The Crack in Space
First British edition, 1977
The Crack in Space (1966) is a science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick set in an overpopulated future where millions of poor and non-white citizens have been placed in suspended animation, and a portal to a parallel Earth offers a troubling solution. This is the first British edition, a paperback original published by Magnum/Methuen.
Softcover. First British Edition. Magnum 36530 (70p). London: Magnum Books / Methuen Paperbacks, 1977. Levack 8f. Wintz & Hyde SF19.7. ISBN: 0413365301. #11001.
Solid very good copy with light creases and minor wear.
Softcover. First British Edition. Magnum 36530 (70p). London: Magnum Books / Methuen Paperbacks, 1977. Levack 8f. Wintz & Hyde SF19.7. ISBN: 0413365301. #11001.
Solid very good copy with light creases and minor wear.
Additional Details
The Crack in Space (1966) is set in the year 2080, in a United States that has solved its overpopulation crisis through an uneasy compromise. Tens of millions of people, disproportionately non-white and poor, have volunteered to be put into suspended animation and stored in government warehouses, waiting for a labor market that may never recover. They are called "bibs," short for "bottled in bond," and they represent both the novel's central social problem and its most uncomfortable satirical point. The system has been running for nearly a century, and the people inside it are beginning to feel less like a temporary measure and more like a permanent underclass held in stasis.
Into this situation arrives Jim Briskin, a Black presidential candidate whose campaign is built around the promise to reintegrate the bibs into society. He is charismatic, conflicted, and uncomfortably aware that his campaign may be overpromising. His campaign manager pushes him to appeal to the "Col" (colored) vote while the "Cauc" (Caucasian) establishment regards his candidacy with open alarm. Dick renders this political landscape with a directness unusual even for his work, naming the racial politics of the future with a bluntness that was clearly intentional.
The novel's plot turns on the discovery of a crack in space itself, a flaw in a Jiffi-scuttler repair satellite that opens a portal to a parallel Earth. The initial hope is that this alternate world could absorb the bibs, solving the overpopulation crisis with a single stroke. The complication is that the parallel Earth is not uninhabited. Its dominant hominids are Pithecanthropus, Peking man, a pre-sapiens species living in small communities and entirely unaware that another version of their planet is about to be colonized. The novel then turns on the question of what to do and whether humanity has the right to displace another species from its own world, even a less developed one, in the name of solving a crisis it created itself.
The novel expands Dick's short story "Prominent Author," published in 1954, and was first serialized in the July 1964 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the title "Cantata 140," a reference to Bach's chorale cantata Wachet auf (Wake, Arise), whose title resonates with the novel's central image of millions of sleepers waiting to be woken. First published as an Ace paperback original in 1966.
Into this situation arrives Jim Briskin, a Black presidential candidate whose campaign is built around the promise to reintegrate the bibs into society. He is charismatic, conflicted, and uncomfortably aware that his campaign may be overpromising. His campaign manager pushes him to appeal to the "Col" (colored) vote while the "Cauc" (Caucasian) establishment regards his candidacy with open alarm. Dick renders this political landscape with a directness unusual even for his work, naming the racial politics of the future with a bluntness that was clearly intentional.
The novel's plot turns on the discovery of a crack in space itself, a flaw in a Jiffi-scuttler repair satellite that opens a portal to a parallel Earth. The initial hope is that this alternate world could absorb the bibs, solving the overpopulation crisis with a single stroke. The complication is that the parallel Earth is not uninhabited. Its dominant hominids are Pithecanthropus, Peking man, a pre-sapiens species living in small communities and entirely unaware that another version of their planet is about to be colonized. The novel then turns on the question of what to do and whether humanity has the right to displace another species from its own world, even a less developed one, in the name of solving a crisis it created itself.
The novel expands Dick's short story "Prominent Author," published in 1954, and was first serialized in the July 1964 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the title "Cantata 140," a reference to Bach's chorale cantata Wachet auf (Wake, Arise), whose title resonates with the novel's central image of millions of sleepers waiting to be woken. First published as an Ace paperback original in 1966.
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