GALACTIC POT-HEALER

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'''Galactic Pot Healer''' is a science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in 1969. The novel deals with a number of philosophical and political issues such as repressive societies, fatalism, and the search for meaning in life.

Contents

Plot introduction

Plot summary

The Glimmung: Gnostic Or Jungian?

Bibliographic information

Plot introduction

The story concerns a man who thanklessly fixes pots in a totalitarian future Earth, only to be summoned by a godlike alien known as the Glimmung, who has recruited him as part of a multispecies specialist team sent to "Plowman's Planet" (or Sirius Five) for a mystical quest, which is to raise the sunken cathedral of Taldascalla from a surreal alien ocean.

Plot summary

The novel takes place in a dismal future America, the “Communal North American Citizen's Republic.” Not unlike George Orwell's nightmare vision of society in ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', the United States government has become extremely intrusive and repressive, monitoring the actions, speech and even thoughts of its citizens. It is hinted that this may be the result of a Soviet Union victory during either the Cold War of the 20th Century, or a later conventional or limited thermonuclear war.
The protagonist, Joe Fernwright, is a pot-healer, one who can perfectly restore pottery to brand new condition. Joe finds himself constantly depressed and idle at the opening of the novel. He is unemployed and on a war veteran's social security benefit, given that ceramic pottery has been replaced by plastics, and his profession is not in great demand. He longs for purpose and meaning in life.
Joe finds this when he is summoned to "Plowman's Planet"/Sirius Five by a mysterious highly evolved alien, Glimmung, with seemingly godlike powers. Along with other similarly talented but depressed and alienated people and creatures from all over the galaxy they are employed by Glimmung, in a grand endeavor to raise an ancient sunken cathedral from the ocean floor.
Glimmung is also in a struggle with the Kalends, a species gifted with precognition who are constantly writing a book that supposedly foretells the future, one which inevitably is proven right. Glimmung is determined to continue with his struggle, even when the book predicts certain failure. This existential position allows Dick to explore the idea of fatalism. Glimmung is repeatedly compared to Faust, mainly in conversation amongst the protagonists.

The Glimmung: Gnostic Or Jungian?

Given that Dick was yet to experience his alleged gnostic theophany in February 31974 at the time that he wrote this book in 1969, it is also striking that the book appears to contain profound influences from dualist gnostic cosmology. For example, the Glimmung is shadowed by a dark counterpart, the "Dark Glimmung," while there is a duplicate Taldascalla, known as the "Dark Cathedral." The Dark Glimmung may be seen as a gnostic demiurge, a rival deity to the Glimmung, and the miasmic depths of the Plowmans Planet oceans may be viewed as the inferior or damaged created world that the demiurge is said to preside over within gnostic theology. Later in the book, Taldascalla is revealed as a fetus offspring of the Glimmung.
However, the Glimmung's battle may also be viewed as Jungian, as Dick showed that he was familiar with that school of psychology in his earlier Man in the High Castle. The Glimmung must struggle past Jungian archetypes in the miasmic ocean as a metaphor for the human unconscious, to attain its desired psychological and existential resolution. From this perspective, the Dark Glimmung is a Jungian shadow aspect which may represent his internal conflict, which seeks to sabotage the desired outcome.
At the conclusion of the book, Fernwright and his companions are offered the opportunity to join a gestalt or hive mind that also encompasses the Glimmung. Fernwright and an unnammed octopoid companion alone refuse the offer, only to find that their heightened creative abilities have been lost without the network that the Glimmung-run hive mind provided.

Bibliographic information

''Galactic Pot-Healer'' was originally published in 1969 by Berkley Medallion Books. It is currently published in the United States by Vintage Books, ISBN 0-679-75297-8, and in the United Kingdom by Gollancz.