Hacía un par de semanas que no hablaba de algún autor.

Sihaya me prestó hace unos doce años –que sí, que me acuerdo que lo empecé a leer en un tren de camino a La Cañada para ayudar a tú ya sabes quién– El padre-cosa, una recopilación de cuentos breves de Philip K. Dick que me puso los pelos como escarpias: empieza con el del ojo que observa al narrador –digno de Ibáñez Serrador– y continúa con la invasión de los alienígenas à la Body Snatchers –que con el à la le damos más clase al asunto–, vamos, directo al ruedo. De la mitad de los cuentos ya ni me acuerdo, pero sí me quedé completamente embobado. Es uno de los libros de ciencia-ficción que más me ha animado a leer más del género, y no me voy a poner a discutir sobre si es un género o no, que me cansa el tema.

Los que más me gustan de Dick:

• Ubik –que ahora está en La Factoría de Ideas, creo que hay una edición a siete euros en FNAC–: The novel takes place in the North American Confederation in 1992. The protagonist is Joe Chip, a debt-ridden technician for Glen Runciter’s «prudence organization,» which employs people with the ability to block certain psychic powers (for instance, an anti-telepath can prevent a telepath from reading a client’s mind). The company’s main adversary is Ray Hollis, who leads a group of psychics (Hollis appears only briefly in the novel). Runciter runs the company with the assistance of his deceased wife Ella, who is kept in a state of «half-life,» a form of cryonic suspension that gives the deceased person limited consciousness and communication ability. While the confusion between real and unreal, obscured by the perception of the main character(s), is common in Dick’s work, in Ubik this confusion occurs in more than one way. Given the premise of half-life (the term is related to radioactive half-lives in that the partially dead person continues to slowly die and eventually is completely dead), one puzzle lies in resolving the false reality of the deceased with the real perceptions of those who are still alive.

• El hombre en el castillo –descatalogada hace mil años– es una ucronía no tan inquietante como otras. Dick escribió esta novela usando el I Ching, según declaró él mismo. Puede ser verdad o no, pero con lo zumbado que estaba me lo creo perfectamente. También se insipiró en Bring the Jubilee, de Ward Moore, en la que aparecen los EEUU después de una victoria de los confederados en la guerra civil –hay una película con el mismo tema, CSA: The Confederate States of America, de 2004, que recomiendo ver, por supuesto–: The Man in the High Castle underwent its point of divergence from our own world due to the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. He was succeeded by Vice President John Nance Garner, who was subsequently replaced by John W. Bricker. Neither man was able to revive the nation from the Great Depression, and both clung to an isolationist policy related to the oncoming war. Due to poor U.S. economic performance and isolationism, Britain and the rest of Europe fell to the Axis Powers. Russia collapsed in 1941 and was occupied by the Nazis, while most of the Slavic people were exterminated. The Slavic survivors of the war were confined to «reservation-like closed regions». The Japanese completely destroyed the United States’ Pacific fleet in a much more expansive attack on Pearl Harbor. Due to Japan’s expanded military capabilities, it was able to invade and occupy Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and the Southwestern Pacific in the early forties. After this, the United States fell to the Axis, with many important cities suffering great damage.

• Algunos añadirían, por supuesto, ¿Sueñan los androides con ovejas eléctricas?, que dio lugar a la película Blade Runner –a mí no me gustó tanto como las anteriores, la verdad–: «Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?» takes place in 2021 (in the original publication, the story takes place in 1992.) several years after the fallout resulting from «World War Terminus» destroyed much of Earth. In the aftermath, the United Nations encourages people to emigrate to off-world colonies to preserve the human race from the effects of the radioactive dust. One incentive is that each emigrating family will receive a custom-built android servant (derogatively referred to as an «andy.»). The people who remain on Earth live in cluttered cities where radiation poisoning causes significant illness and gene damage. All animals are endangered. Owning and caring for an animal is considered a civic virtue and a status symbol, depending on the rarity of the species. Animals are bought and sold according to the price of the latest Sidney’s Catalog; extinct animals are listed at the price of the last example sold. Some people who cannot afford an animal choose to buy an artificial, robotic animal to maintain social standing. The protagonist Rick Deckard owned a sheep, which died of tetanus and was replaced by an electric replica to maintain the illusion of animal ownership.