I finished quite a while ago reading “Time out of joint” by Philip K. Dick. I started reading this book right after finishing Frank Herbert’s Dune series (you can find a review of this series here). The book is ok, being easily included in the category of interesting books.
Spoilers ahead, not suited for those that haven’t read the book.
The first half and the Truman show
The first half of the book is pretty dull as the reader is introduced in the boring and nothing-is-happening-here atmosphere of a small town. The characters are faded, with no elements to really catch the eye (or, that is, the mind of the reader). The book spices up a little bit when the main character (Ragle Gumm) starts having some weird experiences with the time freezing up. However these little weird events are in a small number (like 3 or so) and, what is most interesting, they do not count after the first quarter of the book. This is really strange, it is as if the author wanted to make something out of these events, but then changed his mind and nailed the story to a totally different direction.
Next the reader in introduced in the weird and silly game that Ragle Gumm is playing (and out of which he makes a living). Up to the end of the first half of the book you get the feeling of what is actually happening, at least partially. If you have seen Peter Weir’s Truman Show movie, you will surely think that the movie is some kind of remake after this book (the book appeared in 1959, and the movie in 1998). The main character starts to notice that something is wrong around him, that some people are acting strange and that some kind of plot is clearly going on behind him. Just like in the movie, he starts to suspect everyone, and begins his numerous attempts to escape the town. Of course, all his efforts are without results, as weird people from the army are struggling to keep him inside the town.
The nice finale
Raggle Gumm finally manages to escape the town and get to the outside world. He realizes that what he has suspected is true, the current date is not 1959 as people from the town believe, but 1997. However, he also finds out very soon that the real world is actually in the middle of a war with the people that built an establishment on the Moon, that periodically these people are launching atomic rockets towards the Earth and that the game he was playing was actually used by the army to discover where the next atomic rocket will hit the earth.
While living in the 1959-town without knowing what was actually happening, he was able to guess each day the correct solution of the game in the newspaper. The newspaper was presenting the readers with a board of 1208 cells, and the readers were asked to guess where a little green man will appear in the next day. Raggle Gumm was able to guess each day the exact position of the little green man. The solutions that he was sending to the newspaper were used by the army to launch the anti-missile projectiles that were keeping the Earth safe from the atomic offensive.
The book’s ending could have been better, since it is really not clear why the lunatics (the people that escaped the Earth and established on the Moon) are those that stand for the correct concepts and why Raggle Gumm runns away from the Earth, and to the Moon. You can only guess or, better said, assume that this will help ending the war and resolve the crisis between the lunatics and the Earth-inhabitants. Nevertheless the book was ok, and it was clearly something totally different than the political-philosophical atmosphere of Dune.