Martian time lapse

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Martian Time-Slip (in the original English. Martian Time-Slip is) a science fiction - novel of the American writer Philip K. Dick in 1964. The novel takes place in a human colony on Mars and covers topics such as mental illness , the Perception of time and the dangers posed by central government.

The novel is an extension of Dick's novella All We Marsmen , which appeared in three parts in August, October and December 1963 in Worlds of Tomorrow magazine. The figure of Manfred Steiner resembles that of Tim in Philip K. Dick's 1954 short story A World of Talent , which first appeared in Galaxy magazine.

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The novel is set in 1994, a few years after the first human colonies were established on Mars . Many colonies are derived from the nation-states of the earth. Those of Israel and the United States are the greatest. All colonies are under the administration of the United Nations . The UN is striving for a self-sufficient Martian civilization in order to be able to survive in the event of a nuclear war on earth that would end all life there.

Since water is very precious on Mars, most of the houses are built on canals . The water consumption is strictly controlled. Arnie Kott, chairman of the sewer workers' guild, is one of the most powerful men on Mars.

The indigenous population of Mars is a human-like, dark-skinned species that colonists call the bleachers . They live as hunters and gatherers and hold on to old religious beliefs, which is why the colonists regard the bleachers as primitive savages. The people of Earth and the Bleekmen of Mars are said to have common ancestors.

Mars in the novel is strongly reminiscent of Central Australia , which is also an arid place and home to an ancient species (Bleekmen in the novel, Aborigines in Australia) with a deep awareness of history, rich mythology and sacred place ("Dirty Knot" in the novel, Ayers Rock in Australia) is.

The characters in the novel are often connected in ways that they themselves are not aware of. This is a trademark of Philip K. Dick, as it also occurs, for example, in The Oracle of the Mountain . Jack Bohlen's neighbors are the Steiners. Norbert Steiner, Manfred's father, trades in groceries and smuggles delicacies from Earth to Mars. However, this is forbidden on the part of the UN, as it undermines the planet's self-sufficiency.

Manfred, his autistic son, lives in a home for abnormal children at Camp Ben-Gurion in the Israeli colony, which the UN plans to close. The son of Anne Esterhazy and her ex-husband Arnie Kott also live there, with whom she still has a reasonably friendly relationship. Anne is committed to Camp Ben-Gurion, while Arnie would like to close it because it discourages new colonists and thus runs counter to his vision of a 'pure' Mars. Manfred, who does not take part in normal life because of his autism, only communicates with the native bleachers, especially with Heliogabalus, Kott's tame bleacher and house servant.

Otto Zitte, Norbert Steiner's mechanic, tried to take over Steiner's business after his death. He seduces Jack's wife Sylvia, while Jack is having an affair with Doreen Anderton, Arnie Kott's lover, at the same time.

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Jack Bohlen is a mechanic who emigrated to Mars to escape his outbreaks of schizophrenia . He lives on one of the Mars canals with his wife Sylvia and son David. Later, Jack Bohlen Father Leo comes to visit, the Franklin D. Roosevelt - mountains wants to acquire a seemingly worthless piece of land in order to achieve speculative gains. Leo received an insider tip that the UN wants to build a huge residential complex there, the AM-WEB . "AM-WEB" stands for the line All people become brothers from Friedrich Schiller's poem To Joy .

Bohlen, who travels by helicopter for his employer, hears an emergency call and rushes to help a group of bleachers who are traveling in the desert without water. When he has landed with the Bleekmen and has taken care of them for the time being, another helicopter lands. This belongs to Arnie Kott, chairman of the sewer workers' guild. Kott, whose pilot landed against his will but in accordance with UN regulations, makes it clear that he does not believe in helping the bleachers. Bohlen Kott then gives his opinion, which arouses them very much.

After Kott visits his ex-wife Anne Esterhazy about her own "abnormal" child, Kott learns of a new theory from Dr. Milton Glaub, a psychotherapist at Camp Ben-Gurion, a facility for children with profound developmental disabilities . The theory is that mental illness may just be due to an altered perception of time. Kott then begins to be interested in the autistic child Manfred Steiner. He hopes with its help and the theory of Glaub to predict the future, which he wants to use for his business interests. Since Kott knows from his ex-wife that Camp Ben-Gurion should be closed, he offers Glaub to look after the boy. Manfred is afraid of a future that only he can see: Mars is barren and almost deserted by people, the AM-WEB complex has fallen into disrepair and a shelter for people who only vegetate with life-saving measures.

Kott buys Bohlen out of his contract with his current employer and assigns him to construct an audio and video chamber with which Manfred's time perception can be synchronized with the time perception of "normal" people. As a pleasant side effect, Kott plans to take revenge on Bohlen for his cheeky behavior in the relief operation for the Bleekmen. Bohlen begins to be interested in Manfred, but the increasing stress in carrying out his task triggers fear of relapses into his schizophrenia. He receives support from Kott's lover Doreen Anderton, with whom Bohlen begins an affair.

One of Bohlen's jobs is to repair the teaching machines at the school ( International School ). The teaching machines are in the form of historical personalities and are very upsetting to Bohlen, because they remind him of a schizoid attack when he thought he could see machines behind the faces of people around him. When he brings Manfred to school for a repair job, the machines begin to behave strangely because Manfred seems to change their reality. Bohlen is then asked to remove Manfred from the school.

Heliogabalus , Kott's tamed bleacher , is the only person who can communicate with Manfred. For Manfred all other people seem to live in a strange world with torn apart times, in which they disappear in one place and reappear in another and generally move in an erratic, uncoordinated manner. Heliogabalus, on the other hand, moves smoothly and gracefully and can apparently communicate with Manfred without words.

The event in the novel that only triggers the rest of the plot is the suicide of Manfred Steiner's father, who connects Arnie Kott with Manfred and robs Otto Zitte, Steiner's assistant, of his livelihood. The key point is a meeting between Kott, Bohlen, Anderton and Manfred Steiner in Kott's house, which is described from Manfred's point of view. Instead of "real time", the scene takes place three times before it actually happens, apparently through Manfred's eyes, but with the help of Bohlen. From time to time the events become more surreal and the perceptions more hallucinatory. When the scene finally reaches the crucial point that Bohlen is afraid of because he foresaw the outcome, he doesn't even consciously experience it himself. His perception ends when he arrives at Kott's home with Doreen and only begins again when they leave Kott. He only remembers the farewell, which on the surface seemed friendly, but clearly showed that he and Kott are actually opponents.

Pressured by Kott, Heliogabalus reveals that the bleacher's sacred rock, "Dirty Knot", could be used as a portal to travel through time , and that Manfred would be able to open it. Kott has two goals that he wants to achieve with a journey through time: revenge on Jack Bohlen and claiming the land in the FDR mountains before Bohlen’s father does.

Kott goes to the Dirty Knorren with Manfred Steiner and finds a cave there, in which he proceeds according to Heliogabal's instructions. He travels back in time and appears at the moment in which he also appeared in the novel for the first time: when he leaves the bathhouse in the building of the sewer workers' guild. He does not manage to change his previous actions and at the same time struggles with disturbances in his perception, which probably originate from Manfred. He tries to get to the FDR mountains to claim land there, for which he has to plant a stake. However, during the flight into the mountains, an emergency is reported to a group of Bleekmen and its pilot lands to provide help - just as it originally happened. He meets Bohlen again and now tries to shoot him, but is killed by a bleacher's arrow.

Kott wakes up from his journey through time and realizes that he has failed. He decides to give up his plan completely, to leave Doreen, to leave Bohlen in peace and to help Manfred, who has disappeared since the time travel. When he has left the cave in the Dirty Knorren , he meets Otto Zitte. Zitte, an employee in Steiner's black market business, wanted to take over his trade after Steiner's death - as did Kott, Steiner's best customer. When Kott noticed that there was a competitor, he had its base and transport missile destroyed and Zitte left a message. Zitte then swore revenge and pursued Kott to the Dirty Knot . Kott, who does not know Zitte personally, does not recognize the danger because he believes he is in another hallucination of Manfred. Bohlen and Doreen land in Kott's own helicopter and bring Kott, who was shot by Zitte, back to the settlement. Kott dies on the way and does not believe in the reality of events until the end.

Bohlen and Doreen realize that their relationship has no future. Bohlen then returns to his wife, and although she too had cheated (with Otto Zitte), they decide to continue their marriage. Suddenly a scream from the Steiner's house shakes the scene and the widow Steiner disappears screaming into the night. When Bohlen and his wife enter the house, they see Manfred, old and covered with hoses and accompanied by Bleekmen, sitting in a wheelchair. After Manfred left the Dirty Knot , he joined a group of Bleekmen and thus saved himself from the dreaded future in the AM-WEB. He has traveled back in time to see his family and to thank Jack Bohlen for saving him.

In the last scene, Bohlen and his father are outdoors, looking for the widow Steiner in the dark.

Main themes

Mental illness

As in many of Dick's novels, characters in Martian Time Fall appear who can be considered insane or savants . Jack Bohlen suffers from his schizophrenia and believes that it was through it that he foresaw the arrival of robotic teaching machines. Manfred is more affected. As an autistic person, he cannot communicate with his environment. Philip K. Dick describes Manfred Steiner's autism as a manifestation of a distorted perception of time. He cannot escape visions from the future that show him sick and vegetating in a neglected building.

The idea of ​​mental illness as a kind of precognition that those affected cannot cope with is scientifically untenable, but it is a central theme in most of Dick's works: one person's perception can be different from the perception of another person and the view that is stranger at first glance may be the “more correct” one.

Dick tells the psychiatrist Dr. Milton Believes in words that suggest that Dick is trying to ridicule certain psychiatric theories. Glaub cites parent misconduct, such as a dominant mother, as the cause of problems such as autism and schizophrenia, coupled with evidence of elimination and the outdated anal and oral classification of people . Dick treats these theories with the coup de grace through the bleacher Heliogabalus, who explains to Arnie Kott that psychoanalysis is an inflated folly. Asked by Arnie Kott why, Heliogabalus replies with Dick's recurring leitmotif: How do we know what is normal?

The fact that Dick knew German and that Dr. Glaub also bears this name in the original, suggests that Dick wanted to portray him as a believer in certain theories.

Non-linear time

In Martian Time-Slip , the idea is expressed that the flow of time change or even be reversed from place to place. Time is more flexible on Mars than on Earth, or at least there are time portals and loops on Mars.

The Bleekmen seem to have long known about the special conditions of time on Mars. Her non-linear understanding of time is one of her tenets of belief. This may also explain why the Bleekmen, genetically very similar to humans, are far less technologically advanced: time has no linear flow for them, which is why the idea of progress is alien to them.

Dangers of central government administration

Authority figures are mostly depicted as malevolent or at least rashly acting characters. The best example of this is Arnie Kott, who goes to great lengths to maintain and expand his power.

Another example is the United Nations. The Organization rules Mars, but its resolutions are seldom beneficial to its people. In order to make the colonies self-sufficient, the United Nations has imposed a ban on food imports, but this has resulted in a flourishing black market for upscale products from the world such as oysters and caviar. To improve the colony's gene pool , the United Nations is considering executing all children at Camp Ben-Gurion. The plan to build huge apartment complexes in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Mountains is doomed to failure, which is shown in Manfred's visions: the ruins are ultimately used to let sick people vegetate.

A comparable story of the administration of an otherworldly colony starting from the earth is told in the novel Revolte auf Luna by Robert A. Heinlein , which was written around the same time .

literature

German editions

  • Philip K. Dick: Mozart for Martians (German by Renate Laux). Insel Published by Frankfurt am Main (1973). ISBN 3-458-05857-5
  • Philip K. Dick: Martian Time Fall (German by Michael Nagula). Heyne: Munich (2002). ISBN 978-3-453-21726-3
  • Philip K. Dick: Martian Time Fall (German by Michael Nagula). Fischer Klassik: Frankfurt am Main (2014). ISBN 978-3596905638

English version