Apocalyptic Visions from the Past: The Colonization of Mars in Dick's Martian Time-Slip

Abstract

In recent years, climate change has emerged as a dominant theme in literature, with writers trying to find new ways to express how the alteration of climate affects people. Even though it was published before climate change was so pressing an issue, Philip K. Dick’s Martian Time-Slip (1964) deals with the worries caused by an Earth that is becoming increasingly inhospitable, pushing people to migrate to Mars. This article explores how Dick expresses the challenges that immigrants must face in trying to adapt to a new environment and how he uses Mars society to criticize the degeneration of the capitalistic society that marginalizes people who are acutely able to empathize with both humans and the natural world. Among these marginalized people there is Manfred, a child who suffers from autism. Dick conveys Manfred’s conscience through an imaginative language that extends beyond the limits of the human perception of time.