''The Unteleported Man'' (later republished in a greatly expanded version as ''Lies, Inc.'') is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer
Philip K. Dick, first published as a novella in 1964. It is about a future in which a one-way teleportation technology enables 40 million people to emigrate to a colony named Whale's Mouth on an Earth-like planet, which advertisements show as a lush green utopia. When the owner of a failing spaceship travel firm tries to take the 18-year flight to the colony to bring back any unhappy colonists, powerful forces try to stop him from finding out the truth.
Plot summary
A new teleportation technology ("telpor") makes travel by spaceship obsolete. A new colony in the
Fomalhaut
Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Piscis Austrinus, the "Southern Fish", and one of the brightest stars in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation Alpha Piscis Austrini, which is Latinized from Î ...
star system, Whale's Mouth, has been the destination for forty million emigrants, but it is a one-way trip - teleportation back to Earth is supposedly impossible. The only way to return is by spaceship, an eighteen-year journey for passengers who are subjected to a limited form of suspended animation.
Rachmael ben Applebaum, whose spaceship business has been ruined by teleportation, decides to make the journey to Whale's Mouth in his own craft, the ''Omphalos''. Driven by a powerful hunch that the utopian claims may be false, he chooses to make the trip the old-fashioned way in case some of the colonists wish to return. Powerful figures oppose his journey.
''Lies, Inc.'', the expanded version of ''The Unteleported Man'', includes a new first chapter and about one hundred pages of additional exposition. This previously unpublished material begins in Chapter 8 with the phrase, "Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils." What then ensues is a truly horrific drug trip, described in excruciating detail, that Rachmael endures after arriving at his destination and being hit by an
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...
-tipped dart. The expansion material finally terminates in Chapter 15 just before the repeated phrase, "Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils."
Confusion may arise in the reader, however, over Dick's attributing at least part of the perceptual chaos to a deliberately incorporated effect of the teleportation process. Circumstances had forced Rachmael to abandon his original plans and to journey to Newcolonizedland via energy transfer instead. Sinister modifications to the "Telpor" technology apparently cause its victims to experience a variety of so-called "paraworlds" which are thought to actually exist, somehow, as viable alternate realities. Participants are fearful that consensus or agreement amongst themselves as to the paraworlds' descriptions could somehow cause one or the other paraworld to manifest itself ever more aggressively until eventually displacing the current reality-paradigm altogether. And Rachmael's own paraworld experience is said to be the worst one of all.
Characters
*Rachmael ben Applebaum: The story's protagonist. Former owner of Applebaum Enterprise, a spaceship firm. Ben Applebaum is implied to be of Jewish-Israeli descent, which is a particular source of distaste for the Third Reich-esque German authority figures who he opposes.
*Theodoric Ferry: Leader of Trails of Hoffman, Ltd., which runs the teleportation machines.
*Matson Glazer-Holliday: Head of the police organization Lies, Incorporated.
*Freya Holm: Matson Glazer-Holliday's mistress, and an employee of Lies, Incorporated.
*Sepp von Einem: Creator of the telpor device, and employee of Trails of Hoffman, Ltd.
*Gregory Gloch: von Einem's young apprentice and a skilled weapons designer. Gloch is "proleptic", and has become displaced in time.
*Al Dosker: Lies, Incorporated's "ace pilot". Dosker is physically described as a "small and shrewd-looking" African-American.
Publishing history
This particular book has an unusual publishing history compared to other novels by Dick. The story originally appeared in ''
Fantastic
The fantastic (french: le fantastique) is a subgenre of literary works characterized by the ambiguous presentation of seemingly supernatural forces.
Bulgarian-French structuralist literary critic Tzvetan Todorov originated the concept, charac ...
'' Magazine in 1964. The story rights were then bought by
Ace Books but Dick's subsequent revisions to bring the manuscript up to novel-length were rejected and the original story was published in 1966. Its first novel publication was as one half of
Ace Double
American company Ace Books began publishing genre fiction starting in 1952. Initially these were mostly in tĂȘte-bĂȘche format with the ends of the two parts meeting in the middle and with a divider between them which functioned as the rear cover ...
G-602, bound
dos-Ă -dos with ''The Mind Monsters'' by
Howard L. Cory.
In 1983, the expanded 80,000-word story was published by
Berkley Books. Dick had been revising the material to include his original 1965 expansions (some pages of the 1965 manuscript were missing, leading to continuity problems), before he died in March 1982, leaving the revision incomplete. The original story was published, with Dick's revisions, in 1984 as ''Lies, Inc.'' The missing pages were found and published in 1985 in the Philip K. Dick Society Newsletter #8. In 2004 a new edition of ''Lies, Inc'' was published which included the found pages.
Reception
Dave Langford
David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter ''Ansible'', and holds the all-time record for mos ...
reviewed ''Lies Inc.'' for ''
White Dwarf
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes ...
'' #56, and stated that "I'm not sure ''Lies, Inc's'' maze of nightmares does in fact make sense in objective plot terms: it's a marvellously hallucinatory experience, though, far better than the original ''Unteleported Man''."
Reviews
*Review by C. J. Henderson
s by Chris Henderson(1983) in ''
Dragon Magazine
Dragon Magazine may refer to:
* ''Dragon'' (magazine), an American magazine for ''Dungeons & Dragons'' players
* ''Dragon Magazine'' (Fujimi Shobo), a Japanese light novel magazine
{{disambig ...
'', November 1983
*Review by Frank Catalano (1984) in ''Amazing Science Fiction'', March 1984
*Review
rench
The Rench is a right-hand tributary of the Rhine in the Ortenau ( Central Baden, Germany). It rises on the southern edge of the Northern Black Forest at Kniebis near Bad Griesbach im Schwarzwald. The source farthest from the mouth is that of the ...
by Michel Cossement (1984) in ''SFĂšre'', #14
*Review
rench
The Rench is a right-hand tributary of the Rhine in the Ortenau ( Central Baden, Germany). It rises on the southern edge of the Northern Black Forest at Kniebis near Bad Griesbach im Schwarzwald. The source farthest from the mouth is that of the ...
by Stéphane Nicot? (1984) in ''Fiction'', #351
*Review
rench
The Rench is a right-hand tributary of the Rhine in the Ortenau ( Central Baden, Germany). It rises on the southern edge of the Northern Black Forest at Kniebis near Bad Griesbach im Schwarzwald. The source farthest from the mouth is that of the ...
by Pierre-Paul Durastanti (1984) in ''Fiction'', #351
*Review
rench
The Rench is a right-hand tributary of the Rhine in the Ortenau ( Central Baden, Germany). It rises on the southern edge of the Northern Black Forest at Kniebis near Bad Griesbach im Schwarzwald. The source farthest from the mouth is that of the ...
by Dominique Warfa (1984) in ''Fiction'', #351
*Review by Dan Chow (1984) in ''
Locus
Locus (plural loci) is Latin for "place". It may refer to:
Entertainment
* Locus (comics), a Marvel Comics mutant villainess, a member of the Mutant Liberation Front
* ''Locus'' (magazine), science fiction and fantasy magazine
** ''Locus Award' ...
'', #283 August 1984
*Review
erman Erman RaĆĄiti may refer to:
Given name
* Erman Bulucu (born 1989), Turkish footballer
* Erman Eltemur (born 1993), Turkish karateka
* Erman GĂŒraçar (born 1974), Turkish footballer
* Erman Kılıç (born 1983), Turkish footballer
* Erman Kunter (b ...
by Uwe Anton (1985) in ''Science Fiction Times'', Februar 1985
*Review by Edward James (1986) in ''Paperback Inferno'', #60
*Review by Bruce Gillespie (1989) in ''SF Commentary'', #67
Sources
* Butler, Andrew M., âLSD, Lying Ink and Lies, Inc.â ''Science-Fiction Studies'', #96 32:2, July, pp. 265â80, 2005.
References
External links
*
''The Unteleported Man/Lies, Inc.'' cover art gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Unteleported Man, The
1966 American novels
1966 science fiction novels
American science fiction novels
Novels by Philip K. Dick
Short stories by Philip K. Dick
Works originally published in Fantastic (magazine)
Ace Books books