Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 (46)

By: Joshua Glenn
September 19, 2016

One in a series of 75 posts about the best science fiction novels published during the genre’s so-called Golden Age (from 1934–63, according to HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn’s periodization schema). For the complete Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 list, click here.

Philip K. Dick’s The Man Who Japed (1956).

Allen Purcell, protagonist of this funny, dark, hastily written novel, is a marketing pro in a Brazil-like future (2114) society, one which has recovered from a devastating 1972 nuclear war by adopting puritanical “Morec” principles. (The Fifties-esque Moral Reclamation ideology was pioneered by General Streiter, a statue of whom stands in Newer York’s public park.) Premarital sex is now taboo, not to mention cursing, drunkenness, even pulp fiction. Insect-like robots pry into citizens’ personal lives, and neighborhood meetings are devoted to chastising one another. Purcell and his smart but deeply bored wife, Janet, are up-and-coming Newer York yuppies; it’s their lucky day when Purcell is offered the top position at Telemedia, the government-run edutainment conglomerate whose pap programming keeps people from rebelling. Unfortunately, Purcell is afflicted with a sardonic sense of humor; he is immune to Morec’s earnest mind-control. One night, without quite realizing what he’s doing, he knocks the head off Streiter’s statue!

Fun fact: The Man Who Japed was first published as an Ace Double; it was bound dos-à-dos with E. C. Tubb’s The Space Born.

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Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 (46)

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