.jpg) Cover of first edition (hardcover) | |
| Author | Philip K. Dick |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Arbor House |
Publication date | 1988 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 246 |
| ISBN | 1-55710-012-8 |
| OCLC | 17412624 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3554.I3 B76 1988 |
The Broken Bubble is an early mainstream novel by American science fiction writerPhilip K. Dick. It was written around 1956 under the longer titleThe Broken Bubble of Thisbe Holt but was rejected for publication in the 1950s, as were all of Dick's "straight" (non-SF) novels at the time. It was published in hardcoverposthumously[1] with a shortened title in 1988.
The lives of two couples intertwine in mid-1950sCalifornia, and all learn important lessons about life. Jim Briskin is aclassical musicDJ. He and his ex-wife Patricia Gray are still very much in love but have divorced because he issterile. The two divorcees meet a teenaged married couple named Art and Rachael and essentiallyswap partners.
Pat passionately loves the youthful but dysfunctional Art, almost as though he were her child, and the two of them have anabusive relationship in which he gives her a black eye. Meanwhile, Jim and Rachael hook up and Rachael offers to ditch Art and move toMexico with Jim where he will adopt her baby and raise it as his own. In the end, however, maturity prevails and they all return to their original partners.
Miss Thisbe Holt of the original title is actually a very minor character in the book. She is a well-endowedstripper who performs at anoptometrists convention which occurs near the very end of the novel. Her act consists of climbing naked into a large clear plastic ball which the optometrists then roll around the hotel suite to more thoroughly examine her ample personal assets. The ball is demolished when it's later filled with debris and pushed off the hotel roof by the inebriated optometrists.
The shortened title seems more obviously appropriate in that its lack of specificity allows it to do double duty in serving as ametaphor symbolizing the irreversible effects of the various life-altering events that occur within the orbits of the main characters.
Jim Briskin is one of several characters whose names appear several times in Dick's fiction. Briskin reappears inThe Crack in Space, which has no connection withThe Broken Bubble, and there is a black man of the same name, now anews anchor, in two of Dick's short stories.
