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Fredric Jameson, ‘After Armageddon: Character Systems in Dr. Bloodmoney’

Suvin is not the only well-known name in the 1975 special edition. In the same issue Fredric Jameson offers his own take on Dick’s late ‘metaphysical’ novels, describing them as Dick’s ‘most striking novels’ (31). While Jameson’s ostensible goal is to analyse the character systems in Dr. Bloodmoney, his choice of this novel is motivated by following the metaphysical thread in Dick’s works. Jameson identifies the ‘reality fluctuation’ and the ‘nightmarish uncertainty’ it causes Dick’s characters as a ‘familiar’ part of Dick’s novels (32). Jameson describes the reality fluctuations as moments when Dick unseats the categories of subjectivity and objectivity by causing ‘the psychic world’ to ‘go outside’, using devices such as drugs, schizophrenia and sometimes the sf trope of special super-human powers.
In general, the effect of these passages, in which the narrative line comes unstuck from its referent and begins to enjoy the bewildering autonomy of a kind of temporal Moebius strip, is to efface the boundary between real and hallucinatory altogether, and to discredit the reader’s otherwise inevitable question as to which of the events witnessed is to be considered ‘true.’ (‘After Armageddon’ 32)
In the above extract, Jameson describes an effect in Dick’s writing, and suggests its purpose is to blur the lines between objective and subjective, real and hallucinatory. This then allows Dick to ‘transcend the opposition between the subjective and the objective’ (‘After Armageddon’ 32). According to Jameson, Dick doesn’t merely erode the boundaries between subjective and objective, or knock down the so-called objective reality in favour of the subjective; Dick transcends the two, affirming the truth of both, apparently contradictory, understandings of the world, making the question of truth moot.
Jameson’s account has much to recommend it. For one thing, Dick’s novels tend to end in profound ambiguity. The objective/subjective, absolute reality/contingent reality dilemmas are usually left unresolved by the final pages. Jameson’s account matches this observation, since the intention of transcending the divide between objective and subjective would be negated if one were privileged over the other. Dick’s protagonists are left to go on living without the certainty of knowing what is inside their heads, what is outside them and what the difference really is. They can only do so by transcending the two categories, accepting both as important and true. Generally speaking, this is how Dick’s novels tend to end: they often close on a protagonist who, after a long pursuit for the truth, is forced to be satisfied with the mix of subjective and objective understanding that has been allocated to him or, in the case of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, her. Of necessity, the protagonist is required to transcend these categories in order to go on with his or her life. For instance in Eye in the Sky (ES 1957), after a speedy tour through four different subjective universes, the protagonist, Jack Hamilton, having been confronted with the terrifying contingency of his universe, resolves to start a hi-fi equipment business. Rather than becoming immersed in the problem, the protagonist transcends it. Similarly, at the close of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the protagonist, Rick Deckard, emerges from a bewildering maze of simulacra and simulations only to find that what appeared to be a transcendent sign of a higher power – the discovery of a live toad in the desert, a sacred animal in the Mercerist religion – is not a genuine toad but an artificial copy.
Deckard is forced to accept the false toad as his miracle and go on with his life knowing that at the heart of his spiritual revelation lies a falsehood, turning a piece of transcendental surety into the same ambiguity that characterised his previous existence. Rather than trying to work out the truth of the matter, Deckard goes to bed, the issue of truth and simulation indefinitely postponed as the novel ends before he wakes. Jameson’s description of Dick’s method explains the tightrope Dick seems to walk in every novel, carefully avoiding leaning too far in any direction, and careful to unseat any explanation that seems to offer certainty. Jameson considers Dick’s ‘solution’ to the problem of objective and subjective to be perfectly in tune with ‘our fragmented existence under capitalism’ in which we have a ‘simultaneous presence in the separate compartments of private and public worlds’ (33). It seems strange that Jameson would consider existing in both the ‘private and public worlds’ unique to capitalism, but it makes no difference to his argument.
Jameson’s contention that Dick is trying to make the question of truth irrelevant and transcend the categories of subjective and objective has some problems. If Dick wants his readers to transcend the question of what is real, wouldn’t the driving force of the novels be weakened? Why do Dick’s characters engage in so much speculation about the question? Jameson’s contention is not as straightforward as it might initially seem. Jameson acknowledges this when he turns to the main target of his article: Dr. Bloodmoney.
Jameson sees Dr. Bloodmoney as a problem for Dick and the tightrope of ambiguity and transcendence Dick walks when dealing with the question of reality. The atomic blast is a unique referent; it can’t be dismissed as ambiguous possibility because such a dismissal ‘lies outside the range of Dick’s aesthetic possibilities’ (33). The bomb confronts Dick with its reality and its finality, and he is forced to deal with it.8 Jameson suggests that Dick deals with the problem by setting up several structural oppositions in order to create self-cancelling structures in the novel and ultimately to create an opposition capable of negating the terrible reality of the terminal moment.
As is typical for one of Dick’s early commentators, Jameson is engaged in the beatification – to use Csicsery-Ronay’s term – of the science fiction writer and as such wishes to show the artistry of Dick’s work. By taking a structuralist approach, Jameson is able to identify what are often hallmarks of intentionality and artistry: structure and pattern. However, the results of his analysis seem to go beyond the available evidence. He sets up a single ‘semantic rectangle’ structure for the characters of the novel, following A.J. Greimas. This involves Jameson stretching his reading of the text in order to make the semantic rectangle work out the way he desires. For instance, the category of ‘the dead’ is defined by Jameson as ‘lacking organs’ (35). This particular definition flies in the face of our intuitive understanding of the category. Jameson uses this odd definition so Hoppy Harrington, who lacks organs, will fit along the correct side of the rectangle. Since Hoppy kills the titular Dr Bloodmoney and hence cancels out the effect of the terrible atomic referent, Jameson needs Hoppy on this side of the rectangle, opposite Bloodmoney. Hoppy would probably fit more naturally along the side defined as ‘mechanical/human’ since Hoppy is a human with mechanical prostheses.

READ INDUCTIVE AND DIALOGICAL PRINCIPLES IN THE NARRATIVE

Chapter 1: Philip K. Dick’s Literary Critics .
Reality, Ideology and Dick’s Early Critics (1975-1981)
Darko Suvin, ‘PKD’s Opus: Artifice as Refuge and World View.’ .
Fredric Jameson, ‘After Armageddon: Character Systems in Dr. Bloodmoney’
Peter Fitting, ‘Ubik: The Deconstruction of Bourgeois SF’ .
Peter Fitting, ‘Reality as Ideological Construct: A Reading of Five Novels by Philip K. Dick’
Chapter 2: A Postmodern Prophet (1981-)
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation .
Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Slusser, ‘History, Historicity, Story’
Golumbia, ‘Resisting “The World”: Philip K. Dick, Cultural Studies, and Metaphysical Realism’
Rossi, ‘Fourfold Symmetry: The Interplay of Fictional Levels in Five More or Less Prestigious Novels by Philip K. Dick’,
Chapter 3: ‘Roog’ and Eye in the Sky .
Roog: Establishing a Pattern
Eye in the Sky: Breaking Through to the Personal Universe
Chapter 4: Martian Time-Slip
A Somatic World
The Time-Slip
Paranoia and Mechanical People .
More Real?
Chapter 5: The Simulacra
The Simulacra
Television
Nitz, Papoolas and Advertising that Gets Under Your Skin
‘It’s becoming me and I have to be it!’ (TS 195)
Chapter 6: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
The Nightmare Vision
The Three Alterities of Palmer Eldritch
Estrangement and Science Fiction
The Familiar
The Hungry God/Machine/Alien
‘The evil, negative trinity of alienation, blurred reality, and despair’ (TSPE 229)
Chapter 7: Ubik in a Can
‘The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”’ (Ubik 28) .
Ubik: Now in Balm, Spray and Pseudoscientific-econo-deific Principle
Why put God in a Spray Can? .
Chapter 8: Ubik
Chapter 9: Dr. Bloodmoney .
Chapter 10: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Bibliography