Martian Time-Slip | Writing Style & Techniques

Martian Time-Slip Techniques/Literary Precedents

Dick's dry language, functional to the limits of triviality, his rejection of any kind of lyricism and decorative description, is at the antipode of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1950), which is also critical of the myth of progress prominent in much science fiction of the Golden Age. In terms of larger structures, in the central chapters concerned with the timeslip, Jack, Arnie, and Doreen, Jack's secretary, all experience a particular hour or two several times over, living as if they were Manfred, who is there with them. Just who is experiencing any one of the repetitions — who the point-of-view character is — is impossible to tell. Dick structures this experience so that it cannot be recuperated into the realm of the rational. The very style and techniques, however, may have barred its popular acceptance.