The Ganymede Takeover - Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson (1967)

 

Rating: Excellent

Some part of me that desired, no, actually needed a shot of paranoid weirdness that only Philip K. Dick can provide. This happens at least a couple of times a year. Fortunately, Dick was prolific, so there are still plenty of his novels I’m yet to read, despite being an avowed ‘Dickhead’ for decades. The Ganymede Takeover is one of the few novels that Dick collaborated on with another writer, in this case Ray Nelson, who was an interesting character in his own right, as an author, cartoonist and the inventor of the propeller beanie hat that went on to become emblematic of science fiction geekdom. Nelson and Dick were friends from childhood and it was after Nelson gave Dick his first LSD trip (I read somewhere that Dick didn’t have a particularly good time, no surprise there...) they decided to collaborate and apparently Dick rounded up some in-progress story fragments and they came up with The Ganymede Takeover. Set on a future Earth that has been invaded by reptilian worm creatures from, you guessed it, Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede. The Ganymedian invaders are also aided by a ‘Creech’ slave race of ugly bipedal monsters. There’s only one area (a ‘bale’) left on Earth in Tennessee that resists the worms from Ganymede, where a ‘Neeg’ leader called Percy X leads a small army of black Americans. There’s also another rebel group called the ‘World Psychiatric Association' (of course) who end up collaborating with Percy X. This premise is merely the framework for hanging all of the typical Dickian tropes from, such as flying cars (ionocraft), telepaths (Percy X and Mekkis, one of the Ganymedian's), vidphones, androids, liberal drug taking and, of course, half deranged doctors who design weird brain warping machinery; everything you’d want from a Philip K. Dick novel basically.

P. K. Dick, staring down Ray Nelson

The Ganymede Takeover can be placed among Dick’s lesser novels, however it is a much better effort than many of his pulpy novels, which typically were knocked off under the influence of legal amphetamines to keep the money, and the amphetamines, coming in. It could very well have been the collaboration with Nelson that created a narrative that is more polished than the usual knock-off effort by Dick. It’s still a wild, schlocky ride though, particularly about half way through, when an epic battle begins between the Neegs and the Creech led Ganymedian army, involving a herd of gigantic African Aardvarks with “...evil, glittering eyes...” and "...tongues that lick ionocraft out of the sky...", causing the greedy and slovenly character of Gus Swenesgard (a typical Dick character, well and truly trapped within the maw of his flaws) to exclaim “Oh my god, not Aardvarks!!” It becomes unbelievably wilder from that point on, with a totally crazy battle involving all kinds of bizarre creatures that emerge straight from the fevered minds of Percy X and his assistant, who are using a machine stolen from the mentally unstable Doctor Balkani that can create very real shared hallucinations. The plot becomes a bit convoluted from that point on, but it is entertaining non-the-less and it was a totally enjoyable 157 pages of Dick freakiness. The Ganymede Takeover is not the place to start for Philip K. Dick initiates, but for established Dickheads it's lots of freaky fun of the kind you’d expect and, of course, need in your life.

The Year Everything Changed: 2001 - Phillipa McGuiness (2018)

 

Rating: Admirable

I bought The Year Everything Changed: 2001 believing that I knew what would be its main focus, but when I finally got around to reading it, it turned out to be quite different to my initial impression; mostly because the text provides quite a personal examination of the year 2001, which is totally fair enough. Phillipa McGuiness lost a baby that year, a tragedy that can’t help but be the lens through which she views the significant events of that year. Like her personal tragedy, that year’s major events are still playing out as we speak. After a fine introduction McGuinness divides the year into months and then advances systematically. There’s quite a bit of Australian content, which makes a change, but also makes sense, as McGuinness is an Australian publisher and author. There’s an examination of the muted celebrations of Australia’s Centenary of Federation, which, of all the events that occurred that year, I’d completely forgotten about. After reading about the unsuccessful attempts at whipping up some public enthusiasm, I’m not surprised. More significantly there are thorough examinations of the Howard government’s weaponisation of the Tampa Affair (‘children overboard’) as a means to demonise asylum seekers and immigrants in general into an election winning ploy that the Coalition used to their advantage for decades. There’s also the dot-com bubble and the emergence of early tech-bro dominance in the form of Google (founded in 1998, but really got going by 2001) and Apple, having launched the iPod in that year. McGuinness also muses over John Howard’s obsession with Don Bradman and the emergent revelations of widespread sexual abuse by Catholic priests. It's all pretty serious, but interesting, stuff.

The one event that overshadows everything else that happened in 2001 is, of course, the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It’s one of those events where everyone alive at the time can remember where they were and what they were doing. 9/11 is the THE major event of 2001 that echoes through the subsequent decades. McGuinness handles it well, her style sitting somewhere between formal and informal, mingling the personal with the factual and getting into the raw exposed nerves of the tragedy. In Australia, due to the events of 9/11, John Howard invoked the ANZUS treaty and went all in with the Bush administration’s determined efforts to root out the perpetrators in Afghanistan. One of the main impressions I went away with after reading The Year Everything Changed: 2001 is a strong reminder of just how reprehensible the Howard government was. The moral and ideological failings of the Howard era have been subsumed by the successive horrors of the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison Coalition governments and the relative failings of the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments. The Year Everything Changed: 2001 provides a timely reminder that John Howard’s conservative neoliberal ideology helped create many of the problems that plague Australia now. Despite sometimes finding The Year Everything Changed: 2001 a bit dry, I did enjoy reading it and it can be seen as a successful attempt at examining that pivotal year from a unique perspective.