The Ganymede Takeover - Misplaced Pages

1967 novel by Philip K. Dick

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The Ganymede Takeover
Cover of first edition (paperback)
Author	Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson
Cover artist	Jack Gaughan
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Ace Books
Publication date	1967
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	157

The Ganymede Takeover is a 1967 science fiction novel by American writers Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson. It is an alien invasion novel, and similar to Dick's earlier solo novel The Game-Players of Titan.

Plot summary

The novel takes place on a future Earth (vidphones, telepaths, androids, ionocraft are normal) recently conquered by aliens from Ganymede: limbless, worm-like creatures whose physical needs are attended to by a slave-race of specialist 'creeches'. Mekkis is the leader of a Ganymedean faction that opposed the war when his Oracle (a creature capable of precognition) foresaw a 'coming darkness'. The apparent success of the invasion means he is now discredited. As a result, Mekkis is saddled with the troublesome Bale of Tennessee, home to the last remaining core of resistance, the 'Neeg-parts' led by Black Muslim leader Percy X. Unknown to all concerned, another resistance movement operates covertly under cover of the World Psychiatric Association. One of its agents, Doctor Paul Rivers, is seeking to protect Percy X by assassinating his former girlfriend, TV host Joan Hiashi who is collaborating with the Ganymedeans to capture Percy X. Although Joan Hiashi switches sides after discovering that Percy X is a trained telepath who can read her mind, Percy X is still captured thanks to a tracking device planted on her by racist landowner Gus Swenesgard.

Mekkis offers Percy X the chance to become the puppet ruler of Tennessee. When the offer is violently declined, Mekkis sends Percy X and Joan to the Norwegian clinic of psychiatric genius Rudolph Balkani, who has had exceptional success turning resistors into enthusiastic collaborators via sensory deprivation therapy. Dr. Rivers manages to free Joan and Percy X, replacing them with androids. On discovering the ruse, Rudolph Balkani commits suicide. This along with a number of other suicides (encouraged by the World Psychiatric Association) lead the Ganymedians to wrongly assume that Balkani has helped the resistance infiltrate their collaborationist regime. Judging their proxy rule of Earth to be impractical, they decide to withdraw from the planet and destroy all life through a device that will block the sun's rays.

Meanwhile, the Neeg-parts have seized a cache of weapons developed by Rudolph Balkani during the war — machines that turn illusions thought up by their users into reality, and a 'hell-weapon' that was never used against the aliens, as it would destroy humanity as well. After most of his troops desert due to the psychological problems caused by the illusion machines, Percy X is finally defeated by an army of robots created by Gus Swenesgard. Dr. Rivers is sent to kill Percy X, both to prevent his capture and stop him activating the hell-weapon.

Mekkis has become obsessed with the theories of Rudolph Balkani. In order to get revenge on his enemies he forms a telepathic link with Percy X that will enable the hell-weapon to destroy those Ganymedians who are not on Earth. After killing Percy X, Rivers is able to switch off the device before humanity is destroyed, but the Ganymedians instinctively form a group mind in times of danger, and so become trapped in a permanent existential and experiential 'hell' within a dark void, unable to contact their creeches for help.

The novel ends with the creeches returning to Ganymede to start their own society, and the World Psychiatric Association supporting Gus Swenesgard as a useful puppet ruler until democracy is restored, though Dr. Rivers can't help wondering as to their true motives.

References

"Title: The Ganymede Takeover".

Philip K. Dick

Novels

Gather Yourselves Together (1950)
Voices from the Street (1952)
Solar Lottery (1954)
Mary and the Giant (1954)
The World Jones Made (1954)
Eye in the Sky (1955)
The Man Who Japed (1955)
A Time for George Stavros (1956)
Pilgrim on the Hill (1956)
The Broken Bubble (1956)
The Cosmic Puppets (1957)
Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)
Nicholas and the Higs (1958)
Time Out of Joint (1958)
In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)
Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960)
Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)
Vulcan's Hammer (1960)
Dr. Futurity (1960)
The Man in the High Castle (1961)
We Can Build You (1962)
Martian Time-Slip (1962)
Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1963)
The Game-Players of Titan (1963)
The Simulacra (1963)
The Crack in Space (1963)
Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)
The Zap Gun (1964)
The Penultimate Truth (1964)
The Unteleported Man (1964)
The Ganymede Takeover (1965)
Counter-Clock World (1965)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966)
Nick and the Glimmung (1966)
Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
Ubik (1966)
Galactic Pot-Healer (1968)
A Maze of Death (1968)
Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969)
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
Deus Irae (1976)
Radio Free Albemuth (1976; published 1985)
A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Valis (1981)
The Divine Invasion (1981)
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
The Owl in Daylight (unfinished)

Collections

A Handful of Darkness (1955)
The Variable Man (1956)
The Preserving Machine (1969)
The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973)
The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977)
The Golden Man (1980)
Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities (1984)
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987)
Beyond Lies the Wub (1988)
The Dark Haired Girl (1989)
The Father-Thing (1989)
Second Variety (1989)
The Days of Perky Pat (1990)
The Little Black Box (1990)
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1990)
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1990)
The Minority Report (1991)
Second Variety (1991)
The Eye of the Sibyl (1992)
The Philip K. Dick Reader (1997)
Minority Report (2002)
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)
Paycheck (2004)
Vintage PKD (2006)
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011)

Short stories

"Beyond Lies the Wub" (1952)
"The Gun" (1952)
"The Skull" (1952)
"The Little Movement" (1952)
"The Defenders" (1953)
"Mr. Spaceship" (1953)
"Piper in the Woods" (1953)
"Roog" (1953)
"The Infinites" (1953)
"Second Variety" (1953)
"Colony" (1953)
"The Cookie Lady" (1953)
"Impostor" (1953)
"Paycheck" (1953)
"The Preserving Machine" (1953)
"Expendable" (1953)
"The Indefatigable Frog" (1953)
"The Commuter" (1953)
"Out in the Garden" (1953)
"The Great C" (1953)
"The King of the Elves" (1953)
"The Trouble with Bubbles" (1953)
"The Variable Man" (1953)
"The Impossible Planet" (1953)
"Planet for Transients" (1953)
"The Builder" (1953)
"Tony and the Beetles" (1953)
"The Hanging Stranger" (1953)
"Prize Ship" (1954)
"Beyond the Door" (1954)
"The Crystal Crypt" (1954)
"The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" (1954)
"The Golden Man" (1954)
"Sales Pitch" (1954)
"Breakfast at Twilight" (1954)
"The Crawlers" (1954)
"Exhibit Piece" (1954)
"Adjustment Team" (1954)
"Shell Game" (1954)
"Meddler" (1954)
"A World of Talent" (1954)
"The Last of the Masters" (1954)
"Upon the Dull Earth" (1954)
"The Father-thing" (1954)
"Strange Eden" (1954)
"The Turning Wheel" (1954)
"Foster, You're Dead!" (1955)
"Human Is" (1955)
"War Veteran" (1955)
"Captive Market" (1955)
"Nanny" (1955)
"The Chromium Fence" (1955)
"Service Call" (1955)
"The Mold of Yancy" (1955)
"Autofac" (1955)
"Psi-man Heal My Child!" (1955)
"The Hood Maker" (1955)
"The Minority Report" (1956)
"Pay for the Printer" (1956)
"A Glass of Darkness (The Cosmic Puppets)" (1956)
"The Unreconstructed M" (1957)
"Null-O" (1958)
"Explorers We" (1959)
"Recall Mechanism" (1959)
"Fair Game" (1959)
"War Game" (1959)
"All We Marsmen" (1963)
"What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" (1963)
"The Days of Perky Pat" (1963)
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" (1963)
"Waterspider" (1964)
"Novelty Act" (1964)
"Oh, to Be a Blobel!" (1964)
"The War with the Fnools" (1964)
"What the Dead Men Say" (1964)
"Orpheus with Clay Feet" (1964)
"Cantata 140" (1964)
"The Unteleported Man" (1964)
"The Little Black Box" (1964)
"Retreat Syndrome" (1965)
"Project Plowshare (later "The Zap Gun")" (1965)
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966)
"Holy Quarrel" (1966)
"Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)
"Not by Its Cover" (1968)
"The Electric Ant" (1969)
"A. Lincoln, Simulacrum" (1969)
"The Pre-persons" (1974)
"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" (1974)
"The Exit Door Leads In" (1979)
"Rautavaara's Case" (1980)
"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980)
"The Eye of the Sibyl" (1987)
"Stability" (1987)

Adaptations

Films	Blade Runner (1982) Total Recall (1990) Barjo (1992) Screamers (1995) Impostor (2001) Minority Report (2002) Paycheck (2003) A Scanner Darkly (2006) Next (2007) Screamers: The Hunting (2009) Radio Free Albemuth (2010) The Adjustment Bureau (2011) Total Recall (2012) Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 2036: Nexus Dawn (2017) 2048: Nowhere to Run (2017) Blade Runner Black Out 2022 (2017)
TV series	Total Recall 2070 (1999) The Man in the High Castle (2015) Minority Report (2015) Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams (2017) Blade Runner: Black Lotus (2021) Blade Runner 2099 (upcoming)
Franchise	Blade Runner franchise

Works about

Only Apparently Real (1986 biography)
I Am Alive and You Are Dead (1993 biography)
Your Name Here (2008 drama film)

Isa Dick Hackett (daughter)
Philip K. Dick Award

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