peter young’s listopia

12) Philip K. Dick, Our Friends from Frolix 8, 1970
Thors Provoni goes out into the galaxy in search of a Deus ex Machina to liberate ordinary humans from the dominance of a cabal of genetic freaks, the New Men and the Unusuals. He finds it in the god-like beings the Frolixans, but bringing them back to Earth begs the question of just how friendly they might be. Meanwhile an ordinary guy called Nick Appleton who's going through a separation from his family (his wife's called Kleo, also the name of Dick's second wife), falls in with some anti-government types that get him into a mountain of trouble. Dick spent too much time working on the background canvas instead of giving us much of a foreground thrill even though the pace does pick up towards the end. Another character going through a divorce is the despotic leader Willis Gram, probably the story's best-drawn character although Frolix 8's 'dark-haired girl' this time is Charley Boyer, who's unintentionally responsible for the break-up of Appleton's marriage, and the reasons behind that split are not particularly convincing at all. Frolix 8 has an interesting and well thought out ending that explains what PKD was trying to get at all along (the question of where we may find God) and it's certainly the best thing about the entire book, which otherwise plods around not going very far for way too much of the journey.