[The following excerpt was published in a special issue of Science-Fiction Studies devoted to the work of Philip K. Dick.]

The setting [of Martian Time-Slip] is Mars, which is now partly colonised. (p. 42)

This web of civilization is stretched thin over utter desolation. There is no guaranteeing that it can be maintained. Its stability is threatened by the Great Powers back on Earth. For years they have neglected Mars, concentrating dollars and man-hours on further exploration elsewhere in the system; now they may interfere actively with the balance of the colony.

Behind this web exists another, even more tenuous: the web of human relationships. Men and women, children, old men, bleekmen (the autochthonous but non-indigenous natives of Mars) all depend, however reluctantly, on one another. (pp. 42-3)

Behind these two webs lies a third, revealed only indirectly. This is the web connecting all the good and bad things...