Sunday, December 6, 2009
The Variable Man
I am reading Philip K. Dick's novella "The Variable Man". Losties take note. Imagine my delight to discover that it is about a man who is dragged into the future, causing unexpected consequences. Faraday uses the term "variable" to describe a human being's ability to change the pre-ordained time line. Is this purely coincidental? A cursory examination of Lostipedia shows no references to Dick's use of the term, or to the novella itself. Lost DOES refer to Dick's uber-strange novel VALIS, about a computer becoming a god. Interesting!
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PKD > LOST
ReplyDeleteI must say I wasn't all that impressed with PKD's Variable Man. It depended on the idea that a backward country bumpkin brought into the future by accident could fix some very sophisticated equipment that even the scientists and technicians of the day couldn't. Shades of Battlefield Earth.
ReplyDeleteA lot of those short stories from early on in his career are pretty weak and Twilight Zone-y. Some of them are pretty amusing, though, especially the ones that Hollywood picks up and turns into completely different movies.
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