Counter Clock World

The rough draft, now called COUNTER CLOCK WORLD, must have lain at the bottom of Dick's manuscript trunk many years. But a lot of deep thoughts, about god and about man's existence, went into writing this novel. Someday in the future, if man ever gets over his petty attitudes toward life, toward what reality is, these scraps could become an important work. But science has not yet absorbed the significance of nano-scale and pico-scale reality, the tiny seeds from which life springs. Dick's dead characters, born again with the reversal of time, could only report how terribly small they felt while dead. Their deaths had imparted to them a new perspective showing them the huge, immensity of the universe. As always, Dick transcended common thought. Here he uncovered another zany, hidden world. The dead arising from the grave, babies re-entering the womb, none of this made any sense. But nutty stories were what Dick was all about. What he gave the reader was an opportunity to free him/her self from the reality that tried to imprison Dick within his own mind. Read it!

PKD faced the old problem of commercialism vs. integrity. I consider this book to be a testament to Dick's integrity. Exploring often mentioned, but never developed, ideas. For example, the Wizard Merlin supposedly lived backwards in time. Yet this idea has only been presented, not developed in the stories I have read. Several religions suggest a rapture or ressurection of the dead, without filling us in on the details. Dick must have really felt the avenue of backwards time was worth exploring or he never would have finished it. It was brave for Dick to see these ideas through to their conclusion. While facing the realities of rent and editors, etc.This book is not as morbid as earlier reviews might suggest. The characters are sincere and even light-hearted at times. I found this to be one of Dick's easier and smoother reads.I break it down this way. If you go to a movie and willingly submit to a fantasy experience, read this book. If you go to movies to test your analytical and deductive skills don't bother.If you suspect that time is really just one big cosmic "Wow!" that has already ensued, I highly recommend it.

This is not one of Dick's best books, and I kind of found myself getting annoyed a lot of the time at the way time "moved backwards" in the story. It just never quite made proper sense. However, I still enjoyed the whole book, mostly because I love PKD's writing style and imagination. If you are new to his books, I would not start out with this one. (Rated at 5 because he's my favorite author and way better than any other sc-fi out there)...

Dick attempts the impossible task of making time seem to flow backwards as the reader moves forward through the book. An eerie and unforgettable premise has the dead being "born" in their graves, crying out to be exhumed so they can begin their reverse trek through life. In other scenes food is excreted onto plates and then boxed and returned to the shelf, while bodily wastes are ingested through a "sogum pipe," a process alluded to several times but mercifully never depicted. Eventually the book reaches an action-packed climax (shouldn't it have occurred at the beginning?), in which bullets are sucked back into firearms and so forth, but by that time the paradoxes have come so fast and furious that the reader's brain has imploded. As in so many of his novels, Dick throws too many balls in the air to keep the juggling act going, and as scientifically plausible fiction, it's a mess, but only a genius would have attempted an idea as weird as this one, and taken it as far Dick does.