Martian Time Slip

Martian Time Slip

Cover of first edition (paperback)
Author	Philip K. Dick
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction novel Philosophical fiction
Publisher	Ballantine Books
Publication date	1964
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	220 pp

Martian Time-Slip is a 1964 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The novel uses the common science fiction concept of a human colony on Mars. However, it also includes the themes of mental illness, the physics of time and the dangers of centralized authority.

The novel was first published under the title All We Marsmen, serialized in the August, October and December 1963 issues of Worlds of Tomorrow magazine. The subsequent 1964 publication as Martian Time-Slip is slightly longer.

Jack Bohlen is a repairman who emigrated to Mars to flee from his bouts of schizophrenia. He lives with a wife and a young son. His father Leo visits Mars to stake a claim to the seemingly worthless Franklin D. Roosevelt mountain range after receiving an insider tip that the United Nations plans to build a huge apartment complex there. The complex will be called "AM-WEB", a contraction of the German phrase "Alle Menschen werden Brüder" (All men become brothers) from Schiller's An die Freude (Ode to Joy).

Bohlen has a chance encounter with Arnie Kott, the hard-nosed leader of the Water Worker’s Union, when both Bohlen’s and Kott’s helicopters are called to assist a group of critically dehydrated Bleekmen, the "original" inhabitants of Mars who are thought to be genetically similar to the African Bushmen of Earth. Bohlen rebukes Kott for his hesitance to help the Bleekmen, an act that angers Kott.

After visiting with his ex-wife Anne Esterhazy about their own "anomalous" child, Kott hears of the theories of Dr. Milton Glaub, a psychotherapist at Camp Ben-Gurion, an institution for those afflicted with pervasive developmental disorders. Glaub believes that mental illnesses may be altered states of time perception. Kott becomes interested in Manfred Steiner, an autistic boy at Camp B-G in the hopes that the boy can predict the future—a skill Kott would find useful to his business ventures. Since Camp B-G is scheduled for closure, Kott offers to take Manfred off Glaub's hands. Manfred in turn is afraid of a future only he can see, in which Mars is derelict and the AM-WEB is a dumping ground for forgotten people like him, where he will eventually be confined as a decrepit old man to a bed on life-support.