The Crack in Space

The Crack in Space

Cover of first edition (paperback)
Author	Philip K. Dick
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Ace Books
Publication date	1966
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	190

The Crack in Space is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. In the United Kingdom, it has been published under the title of the original novella, Cantata 140, published in the July 1964 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. This original title refers to the short title in English, Sleepers Awake, of J.S. Bach's Cantata BWV 140 and the novel's 'bibs', the millions sleeping in suspended animation. Both are based on the short story Prominent Author. The common elements are the Jiffi-scuttler transport device, the company, Terran Development, that manufactures it (and still exists to play a large role in the later works), and a brief summary of Prominent Author as an event of the past in chapter 2. The "crack in space" is a defect in Jiffi-scuttler operation that allows access to the earth (in Prominent Author) and to parallel earths (in the later works) at various times and locations, beyond its intended use of providing near-instant transport between specific locations on the earth in the present.

On a future Earth (c. 2080 CE) overwhelmed with severe difficulties related to overpopulation, a portal is discovered that leads to a parallel world. Jim Briskin, campaigning to be the first Black president of the United States, believes that the new "alter-Earth" could be colonized and become a home for the seventy million people that are being kept in cryopreservation. Known as bibs, these are people - mostly non-caucasians - who decided to be "put to sleep" until a time when the overpopulation problem is solved.

Briskin is a social conservative, who does not support the Golden Doors of Bliss orbital brothel, and opposes widespread abortion access. There are two dominant US political parties, the "Republican Liberals" and the "States Rights Conservative Democrats" who run CLEAN, a racist frontgroup that opposes Briskin's candidacy, although higher-income white American voters support him. Terraforming becomes a pivotal election issue, until a warp drive malfunction in a "'scuttler" tube results in the discovery of an apparently uninhabited alternate world, an 'alter-Earth' where Homo sapiens either never evolved or lost in competition with other early hominids. In this case, the point of divergence appears to have occurred between one and two million years ago, as Homo erectus, also known as Sinanthropus, Pithecanthropus or Peking Man, is the dominant species. In reference to the latter designation, the explorers refer to the indigenous hominids of this world as "Pekes."