“How does one fashion a book of resistance, a book of truth in an empire of falsehood, or a book of rectitude in an empire of vicious lies? How does one do this right in front of the enemy?”
— Philip K. Dick, 1974 Interview, Only Apparently Real.
PKD – Philip K. Dick – is more than a little bit of an enigma. He was an expert at ideas, with some (above average but not exceptional) talent in writing. He found his niche with science fiction, where he could explore “what ifs” in order to deal with the two questions which haunted him the most: what is real and what does it mean to be human? His brilliant mind allowed him to fashion and refashion these questions time and again – some in not-so-straightforward (and neglected) fiction, but mostly in science fiction stories which focused on a couple key issues based upon a change he brought to reality (one he believed was at least possible, if not likely), seeing how that change affected the people involved with it. As readers of his later stories know, he was one of his own best characters, and his own sense of reality was unstable at best because of his history with drugs and his continuous religious quest which ended only with his life. He was many things at once, making for a complex, and controversial, figure: anti-Nixonite communist sympathizer, gnostic prophet, struggling author, and semi-insane paranoid lunatic. Yet, because of his insanity (however deep it went, and however reinforced it became from his drug use), he was able to see and understand things differently, and ask the right kinds of questions (even if he didn’t find the right answers), making him one of the most beloved authors of many post-modern philosophers (such as Baudrillard and Žižek). In him one could find truth to the ancient notion that the “gods” touched the lunatic, and revealed, through them, hidden mysteries which only the crazy could properly relate to. This is not to say he is an ordinary kind of lunatic – he would appear for the most part sane, and probably was; but there was that layer, deep within him, which was never stabilized and which is what led him from religious experience to religious experience, gnosis to gnosis, and to make him in reality what Timothy Leary could only dream about. And it didn’t seem to do Dick any good. Yet – for his reader, there is much to gain, even if one has to sift through what PKD left behind, and there are some gems which should be on any mandatory reading list. One of them is his short story from 1974, “The Pre-Persons.” It was as insightful as the best of his works, and, sadly, appears to be a terrifying prophecy of where the world is going unless someone steps up to the plate and stops it before it is too late.
The future in the story is bleak. The world is crowded – over-crowded (or at least, at one point, it was). In the United States, abortion laws have become quite liberalized, with the concept of person so radically changed, that it was decided that one became a full person at the age of twelve, when one can theoretically do “algebra,” showing that one was fully “ensouled.” Anyone before twelve can be “aborted”; all parents have to do is send in for an abortion truck, and the child is taken in to a center, where they have thirty days to be adopted or else put to sleep. Children under twelve have to carry on their person a “D” card, a “Desirability Card” which shows the child is desired by the parents, otherwise, if found unattended, they are seen as strays and taken in to the center – and its parents, if they want the child back, must pay a $500 fine, otherwise the child would be adopted out or put to sleep.
There are two main characters in the story, a fourteen year old kid, Walter, who is terrified about the abortion truck, even though he is beyond the age when children can be taken in (he doesn’t feel like he changed at twelve, and he had friends who had been killed), and Ed Gantro, a thirty-five year old man whose son, Tim, does not have a D card because Ed could not afford the processing fee. When Tim is to be taken in by the authorities, he challenges them by saying he doesn’t know algebra either and so he must not have a soul (perhaps he lost it). He forces the local truck driver to take him him with the children he has already collected (as if taking the children to the pound). Ed is an embarrassment to the system, while Walter is pondering what action he and his friends can take against it (he is thinking of firebombing the trucks which take in the kids). Ultimately, Walter’s father helps Ed out, and they ponder moving to Canada where the laws are different.
The story is, in many ways quite simple, and, as a literary value, it is not one of Dick’s best or most complex stories. But he didn’t write it to be such. He wrote it after he heard what happened at Roe Versus Wade, and wrote it as a “what if” piece to show why he thought the logic of abortion was flawed. And it is here where Dick shines in this story -he sees the connection between the abortion industry with modern society, and how sick the whole system has become. More than once, when we see shown what is going on in the mind of Walter or Ed, we are given glimpses to Dick’s own thoughts on the matter, and they are as relevant now (if not moreso) than whan Dick wrote the story.
“This is a con game by which the established, those who already hold all the key economic and political posts, keep the youngsters out of it – murder them if necessary.”[1] Dick, in his anti-authoritarian mode, saw a part of the problem was that abortion was an industry aimed for monetary and political gain. Its justification was a sham, based upon arbitrary notions of personhood:
The whole mistake of the pro-abortion people from the start, he said to himself was the arbitrary line they drew. An embryo is not entitled to American Constitutional rights and can be killed, legally, by a doctor. But a fetus was a “person,” with rights, at least for a while; and then the pro-abortion crowd decided that even a seven-month fetus was not “human” and could be killed, legally, by a licensed doctor. And, one day, a newborn baby – it is a vegetable; it can’t focus its eyes, it understands nothing, nor talks … the pro-abortion lobby argued in court, and won, with their contention that a newborn baby was only a fetus expelled by accident or organic processes from the womb. But, even then, where was the line to be drawn finally? When the baby smiled its first smile? When it spoke its first word or reached for its initial time for a toy it enjoyed? The legal line was relentlessly pushed back and back.[2]
One of the ironic sidelines in the story happens between Walter’s father, Ian, and mother, Cynthia. “‘Let’s have an abortion!’ Cynthia declared excitedly as she entered her house with an armload of synthogroceries. ‘Wouldn’t that be neat? Doesn’t that turn you on?‘”[3] Not only had abortion become a possibility, it became, as it were, the “in thing” to do. Ian was firmly opposed to the idea (finding his wife to be inhuman in the process):
Where did the motherly virtues go to? he asked himself. When mothers especially protected what was small and weak and defenseless?
Our competitive society, he decided. The survival of the strong. Not the fit, he thought; just those who hold the power. And are not going to surrender it to the next generation; it is the powerful and evil old against the helpless and gentle new.[4]
It should not be surprising to hear that Dick got a lot of hate mail over this story – some more than a little threatening, to be sure. But he held on to his view, and indeed, found it ironic – he was more than a little used to opposition, sometimes from the government itself:
In this I incurred the absolute hate of Joanna Russ who wrote me the nastiest letter I’ve ever received; at one point she said she usually offered to beat up people (she didn’t use the word ‘people’) who expressed opinions such as this. I admit that this story amounts to special pleading, and I am sorry to offend those who disagree with me about abortion on demand. I also got unsigned hate mail, some of it not from individuals but from organizations promoting abortion on demand. Well, I have always managed to get myself into hot water. Sorry, people. But for the pre-person’s sake, I am not sorry. I stand where I stand…[5]
On behalf of the pre-persons you might have saved, I want to say, thank you, PKD!
Footnotes
[1] Philip K. Dick, “The Pre-Persons,” pgs. 275 – 296 in The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Stories (New York: Citadel Press, 1992), 290.
[2] Ibid., 291.
[3] Ibid., 285.
[4] Ibid., 289.
[5] In his notes to the story, ibid., 393.
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