Time Out of Joint
First British paperback, 1969
Time Out of Joint (1959) is a science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick in which a man living an apparently ordinary life in a 1959 American suburb gradually discovers that his entire world is a controlled environment, constructed to keep him solving a problem he does not know he has been assigned. This is the first printing of the first British paperback edition, published by Penguin Books. Somewhat scarce.
Softcover. First British Paperback Edition, First Printing. Penguin Science Fiction 02847 (25p, 5/-). Cover art by Franco Grignani. London: Penguin Books, 1969. Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (28). Levack 41g. Wintz & Hyde SF32.12. ISBN: 0140028471. #11039.
Short tear on front cover, else very good copy with some rubbing on back cover and light reading creases along spine.
Softcover. First British Paperback Edition, First Printing. Penguin Science Fiction 02847 (25p, 5/-). Cover art by Franco Grignani. London: Penguin Books, 1969. Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (28). Levack 41g. Wintz & Hyde SF32.12. ISBN: 0140028471. #11039.
Short tear on front cover, else very good copy with some rubbing on back cover and light reading creases along spine.
Additional Details
Time Out of Joint (1959) is set in a small American town in 1959, and it takes its time establishing just how ordinary everything is. Ragle Gumm lives with his sister and brother-in-law, wins a daily newspaper contest called "Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next?" with suspicious regularity, and seems content with his quiet, purposeless routine. Vic, his brother-in-law, works at a grocery store and worries about the recession and Sammy's dental bills. The town feels utterly real in the way that mid-century American suburban life was real. Life is slow and a little dull, full of small social obligations and comfortable routines.
Things also seem wrong. A soft-drink stand dissolves before Ragle's eyes and in its place is a small slip of paper reading "SOFT-DRINK STAND." He puts it in a metal box he keeps in his coat pocket. More slips accumulate: "DOOR," "DRINKING FOUNTAIN," "BOWL OF FLOWERS." Vic's Book-of-the-Month Club brochure lists Uncle Tom's Cabin as new fiction, by an author no one has heard of. Details accumulate that belong to a different reality, or perhaps a different year, and neither Ragle nor anyone else seems to think the anything is out of place.
The novel's central revelation is that Ragle Gumm's contest is not a contest. The constructed suburb is a controlled environment, built to keep Ragle working at a problem he does not know he is solving. The "Little Green Man" is a predictive model for incoming missiles. Ragle is a mathematical savant whose talent for determining where the next one will land is being exploited without his knowledge or consent. The entire community around him, including his family, has been recruited into maintaining the fiction.
Time Out of Joint was Dick's first American hardcover publication, issued by J.B. Lippincott in 1959 rather than as a paperback original. It is also his first extended exploration of the false reality theme that would define so many of his most celebrated works, predating The Man in the High Castle by three years and anticipating Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly by more than a decade. The novel is widely cited by fans as an uncredited influence on the 1998 film The Truman Show, though Dick's version is considerably darker in its implications about the relationship between the state and the individual being exploited.
Things also seem wrong. A soft-drink stand dissolves before Ragle's eyes and in its place is a small slip of paper reading "SOFT-DRINK STAND." He puts it in a metal box he keeps in his coat pocket. More slips accumulate: "DOOR," "DRINKING FOUNTAIN," "BOWL OF FLOWERS." Vic's Book-of-the-Month Club brochure lists Uncle Tom's Cabin as new fiction, by an author no one has heard of. Details accumulate that belong to a different reality, or perhaps a different year, and neither Ragle nor anyone else seems to think the anything is out of place.
The novel's central revelation is that Ragle Gumm's contest is not a contest. The constructed suburb is a controlled environment, built to keep Ragle working at a problem he does not know he is solving. The "Little Green Man" is a predictive model for incoming missiles. Ragle is a mathematical savant whose talent for determining where the next one will land is being exploited without his knowledge or consent. The entire community around him, including his family, has been recruited into maintaining the fiction.
Time Out of Joint was Dick's first American hardcover publication, issued by J.B. Lippincott in 1959 rather than as a paperback original. It is also his first extended exploration of the false reality theme that would define so many of his most celebrated works, predating The Man in the High Castle by three years and anticipating Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly by more than a decade. The novel is widely cited by fans as an uncredited influence on the 1998 film The Truman Show, though Dick's version is considerably darker in its implications about the relationship between the state and the individual being exploited.
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