What I'm reading: The Secret Ascension, by Michael Bishop

Yes, this particular recurring segment of the Blog of Walker is back up and running, after a brief hiatus, during which I wasn't reading much of anything that I wanted to blog about.

But today, I'd like to talk about The Secret Ascension, by Michael Bishop. First, a brief synopsis:

Michael Bishop has been producing in this decade some of the most original and important work in the science fiction field. In addition to winning the Nebula Award for short fiction, he was given a Nebula for his novel, No Enemy But Time, and he has regularly been nominated for major awards. His last novel, Ancient of Days, "a remarkable novel that will further solidify Bishop's reputation as a master of anthropological speculation" ( Publishers Weekly), was called "solid" and "absorbing" by Kirkus, "with intriguing speculations and thoughtful development." "An unqualified success," said the Austin American Statesman, and "a wonderful book," said the Richmond News Leader.

Now in The Secret Ascension Michael Bishop turns from anthropological speculation to an intensely imagined alternate universe, in which the U.S. has a permanent moonbase, Richard M. Nixon is in the fourth term of the "imperial Presidency," and an obscure novelist named Philip K. Dick has just died in California. Dick was the author of such well-regarded works as In Milton Lumky Territory and Confessions of a Crap Artist, but late in his life a number of strane manuscripts by him, unpublished, rejected everywhere, get into samizdat circulation, works of science fictional satire and social allegory that mean a great deal to their underground audience. Dick is a hero to them - and now he's dead.

And then he returns, lacking his memory, walks into a psychiatrist's office in small-town Georgia asking for helop, just in from the airport, with a cab waiting outside, meter running. Lia Pickford, M.D., is nonplussed, especially when Dick fades into nothingness and disappears, leaving the fare unpaid on the taxi. But Cal Pickford, a fan stunned by the news of his hero's death, is electrified when his wife tells him about it.

So begins a sequence of events that involves Cal in the repressive politics of the Nixon regime, the affairs of an aging movie queen, a hip but frightned Vietnamese immigrant and and old black man who works as a groom, leding up to a fateful meeting with Dick, Cal and Nixon himself on the Moon. The Secret Ascension addresses important questions such as the nature of good and evil and whose reality is this, anyway.

Michael Bishop, already at the top of the SF field, has surpassed his previous works and attained a whole new level of achievement in The Secret Ascension.

Now, the story behind me reading this book is only mildly interesting, but I'll give it to you anyway. I've recently found myself becoming more and more of a fan of science fiction author Philip K. Dick ( even though I haven't really read any of his stuff, other than essays and interviews - sort of a reverse fan process, really ), and in the course of reading up on him, The Secret Ascension, or, as it can alternatively be called, Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas, came up.

So I ordered it from the library, and started in on it, reading it over the course of the next few days. Sometimes it's a bit tough to just start cold on a writer, but Michael Bishop was up to the task. His style may not be quite what I would call elegant, but it's arresting, and it was good for the purpose that it needed to serve. In short, Michael Bishop deserves any acclaim as a writer which he recieves - and probably more on top of that. The way that the book laid itself out was rather strange, switching from person to person and narrative to narrative, but this served as a great nod to Philip K. Dick's own style of writing, and if anything only added to the book's wonderfully strange plot.

I also found that The Secret Ascension really captured a spirit of counter-cultural anger. Anger at the establishment, at the crimes of government, the pervasive sense of being watched, baited, and trapped, of being forced into a corner. Since this book was set in an alternate kind of reality, it served as a way of indicting a parody of Richard Nixon and his rather corrupt and eh...let's just say forceful style of doing things, without actually indicting Richard Nixon, which is really quite masterful when you think about it.

In the end,I think The Secret Ascension is more than suitable reading material for not only a scifi reader looking for a good old time, but also for fans of Philip K. Dick, nods toward and outright parodies of whom can be found throughout this book.

The Secret Ascension, by Michael Bishop. Check it out.