Galactic Pot-Healer (Paperback)

by Philip K. Dick (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
What could an omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent entity want with a humble pot-healer? Or with the dozens of other odd creatures it has lured to Plowman's Planet? And if the Glimmung is a god, are its ends positive or malign? Combining quixotic adventure, spine-chilling horror, and deliriously paranoid theology, Galactic Pot-Healer is a uniquely Dickian voyage to alternate worlds of the imagination.

From the Inside Flap
What could an omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent entity want with a humble pot-healer? Or with the dozens of other odd creatures it has lured to Plowman's Planet? And if the Glimmung is a god, are its ends positive or malign? Combining quixotic adventure, spine-chilling horror, and deliriously paranoid theology, Galactic Pot-Healer is a uniquely Dickian voyage to alternate worlds of the imagination.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (May 31, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679752978
• ISBN-13: 978-0679752974
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #356,483 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No glue required, November 10, 2000

By	Philip Challinor (London England) - See all my reviews

According to the author's biographer, Laurence Sutin, Dick didn't much care for this book. I can't imagine why, except that in his more determinedly resolute moments he may have considered the ending too patly pessimistic. I agree with Sutin's rating: Pot-Healer is a gem. Rarely for Dick, it has only a single point-of-view character, the pot-healer (not mender), stranded in a Stalinist USA of the 2040s, who is somewhat circuitously approached by the Glimmung - a possibly divine, certainly whimsical entity of faraway Plowman's Planet. The Glimmung is putting together a collaborative enterprise of life-forms from around the galaxy in order to raise a sunken cathedral, and along the way our hero meets with some spectacular inconveniences, including his own corpse and a book in which his future (or one of them) is inscribed (possibly), occasionally in language he can understand. This is one of Dick's funniest and most enjoyable books, putting a light touch to many of his favourite issues. It's as packed with energy and invention as any of his more famous works and, perhaps because of the single point of view, feels more focused and coherent than many - and this in spite of the fact that its epic plot and impressive special effects all take place within the space of less than a hundred and eighty pages.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Joe and the Glimmung, March 22, 2001

By	Richard Behrens (Lambertville, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Philip K. Dick wrote over forty novels, most of them science fiction. Often churning out books with the expectation that the paperback editions would have the shelf life of lettuce and then vanish from the earth never to be read again, he often repeated himself and took huge leaps of absurdity, sometimes for the sake of laughter, sometimes to work himself out of a painted plot corner. Galatic Pot-Healer is one of his lesser novels, a fast read and almost comic book in its imagery and characters. It recycles some names and concepts from earlier works (his children's story "Nick and the Glimmung" comes to mind) and contains some unexplained absurdities, but it shines out from his other lesser works with its deep use of Gnostic theology and metaphysical ideas couched in science fiction narrative.

The Glimmung is a Jabba-The-Hut-like creature, weighing 40,000 pounds, living on a remote planet but being capable of physical projecting himself by unknown means to other planets where he appears to a select group of humans sometimes in the form of an albatross, sometimes in the form of a hoop of fire and a hoop of water intersected with a paisley carpet and a teenage girl's face floating in the middle. This is clearly a comic composite of Zeus and Jehovah with a heavy dash of Judeo-Christian mysticism thrown into the mix. The Glimmung bundles up his small group of artisans from Earth (including Joe Fernwright, the Pot Healer of the title who can restore antique ceremaics) to come to his home planet to raise the ruins of the ancient temple of the Fog-Things, known as Heldscala, from the ocean floor to restore the ancient way and bring peace back to the planet.

The planet itself is controlled by the Kalends, insect-like wraiths who have written a book in changing script that is a pre-recorded history of the planet. The history (the text of the book) keeps changing as people take different courses of action. As soon as Joe reaches the planet, he gets a copy of the book of the Kalends, and reads that the Glimmung will fail in his raising of the temple and that joe himself will take a course of action that will lead to the Glimmung's death.

Much of the novel has the feel of a comic book, but the gnosticism that was so dear to Philip K. Dick shines through. The Glimmung appears in different form to different people and his raising of the temple from the ocean depths directly reflects the artisans (pot healer, engineers, psychokineticists) attempts to actualize the depleted talent of their own lives. The Glimmung tells Joe early on, "There is no life too small." Their Jabba-the-Hut-like God has entered their lives to restore them to themselves. The novel spirals towards a whacked out confrontation with the Black Glimmung who stirs from the ocean depths and the artisans fight their nemesis by mering their minds with that of the Glimmung.

Philip K. Dick was just years away from the writing of his most gnostic works (Valis, Divine Invasions, etc.) and here we can see a science fiction pot boiler having loads of fun with religion, mysticism, metaphysics and gnostic theology. A strange hybrid. An odd novel. But also a fun and quick read.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Author as 40-Ton Alien, September 11, 2001

By	benshlomo "benshlomo" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

When a man finds a job offer floating in his toilet, he's either desperate or in a Philip K. Dick novel. Joe Fernwright, the title character in this novel, is, of course, both.

We might consider it odd that a job offer in a place like that should lead Joe Fernwright to his life's purpose, but this is, after all, PKD's world; the job offer does exactly that. At the start of his story, Fernwright has little else to hold onto - his ex-wife thinks he's a joke and tells him so as often as possible, the craft of ceramic repair that he loves is useless in his plastic age, his government gives him no privacy even in dreams. It's part of PKD's brilliance to give us such a character - we believe that Joe Fernwright would accept the offer in his bathroom tank, just on the off-chance that it might restore his dignity and give his life some meaning.

The search for meaning is not an uncommon theme for PKD, but "Galactic Pot-Healer" is different in the extent to which Joe Fernwright's search is conducted alone. There's community in it, to be sure; on the other hand, Fernwright begins and ends the book in isolation, an unusual state for PKD characters. It's an important one, though, because although his isolation at the end of the book saddens him, he is content.

It would be unfair to suggest that he's content with his isolation because every other character in the story drives him crazy, but any reader might be excused for saying so. Most of these beings, human and non-human alike, change their attitudes from paragraph to paragraph for no discernable reason, which can get dizzying real quick. For instance, Joe has a love interest, Mali. Within the space of ten pages, she introduces herself to Joe with flattering interest, turns completely cold at a remark from him that she finds insulting, warms up again within minutes of his approach, humiliates him in front of a large group of people, and then takes him to bed. She never can seem to figure out how she feels about him, but it scarcely matters - neither can anyone else.

And if Mali is a bundle of neuroses, then Glimmung, the being who provided that toilet-tank job offer, is completely certifiable. Is it near-omnipotent or enfeebled? Calm and generous, or peevish and subject to towering rages if crossed? Tyrannical or profoundly grateful for its friends? Well, that depends on which page you're looking at.

Like the characters, the story lurches from mood to mood, theme to theme, a state of affairs that is not helped by the fact that Joe and Mali and Glimmung and everyone else suffer from Eloquentiasis. That's the disease that causes fictional beings to declaim on various philosophical points at the drop of a hat, instead of letting the story make their points clear for them. This sometimes produces an amusing or touching moment, as when Joe's ex-wife challenges him to prove that he can speak intelligently to her dinner guests and he launches into an analysis of Beethoven's music as opposed to Mozart's, but most of the time it just slows things down. Here, in addition, it confuses the heck out of anyone trying to find a narrative thread to hang onto.

And yet, despite all the technical flaws, this is still PKD, and as usual he redeems himself by the love he feels for his characters. Indeed, this story grips and moves because of that exact love and care - Joe Fernwright, self-involved loser, learns from the 40-ton Glimmung that all life is worth caring about. It is this that makes him, as Glimmung says, "the best of them," the most whole of all Glimmung's hirelings, this that enables him to stand in isolation at the end and try something new. PKD was a big guy - I suspect he might have seen himself as the huge, gelatinous Glimmung, teaching his own character the way to love.

Speaking of which, I've got a soft spot for "Galactic Pot-Healer" for an additional, very personal reason. Early on, Joe consults an automatic adjustable clergyman for advice on how to proceed with his life. He goes through various religious settings and gets a lot of very spiritual advice. Just before his money runs out, he sets the device to Judaism, and it advises him to eat a bowl of soup. As a Jew, after I laugh myself silly at this, I say it shows very clearly just how much PKD cared about the children of his own mind. We should all have something we care about that much.

Benshlomo says, The flawed need love too.