, often very funny exercise in paranoia that reads like a warm-up for THE THREE STIGMATA. And it has a moment near the end -- when our hero sees our planet from the enemy alien's point of view -- which is perhaps the clearest and most powerful statement of one of Dick's central themes, the subjective nature of perception (and hence reality). Having your world-view challenged has seldom been so much fun.

Philip K. Dick's 10th novel, "The Game-Players of Titan," was originally released in 1963 as an Ace paperback (F-251, for all the collectors out there), with a cover price of a whopping 40 cents. His follow-up to the Hugo Award-winning "The Man in the High Castle," it was one of six novels that Phil saw published from 1962-'64, during one of the most sustained and brilliant creative bursts in sci-fi history. Like so many of the author's works, the action in "Game-Players" transpires on a futuristic Earth (around the year 2225, if I read between the lines correctly) that has been laid waste by war and hard radiation. Here, it has been 130 years since mankind fought the vugs of the Saturnian moon Titan to a stalemate, and now an uneasy peace of sorts reigns, while the fortunate landowners of the depleted, sterile society play a game called Bluff and wager gigantic chunks of real estate at the table. When we first meet the book's central character, Pete Garden, a suicidal, 150-year-old landowner, he is sorely upset due to his recent loss of Berkeley at that night's game...not to mention the lose of his 18th wife! And Pete's lot is soon to get a lot worse, when the newest member of his playing group is abruptly murdered, Pete's memory is blanked out, and suspicion falls squarely upon him. And that murder rap just opens up an ever-widening labyrinth of political intrigue and escalating paranoia for the poor, befuddled character.

I must say, this is one of the wildest, most imaginative, most way-out Dickian jaunts that I have ever encountered...perhaps too much so, for its own good. The book is filled with all kinds of interesting touches, from talking cars, tea kettles and bathroom cabinets to the fascinating sequence in which a telepath examines the mind of a "pre-cog." Many of Phil's pet interests, such as opera, cigars and divorce (Phil would ultimately marry five times) are given an airing, and there is much humor to be had, as well. For example, the car that Joe Schilling, Pete's best friend (a bearded manager of a classical music store, as Phil had been in the early '50s, and a clear stand-in here for the author), drives, is a riot, responding to its owner's commands with comments such as "Up yours." The book has a typically large cast (47 named characters, including the 16 in Pete's Pretty Blue Fox game-playing group); some human, some vugs, and many with ESP-type abilities. Those vugs, by the way, are silicon based, Phil here beating "Star Trek"'s Horta to the silicic punch by a good four years! Typical for a Dick novel, the book is compulsively readable and brimming with ideas. And as for Dick's favorite theme, that of the elusiveness of objective reality, boy, does this novel deliver in spades, and then some! And that is part of the problem.

In this book--where the vugs are capable of mind control, and many characters lie to one another, and red herrings abound, and in which Pete Garden takes so many pills with his booze that he has psychotic episodes--it really is impossible to tell what's what. To make matters even more confusing, the vugs are capable of appearing human and some can even teleport Earth folk instantaneously to Titan or to some in-between limbo state. In short, readers will be hard put to ever know what is real, who is what, where we are or whom we can trust. It is Dick at his most paranoid and extreme, and although it does make for fun reading, I'm not sure that the whole thing hangs together logically, or whether the motivations of several characters are consistent. Heck, this is a murder mystery in which the identity of the killer is never even revealed (!) ,and in truth, as the novel progresses, that issue becomes increasingly unimportant. I was ultimately left unsure, by the book's conclusion, if several characters were actual vugs or merely humans being controlled by vugs. Those vugs, by the way, are never adequately described by Phil; he just tells us that they are "amorphous" and have pseudopods. Six feet tall or six inches? Who knows? And although Dick's novel ends happily, for the most part, the author seems unable to resist throwing in some downbeat ambiguity in the final pages. This is clearly a book that could have seen a sequel, a common temptation for sci-fi writers and one that Phil, amazingly, never succumbed to. In all, a highly readable and entertaining novel from Dick's middle period, if a bewildering one.

Though not Philip K. Dick's most ambitious or meaningful novel, The Game-Players of Titan is one of his best reads. It has one of Dick's most unusual and vividly imagined futures, and his writing is so strong that he pulls us in immediately; despite - or perhaps because of - the strangeness, we become deeply engaged and remain so until the very end. There is a wealth of suspense and twists; we truly never know what comes next and keep reading feverishly to find out. Beneath the science fiction trappings and general quirkiness, the perceptive will see that Dick had deep insight into human nature; his presentation and analysis of gambling's appeal is apt and affecting. The novel also delves more deeply into social criticism usually, critiquing capitalism and the marriage institution particularly. It thus has much to provoke thought in addition to being an entertaining whirlwind. In addition, the scene showing humanity from Titan's point of view is one of Dick's most brilliant - deeply philosophical and highly moving. Perhaps Dick's most underrated work, this is a must read for anyone even remotely interested in him.