Counter-Clock World

By: Philip K. Dick

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

In Counter-Clock World, time has begun moving backward. People greet each other with "goodbye", blow smoke into cigarettes, and rise from the dead. When one of those rising dead is the famous and powerful prophet Anarch Peak, a number of groups start a mad scramble to find him first - but their motives are not exactly benevolent, because Anarch Peak may just be worth more dead than alive, and these groups will do whatever they must to send him back to the grave.

What would you do if your long-dead relatives started coming back? Who would take care of them? And what if they preferred being dead? In Counter-Clock World, one of Dick’s most theological and philosophical novels, these troubling questions are addressed; though, as always, you may have to figure out the answers yourself.

©1967 Philip K. Dick (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Our Man in the Graveyard

Place there is none; we go backward and forward, and there is no place.
-- St. Augustine.

"Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi expugnata dabunt labem putresque ruinas (So likewise the walls of the great universe assailed on all sides shall suffer decay, and fall into ruin."
-- Lucretius, Book ii 1144 1145.

I SAW God. Do you doubt it?
Do you dare to doubt it?
I saw the Almighty Man. His hand
Was resting on a mountain, and
He looked upon the World and all about it:
I saw him plainer than you see me now,
You mustn't doubt it.

He was not satisfied;
His look was all dissatisfied.
His beard swung on a wind far out of sight
Behind the world's curve, and there was light
Most fearful from His forehead, and He sighed,
"That star went always wrong, and from the start
I was dissatisfied."

He lifted up His hand—
I say He heaved a dreadful hand
Over the spinning Earth. Then I said, "Stay,
You must not strike it, God; I'm in the way;
And I will never move from where I stand."
He said, "Dear child, I feared that you were dead,"
And stayed His hand.
-- James Stephens, What Tomas An Buile Said In a Pub

Three organizations vie for the recently resurrected body of the Anarch Thomas Peak. The dead prophet and founder of the negro Udi cult. One man, Sebastian Hermes, is trying to sort through the three groups and their various reasons for wanting him. He runs the Flask of Hermes Vivarium, a small company devoted to recovering the old-born (those whose flesh and particles are migrating back, finding their onetime places, re-forming, putting off corruption). Earth's final mortalities having been June of 1986. After that, time reversed. The dead are now rising. They need a place to recover. They need a seller and a broker. Sebastian Hermes is that man. He is definitely that man for the Anarch Peak, this negro prophet risen, quoting Plotinus, Plato, Kant, Leibnitz, and Spinoza. However, he has to work around the motives of the women in his life, and the interests of a bunch of Fascist librarians associated with the People's Topical Library and the Elders of Udi (a weird combination of Black Panthers and Latter-day Universalists).

This is a pretty straightforward story (run backwards as it is). As SF it is probably not PKD's best (some of his backwards time conventions seem tired and worn-out), but when he is quoting Lucretius, Erigena, and Irish poets and talking about death and resurrection, I love it. For me it is less literary than Amis' Time's Arrow, but I liked it more personally. So, as SF it is three stars, but emotionally it was 5 stars. I'll compromise and give it four stars because sic itur ad astra, baby.

Another great mindbender from PKD

Not one of his best known or most loved but still displays his singular imagination. Bizarre, funny at times, compelling, tense.

The original short story was better

This is one of many of Dick’s short stories that became a full novel. This time I don’t think Dick did a great job. In the short story he explores the curious aspects of the intriguing premise of this world where things move in reverse, except for human thought process, including the religious implications. The novel, however, wastes time on a plain uninteresting protagonist and his marital problems, with some action and intrigue peppered here and there, probably by request of editor.

not his best work

love PKD, but go buy Ubik instead. reading is fine but story is mediocre at best.

Better than expected

This is better that I expected for it to be but it is not a top novel.