Time Out of Joint

by Philip K. Dick

Book Overview

Time Out of Joint is Philip K. Dick's classic depiction of the disorienting disparity between the world as we think it is and the world as it actually is. The year is 1998, although Ragle Gumm doesn't know that. He thinks it's 1959. He also thinks that he served in World War II, that he lives in a quiet little community, and that he really is the world's long-standing champion of newspaper puzzle contests. It is only after a series of troubling hallucinations...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0881843520
• ISBN13: 9780881843521
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
• Length: 263 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

The Golden Age

Time Out of Joint is a very interesting exploration of a great deal of the ideas and feelings circulating in WWII (and post-WWII) America. Naturally, it contains the usual Dick-ian everyman who struggles with understanding how reality relates to his perception of reality, but there are thematic undertones that are far *less* common in some of Dick's more outlandish science-fiction tales such as McCarthyism (which undoubtedly Dick himself was struggling with first-hand), nostolgia for the "Golden Age" of pre-WWII America, Cold War paranoia, American hypocritical morality (i.e. Japanese Interment Camps), and so forth.Clearly, Dick had been reading a great deal of the linguistic and psychoanalytic theory that became prominent in the late 60's in academic settings as traces of post-structuralist thought as well as Freudian theory pop up all over the book. A very complex, yet easy-reading novel. Highly recommended.

Going Sane and loving it. Read the story then the introduct

One of the smoothest, most charming, funny, and light-hearted books by PKD. Warning! Do not read the introduction! It spoils the book!The introduction gives us a new way to look at the works of PKD and I highly recommend it(after you have read the story.)If you like movies like "The Matrix" you might be surprised at their possible (subconscouis or otherwise) origins in stories like this one. Dick is to Sci-Fi movies what Lovecraft is to Horror movies. The going may be rocky, but what a spectacular view at the top!If you prefer the idea of science, over the idea of fiction, this may not be for you. If you suspect that the most creative science fiction was written before we went to the moon, this is definitely for you!

Whooahhh...

The title of this review has a double pun involved...one is to the sheer masterpiece this book is...and the other to something the star of the matrix (which was GREATLY contributed to by this book) and his catch phrase...All puns aside...this is simply one of the greatest novels ever written...the plot is so obscure and oblique that it strikes remarkably close to home...and the overall idea of the entire book is enough to make you want to look over your shoulder when you are walking down that long corridor...(1984 pun...god im full of them tonight...)...this is one of the greatest books you can read...(and coincidentially a very hard one to find) if you like this book...i suggest you read "The Man in the High Castle" "The World Jones Made" "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep"(book that the movie bladerunner was based on) by the same author...and also "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and "Fahrenheit 451"... by Ray Bradbury....and of course...."Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clark.....ALL of these books i have mentioned and made puns of are awesome books...and should be read by anyone interested in seeing the future of the human race...

The book that The Truman Show (unofficially) derives from

Saw The Truman Show in the cinema when it was out. Was perplexed, as I was getting a massive sense of deja vu throughout the film.So when I got home I began digging through the book collection. Eventually I found Time Out of Joint,the book I believe was the (unconscious?) memetic root of the film's ideas.Weird thing, in the book the hero is living in a perpetual 1958 (the book was written around then) where he is the centre of attention, and when he finally breaks out of the pretend town (some scenes, such as the wall of fire, are scene-for-scene the same as Truman Show) he finds out it's 1998 -- which is the year the Truman Show came out. Weird or what? In the book, I liked the description (from a 1959 person's point of view) of youth gangs in 1998. Women and men, with piercings and tatoos, the women with short hair and trousers were indistinguishable from the men.Great stuff, paranoiac exposition and crisp dialog put together in splendid economy. Great stuff.

Visionary Gem by PKD

Lost in all the mind-boggling 'what is real' question that would later flavor most of this master's work, is the groundwork he lays for relationship building. At the time this book was published--1959--sci-fi was, for the most part, hard science. This, however, is not the only 'gem' this book provides. Read the short scene with the youth--spiked, colored hair. Wait a minute. This book was published in 1959. Spiked, colored hair in 1959? I don't think so, not even California in 1959. In the annals of Dickdom, Time Out of Joint represents the same visionary mark of his talent as 'Meet the Beatles' did for The Beatles. A must read for any PKD fan.