I remember reading this book in French translation (in a binge of lesserknown PKD novels, of which “(A. Lincoln,) Simulacrum” is imho the next one to get a Hollywood treatment, if ever there was need for one, as many of its themes got pilfered in recent scifi tv/movies like Black Mirror, built around bringing back “the dead” through AI, built on memorabilia and/or memories), and remember quite liking it, despite its rather loose, rambling structure, or perhaps even *because* of it.
Part is mostly because PKD always got excellent French translators, due to the French recognising his genius at mixing weird scifi with common people, and common psychological & psychoanalytical science. It is a stark difference in literary ambition from the common US scifi schlock reaching us in Europe, that still often built on heroic and hollywoodian colonist xenophobic monsterfighting tropes.
I have always been convinced PKD’s dystopian postapocalyptic novels/stories (there have been several) lent themselves to longrunning prestige tv more than to movies, because of their often loose structure (even wellknown movies like Total Recall and Blade Runner impose a narrative structure and a Hollywoodian “Save the Cat” beat structure totally missing in PKD’s novels/stories).
Mainly because PKD had the drug- or mental illness-induced tendency to seemingly randomly shift focus or perspective, lose the main thread for sidekicks, and have an infinity of little stories-within-stories, and a hint of a larger-than-shown “world beyond the story”.
I still vividly remember the character of the astronaut stuck in his space station, playing his vast vinyl (?) collection as some godly DJ, as all other media lost hope and broadcasting ability, losing his astronaut wife in his space station to cancer (or dying himself? memory is getting hazy) and I can more easily see this, and Hoppy’s rise-to-power, and many other “vignettes” become part of a prestige series developing the many, deeply flawed, humans (not heroes) PKD loved to write.
Despite its “Nuclear Powers create Superpowers” subplot, it eschews the black & white morality of Stephen King’s (repeatedly adapted, yet always annoyingly railroady) The Stand.
PKD’s post-apocalysm is ultimately thoroughly *humanist* like McCormack’s The Road, PD James’ (The) Children of Men, Naughty Dog Studio’s The Last of Us or (more optimistic) Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven, and their adaptations.
Problems aren’t solved by extraordinary human “heroes” (as in power fantasies like Mad Max), but by ordinary, flawed, suffering, wellmeaning yet barely “heroic” humans being human.
The threats don’t come from monsters, but from fellow humans who lost faith in the power of simply being human.
In this sense, Bluthgeld/Bloodmoney truly is the “monster” just as Victor Frankenstein is the one true monster (not Hoppy).
I share PKD’s loathing for the kind of public intellectual/scientist who *might* trigger a WW3 or 2nd Chernobyll (or Bhopal, or Exxon Valdez) by isolating themselves from resposibility (“I only did the calculations!”) and read a lot of Wernher Von Braun in his rationalisations (the analogy *I* made when reading Dr Bloodmoney and suspecting a Project Paperclip name change).
PKD grants his “monster” Bluthgeld (literally “paid for blood”) an albeit confused conscience (humanity!) gnawing at his sanity.
But it’s funny how PKD always loved ultra-Dickensian names, telling part of its metaphorical meaning through wordplay and allusion.
Psychiatrist Stockstill references the German & Dutch words for “unmoving”, PKD’s self-injected author surrogate in Valis & other stories, has always been Horselover (latin: Philo-Hippos) Fat (Dick is German/Dutch for “fat”).
Mr Tree as chosen sobriquet, becomes an alias to Mr Baum. Bluthgeld literally sees himself, a flawed Nuclear Scientist, as the origin/father of Nuclear War: Mr Bomb.
"Problems aren’t solved by extraordinary human “heroes” (as in power fantasies like Mad Max), but by ordinary, flawed, suffering, wellmeaning yet barely “heroic” humans being human."
Not in the first three iconic flicks.
After loosing his family, his ambition, and his place in society Max became nothing more than a scavenger living off the decaying corpse of the society that had given his life meaning and purpose. He was a merc who would do anything if it filed his gas tank to keep him on the move and, coincidentally, from settling anywhere and developing new ties to new people in a new place.
In other words Max was a " ordinary, flawed, suffering, wellmeaning yet barely “heroic” human being human."
Agree, but at most at the start, in the first movie, where he has a *life*, a job (as the last vestige of a "police" force), colleagues, a wife/gf to lose, etc…
In the subsequent films, and in our public imagination, he becomes the eternal (postapocalyptic) lone rogue survivalist warrior, the Snake Plisskin, Aragorn, or Duke Nukem.
Who at most gets a temporary sidekick (sometimes a temporary random kid/sidekick, in most hollywoodian franchises a dog), to avoid weird monologues and have a person to talk to in front of a camera.
It's the guntotin', selfsufficient "prepper culture" ideal. Every bit of background is mostly to lend a glow of strength to his lonesome cowboy schtick. No longer part of his life or any life he would get back to. Sure he's "mad", but the psychological aspect is only superficial.
It's a far cry from the true vulnerability of PKD's (or McCormack's) post-apocalyptical protagonists.
Hollywood Americana repeatedly stresses the "cool factor" of being a loner who "cannot settle down". Most (recent) thoughtful postapocalyptica, informed by our insight in the human psyche, tends to stress how horribly painful loneliness is. How much of "being human" is 'being humanS" (plural!).
The fact tin cans, fuel, and bullets would fast become scarce in a no-longer-industrial world, is often ignored in postapocalyptical Hollywood Americana (and yes, I know Mad Max is Australian). Because it *seems* to glorify Postapocalyptical Prepper Culture, but is mostly reminiscent of Wild West mythbuilding.
Read this way, most "heroic" postapocalyptica tend to rehash Wild West tropes (The Lone Ranger coming to town, the ever present desert, up to the horse/train chase and shootout, but especially the feeling one can survive on their own with a six-shooter and a horse (guns and cars), but nobody should hope for the Cavalry.
If you think that Max has any resemblance to Aragorn in LOTR then I'm guessing that you've never actually read LOTR, especially if you consider Max to be a " lone rogue survivalist warrior' whatever that is.
While Aragorn could and did operate alone while in the wilds of the lost Northern Kingdom he Was nonetheless part of a larger organization consisting of the remaining members of the noble houses of the Northern Kingdom and individuals in this organization were known as 'Rangers'. Rangers could act independantly or in concert with each other and their organization was largly responsible for keeping the geographic area around the Shire free from the evils of the outside world. Aragorn was also a member of that branch of Elf society living in Rivendell by virtue of his lineage and his upbringing by Elrond and His house: he thus had real links to an ancient and long standing social organizations. Max on the other hand no such links after the loss of his family and it would be hard if not difficult to claim that he did what he did for the refinary enclave or Bartertown out of any sense of allegience or fraternity with them: he did what he did merely because the two had something he wanted and he could do something for them to get what he wanted. Likewise unlike Max, who recognized no higher authority beyond himeslf, Aragorn can and did recognize titular and hereditary heads of state when the situation called for it and indeed offered his services to them on occasion(he fought for the King of Rohan despite the fact that Aragorn was by right Theoden's overlord. Aragorn also served the ruling Stewerd of Gondor in his youth under an assumed name on a campagne in Harad) He did that because recognizing authority was a long accepted practice in Middle Earth and because as one noble born he had to adhere to that standard as an example to the people that he might lead and eventually rule. Max Did treat with authority in the form of Papgallo(Road Warrior) and Aunty Entity(Beyond Thunderdome) but it would be impossible to claim that Max's motives for doing so were anything other than pure self interest: certainly you could never clain that Max did what he did what he did in those two instances out any sense of obiligation to them as heads of state.
Please, I wouldn't want to make this a "Nerd Lore Showdown", I was comparing these (Snake Plisskin, Duke Nukem, Mad Max, Aragorn,… and I could add a handful of others) because they embody the *archetype* of the Lone Rogue Survivalist Warrior.
Because they (Mad Max and Aragorn-like figures) became archetypes in public imagination, and actual blueprints in books, movies, comics, and tv series. So much so their archetype also became a notorious type of player in tabletop roleplaying games.
TVtropes calls them "The Drifter" (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDrifter), Joseph "Hero's Journey" Campbell calls them "The Stranger". They always have a "mysterious past" and "prefer to work alone" despite of course having more connections than any real "loner" would have.
They are reminiscent of popular 80s serialized action dramas (the old Hulk TV series, the wandering angel in Highway to Heaven, Kung Fu reprising the Wild West version with a twist,…) because it was easy to not have to deal with complex backstories of secondary characters. Which is why it fits the "uncrowned King in exile" Aragorn was, Lucky Luke's "Poor Lonesome Cowboy", and most cowboy AND post-apocalyptic heroes.
Both the Wild West, Tolkien's Middle Earth, as any Post-Apocalyptic setting, were ideal, as pockets of adventure and civilisation, can be as interconnected or far away as fiction demands.
In Tabletop Roleplaying Games, fantasy, but also especially post-apocalyptic and western ones, there's always a couple of beginning players who absolutely want to play the "competent mysterious loner clad in black, who doesn't need the party, has 10 pages of secret background lore written out, but has no reason to actually join the party". (All of these players casually forget that while "cool", in regular fiction these loners always get a subtle, personalised motivator written into the story).
Back to the (Post) Apocalyps though, I'm honestly wondering in what ways the US mythologizing the Wild West, has fed into Prepper Culture, as well as into Post-Apocalyptical fiction.
Deserts being the Freudian archetype of the virgin unconscious mind (re: the many surrealists embracing this desertscape in their art), and its many Biblical connotations, the Wild Western Desert and Post-Apocalyptical Desert are both places of rebirth, challenge, and reinvention.
The trifecta of the Wild West, Prepper Culture, and Post-Apocalyptica seem typically US-based. It is quite possible these have always been mutually reinforcing each other.
That mysterious cover image at the top? That's the psychic fetus-in-fetu after it gets loose. I haven't read the book for fifty years, but that image has stayed with me.
Think about this phrase for a while: "a myth, is a truth, which cannot be told in any other way".
Is Dick 'signalling'? That is, is he telling a fantastical myth because there is no other way to say it. So a signal is used.
Perhaps because what he's really pointing at with his signal will bring him a lot of trouble if told directly - he was well aware(or paranoid about the feds).
Or is it that the truth he's actually signalling with his myth makes him complicit in a collective misanthropy with all the shame and guilt that must bring to an otherwise honest man.
Maybe a bit of both?
There's a hell of a lot of irrational, nonsensical shame and guilt been going around over the past few decades since civil rights law started to gain power. And its been exploited very successfully indeed. Dick may have sensed this very early on.
I remember reading this book in French translation (in a binge of lesserknown PKD novels, of which “(A. Lincoln,) Simulacrum” is imho the next one to get a Hollywood treatment, if ever there was need for one, as many of its themes got pilfered in recent scifi tv/movies like Black Mirror, built around bringing back “the dead” through AI, built on memorabilia and/or memories), and remember quite liking it, despite its rather loose, rambling structure, or perhaps even *because* of it.
Part is mostly because PKD always got excellent French translators, due to the French recognising his genius at mixing weird scifi with common people, and common psychological & psychoanalytical science. It is a stark difference in literary ambition from the common US scifi schlock reaching us in Europe, that still often built on heroic and hollywoodian colonist xenophobic monsterfighting tropes.
I have always been convinced PKD’s dystopian postapocalyptic novels/stories (there have been several) lent themselves to longrunning prestige tv more than to movies, because of their often loose structure (even wellknown movies like Total Recall and Blade Runner impose a narrative structure and a Hollywoodian “Save the Cat” beat structure totally missing in PKD’s novels/stories).
Mainly because PKD had the drug- or mental illness-induced tendency to seemingly randomly shift focus or perspective, lose the main thread for sidekicks, and have an infinity of little stories-within-stories, and a hint of a larger-than-shown “world beyond the story”.
I still vividly remember the character of the astronaut stuck in his space station, playing his vast vinyl (?) collection as some godly DJ, as all other media lost hope and broadcasting ability, losing his astronaut wife in his space station to cancer (or dying himself? memory is getting hazy) and I can more easily see this, and Hoppy’s rise-to-power, and many other “vignettes” become part of a prestige series developing the many, deeply flawed, humans (not heroes) PKD loved to write.
Despite its “Nuclear Powers create Superpowers” subplot, it eschews the black & white morality of Stephen King’s (repeatedly adapted, yet always annoyingly railroady) The Stand.
PKD’s post-apocalysm is ultimately thoroughly *humanist* like McCormack’s The Road, PD James’ (The) Children of Men, Naughty Dog Studio’s The Last of Us or (more optimistic) Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven, and their adaptations.
Problems aren’t solved by extraordinary human “heroes” (as in power fantasies like Mad Max), but by ordinary, flawed, suffering, wellmeaning yet barely “heroic” humans being human.
The threats don’t come from monsters, but from fellow humans who lost faith in the power of simply being human.
In this sense, Bluthgeld/Bloodmoney truly is the “monster” just as Victor Frankenstein is the one true monster (not Hoppy).
I share PKD’s loathing for the kind of public intellectual/scientist who *might* trigger a WW3 or 2nd Chernobyll (or Bhopal, or Exxon Valdez) by isolating themselves from resposibility (“I only did the calculations!”) and read a lot of Wernher Von Braun in his rationalisations (the analogy *I* made when reading Dr Bloodmoney and suspecting a Project Paperclip name change).
PKD grants his “monster” Bluthgeld (literally “paid for blood”) an albeit confused conscience (humanity!) gnawing at his sanity.
But it’s funny how PKD always loved ultra-Dickensian names, telling part of its metaphorical meaning through wordplay and allusion.
Psychiatrist Stockstill references the German & Dutch words for “unmoving”, PKD’s self-injected author surrogate in Valis & other stories, has always been Horselover (latin: Philo-Hippos) Fat (Dick is German/Dutch for “fat”).
Mr Tree as chosen sobriquet, becomes an alias to Mr Baum. Bluthgeld literally sees himself, a flawed Nuclear Scientist, as the origin/father of Nuclear War: Mr Bomb.
"Problems aren’t solved by extraordinary human “heroes” (as in power fantasies like Mad Max), but by ordinary, flawed, suffering, wellmeaning yet barely “heroic” humans being human."
Not in the first three iconic flicks.
After loosing his family, his ambition, and his place in society Max became nothing more than a scavenger living off the decaying corpse of the society that had given his life meaning and purpose. He was a merc who would do anything if it filed his gas tank to keep him on the move and, coincidentally, from settling anywhere and developing new ties to new people in a new place.
In other words Max was a " ordinary, flawed, suffering, wellmeaning yet barely “heroic” human being human."
Agree, but at most at the start, in the first movie, where he has a *life*, a job (as the last vestige of a "police" force), colleagues, a wife/gf to lose, etc…
In the subsequent films, and in our public imagination, he becomes the eternal (postapocalyptic) lone rogue survivalist warrior, the Snake Plisskin, Aragorn, or Duke Nukem.
Who at most gets a temporary sidekick (sometimes a temporary random kid/sidekick, in most hollywoodian franchises a dog), to avoid weird monologues and have a person to talk to in front of a camera.
It's the guntotin', selfsufficient "prepper culture" ideal. Every bit of background is mostly to lend a glow of strength to his lonesome cowboy schtick. No longer part of his life or any life he would get back to. Sure he's "mad", but the psychological aspect is only superficial.
It's a far cry from the true vulnerability of PKD's (or McCormack's) post-apocalyptical protagonists.
Hollywood Americana repeatedly stresses the "cool factor" of being a loner who "cannot settle down". Most (recent) thoughtful postapocalyptica, informed by our insight in the human psyche, tends to stress how horribly painful loneliness is. How much of "being human" is 'being humanS" (plural!).
The fact tin cans, fuel, and bullets would fast become scarce in a no-longer-industrial world, is often ignored in postapocalyptical Hollywood Americana (and yes, I know Mad Max is Australian). Because it *seems* to glorify Postapocalyptical Prepper Culture, but is mostly reminiscent of Wild West mythbuilding.
Read this way, most "heroic" postapocalyptica tend to rehash Wild West tropes (The Lone Ranger coming to town, the ever present desert, up to the horse/train chase and shootout, but especially the feeling one can survive on their own with a six-shooter and a horse (guns and cars), but nobody should hope for the Cavalry.
Lawless, Godless, Boundless.
And mostly libertarian pipedreams.
If you think that Max has any resemblance to Aragorn in LOTR then I'm guessing that you've never actually read LOTR, especially if you consider Max to be a " lone rogue survivalist warrior' whatever that is.
While Aragorn could and did operate alone while in the wilds of the lost Northern Kingdom he Was nonetheless part of a larger organization consisting of the remaining members of the noble houses of the Northern Kingdom and individuals in this organization were known as 'Rangers'. Rangers could act independantly or in concert with each other and their organization was largly responsible for keeping the geographic area around the Shire free from the evils of the outside world. Aragorn was also a member of that branch of Elf society living in Rivendell by virtue of his lineage and his upbringing by Elrond and His house: he thus had real links to an ancient and long standing social organizations. Max on the other hand no such links after the loss of his family and it would be hard if not difficult to claim that he did what he did for the refinary enclave or Bartertown out of any sense of allegience or fraternity with them: he did what he did merely because the two had something he wanted and he could do something for them to get what he wanted. Likewise unlike Max, who recognized no higher authority beyond himeslf, Aragorn can and did recognize titular and hereditary heads of state when the situation called for it and indeed offered his services to them on occasion(he fought for the King of Rohan despite the fact that Aragorn was by right Theoden's overlord. Aragorn also served the ruling Stewerd of Gondor in his youth under an assumed name on a campagne in Harad) He did that because recognizing authority was a long accepted practice in Middle Earth and because as one noble born he had to adhere to that standard as an example to the people that he might lead and eventually rule. Max Did treat with authority in the form of Papgallo(Road Warrior) and Aunty Entity(Beyond Thunderdome) but it would be impossible to claim that Max's motives for doing so were anything other than pure self interest: certainly you could never clain that Max did what he did what he did in those two instances out any sense of obiligation to them as heads of state.
Please, I wouldn't want to make this a "Nerd Lore Showdown", I was comparing these (Snake Plisskin, Duke Nukem, Mad Max, Aragorn,… and I could add a handful of others) because they embody the *archetype* of the Lone Rogue Survivalist Warrior.
Because they (Mad Max and Aragorn-like figures) became archetypes in public imagination, and actual blueprints in books, movies, comics, and tv series. So much so their archetype also became a notorious type of player in tabletop roleplaying games.
TVtropes calls them "The Drifter" (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDrifter), Joseph "Hero's Journey" Campbell calls them "The Stranger". They always have a "mysterious past" and "prefer to work alone" despite of course having more connections than any real "loner" would have.
They are reminiscent of popular 80s serialized action dramas (the old Hulk TV series, the wandering angel in Highway to Heaven, Kung Fu reprising the Wild West version with a twist,…) because it was easy to not have to deal with complex backstories of secondary characters. Which is why it fits the "uncrowned King in exile" Aragorn was, Lucky Luke's "Poor Lonesome Cowboy", and most cowboy AND post-apocalyptic heroes.
Both the Wild West, Tolkien's Middle Earth, as any Post-Apocalyptic setting, were ideal, as pockets of adventure and civilisation, can be as interconnected or far away as fiction demands.
In Tabletop Roleplaying Games, fantasy, but also especially post-apocalyptic and western ones, there's always a couple of beginning players who absolutely want to play the "competent mysterious loner clad in black, who doesn't need the party, has 10 pages of secret background lore written out, but has no reason to actually join the party". (All of these players casually forget that while "cool", in regular fiction these loners always get a subtle, personalised motivator written into the story).
Back to the (Post) Apocalyps though, I'm honestly wondering in what ways the US mythologizing the Wild West, has fed into Prepper Culture, as well as into Post-Apocalyptical fiction.
Deserts being the Freudian archetype of the virgin unconscious mind (re: the many surrealists embracing this desertscape in their art), and its many Biblical connotations, the Wild Western Desert and Post-Apocalyptical Desert are both places of rebirth, challenge, and reinvention.
The trifecta of the Wild West, Prepper Culture, and Post-Apocalyptica seem typically US-based. It is quite possible these have always been mutually reinforcing each other.
That mysterious cover image at the top? That's the psychic fetus-in-fetu after it gets loose. I haven't read the book for fifty years, but that image has stayed with me.
An odd Dick novel, not entirely successful. I haven't read it for years, but it does fit within Dick's focus on psychotherapy.
Think about this phrase for a while: "a myth, is a truth, which cannot be told in any other way".
Is Dick 'signalling'? That is, is he telling a fantastical myth because there is no other way to say it. So a signal is used.
Perhaps because what he's really pointing at with his signal will bring him a lot of trouble if told directly - he was well aware(or paranoid about the feds).
Or is it that the truth he's actually signalling with his myth makes him complicit in a collective misanthropy with all the shame and guilt that must bring to an otherwise honest man.
Maybe a bit of both?
There's a hell of a lot of irrational, nonsensical shame and guilt been going around over the past few decades since civil rights law started to gain power. And its been exploited very successfully indeed. Dick may have sensed this very early on.
See here for further analysis:
https://www.northstokelife.com/2026/05/mind-control-is-myth.html
and here to read more about the meaning, cause and effect of 'signalling'
https://www.northstokelife.com/2026/02/signalling-obedience.html