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(LIES, Inc.)

The SubInfo computers owned by Lies Incorporated had been caught in an unnatural act by a service mechanic. SubInfo computer Five had transmitted information which was not a lie. -- LIES, INC.

FIRST EDITION

• 		ACE, pb, G-602, Nov 1966, 100pp, $0.50, (Kelly Freas)
  		Methuen, pb, 36550-6, Aug 1976, 124pp, 50p (Chris Moore)

HISTORY    (See also: "The Unteleported Man" and LIES, INC.)

    Philip K. Dick’s novelette "The Unteleported Man" and subsequent expansion into the novel THE UNTELEPORTED MAN is the most complicated of all PKD’s stories from a historical point of view.      Like Dr. Bloode’s book within the story:

    There were several editions of the Text. And evidently not all were accurate. Like the range of paraworlds, the texts were mutually exclusive; one replaced the other, supplanted and abolished earlier versions.

    For, see, the UNTELEPORTED MAN itself went through several versions and even today there is no real definitive text.

    It all started in the summer of 1964 when Fantastic Stories commissioned PKD to write "The Unteleported Man". By the end of August Dick had finished the story – a novelette at 32,000 words – and the story wound its way to Fantastic Stories where it appeared with full-cover illustration by Lloyd Birmingham in the December issue.{See "The Unteleported Man"}

    Between the time the novelette manuscript was done (26 Aug 1964) and its publication in December, Don Wollheim at Ace Books requested that the story be expanded. Terry Carr, an editor at Ace at the time, was instrumental in the expansion. In a letter to PKDS Carr expounds on this:

    But while I'm writing about what happened sometimes between PKD and ACE, allow me to address the question of the supposedly censored text of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN that Ace published. The story originally appeared in Fantastic, December 1964, and when I read it there I thought it was excellent: I gave a copy to senior Ace editor Don Wollheim and urged him to buy it. But it was just 32,000 words, pretty short for a novel, so though Don liked it too he wanted to know if Phil could expand it to book-length. Phil said sure, no problem, and signed a contract to produce an expanded version -- which he did within a few months, and it was given to me to read first.

    Carr probably read the story in early November when the issue of Fantastic Stories hit the stands a month ahead of the publication date as usual. As for the expansion, Dick was interested in having his future collaborator Ray Nelson (THE GANYMEDE TAKEOVER) work on it with him. The idea to include Ray Nelson as a collaborator probably occurred in mid-1964 when PKD hosted science fiction writers at his home in Oakland. Among these was Ray Nelson and the group would brainstorm ideas and plots. An idea for a novel to be called THE WHALEMOUTH COLONY turned into THE UNTELEPORTED MAN.

    In a series of letters to Terry and Carol Carr and his agent, Scott Meredith, in late 1964 and early 1965, PKD wrote of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN expansion. First to the Carr’s in November:

    So, please, Terry, old U-No bar comrade, answer me informally, in confidence (like the confessional) which I ought to do:
    (1) Expand THE UNTELEPORTED MAN solo.
    (2) Expand it in collaboration with Ray, but under my byline, and give him no credit (though he deserves it, and will let it be known anyhow, as I said before; and I see lots of trouble there)
    (3) Expand it in open collaboration with Ace's official approval, in that I would serve formal notification to Don, via Scott, etc. {...}{...}

    Philip Dick, then, was thinking about the expansion in Nov 1964 and was still working on it in Jan 1965. Whether Ace later approved of a collaboration with Ray Nelson is not known but Nelson was in at the start of things as we’ve seen. However, Dick was certainly writing the expansion in Jan 1965:

    After New Year's I went back to the expansion of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN and so, except for my relationship with Nancy, there isn't much action in progress, here in East Gakville ... except of course for the Mormon Temple turning on and off all night. {...} Anyhow, it seems almost certain that she and I will be leaving here, probably for the East Coast, most likely as soon as I finish the work on THE UNTELEPORTED MAN for Ace.

    Nancy here refers to Dick’s girlfriend, Nancy Hackett whom he had fallen in love with by Dec 1964 after Grania had left him and who would become his fourth wife in July 1966.

    As for the nature of the expansion itself we must return to Terry Carr’s explanatory letter to PKDS in 1985:

    I discovered that what Phil had done was break into the narrative at its crucial point by having someone shoot the narrator with what amounted to an LSD dart, and then he spent 25,000 or 30,000 words telling us about the "acid trip" the protagonist had, after which Phil returned to the original text which had wrapped up the story. The material Phil wrote in the "acid trip" section had nothing to do with anything (it was a great description of an acid trip but honestly, all of it was quite irrelevant to the story), so I told Don that I thought Phil had "expanded" the story by adding a bunch of irrelevant bullshit. Don then read the ms., and he agreed with me, so he made an arrangement with Phil whereby Ace would publish only the original novella as half of an Ace Double, though as I recall Phil got paid as much money as he would have if he'd expanded his novella to a novel that Ace would have published with pride.

    Perhaps this ‘acid-effect’ was the result of PKD’s taking LSD for the first time that summer of 1964 (one of those with whom he ‘dropped’ acid was Ray Nelson). Evidently Don Wollheim must’ve contacted Dick or his agent and commented negatively on Dick’s expanded THE UNTELEPORTED MAN when he read it before May 1965 as PKD wrote an injured letter to Scott Meredith at that time:

    I wish, too, to complain of something else: Don's tying in the purchase of my story collection with the completion of the contract for THE UNTELEPORTED MAN. This is a club held over my head, entirely unnecessary, since I frankly worked my goddam ass off over the expansion -- as everyone who knows me is aware of. If Don sees fit, in view of his rejection of the completed -- and to my mind satisfactory -- UNTELEPORTED MAN, to reject the story collection as further punishment, then I will insist that the Agency take note of this violation of what Rick Prindle called a "quasi-contract", by that meaning that Ace's statement that they wished to buy a story collection of mine did in no way originally hang on the purchase of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN as a separate expansion; nor, in fact, did such a separate expansion even exist. What has happened here is that by failing to satisfy Don on THE UNTELEPORTED MAN I may find myself facing the loss of other sales which have absolutely no connection with it. In professions other than fiction writing a good strong union generally can take care of fink tactics like this; unfortunately we s-f writers do not have a union {...}

    The collection Dick refers to in this letter is probably THE PRESERVING MACHINE which Ace Books published in 1969 and which Terry Carr (probably having read Dick’s complaining letter about Don Wollheim) was instrumental in publishing.

    For the last word on the expansion we return to Terry Carr and his 1985 letter to PKDS:

    THE UNTELEPORTED MAN has recently been published in its "full" version, each time with Introductions that castigated the Ace editors for "censoring" the longer text that included Phil's cop-out insertion. I will agree that the irrelevant material Phil added was enjoyable, but I still claim it shouldn't have been there: it's worth reading now solely because Phil wrote it. So what if it showed Phil, uncharacteristically, as essentially a hack writer? PKD had had enough of that characterization by then, and he was beginning to write the novels -- some dreadful, some adventurous and wonderful -- that established and confirmed his reputation.

    And there THE UNTELEPORTED MAN lies for the next 22 years, until  January 1979 when Russ Galen at Berkley Books purchased THE COSMIC PUPPETS together with DR. FUTURITY and THE UNTELEPORTED MAN as part of a package deal that paid Dick $14,000.

    Now we must look at the different editions of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN for, like Dr. Bloode’s text, they are all different.

    First is the original novelette, "The Unteleported Man" written by Dick in 1964 and published in Fantastic Stories in December of that year. This first version was expanded by Dick in early 1965 but the expansion was rejected by Ace Books and the story was published in its original version as one half of an Ace Double in Nov 1966.

    In England, Sidgwick & Jackson included the original text in A PHILIP K. DICK OMNIBUS in 1970.

    Then in 1972 Ace paired THE UNTELEPORTED MAN with DR. FUTURITY and issued them together as an Ace Double. Next, in England, Methuen brought out a paperback edition in 1976 followed by Magnum in 1979. These editions all consisted of the original novelette text.

    The big change came in 1983 with the Berkley Books paperback edition. As just noted, Russ Galen had acquired the rights to THE UNTELEPORTED MAN in 1979 and, for whatever reason, thought to include the expansion text rejected by Don Wollheim in 1965. But… there was a slight problem with this. Some of the pages in the expansion section had been lost in the meantime. So Berkley published the novel with three gaps indicated in the text and on the front cover they splashed the blurb: ‘The World Famous Classic Now Uncensored For The First Time!’ and below that ‘With The Author’s Previously Unpublished Original Ending.’ No doubt this was what upset Terry Carr as he was one of PKD’s editors castigated in the Berkley edition.

    When Gollancz publishers in England picked up the novel and published their edition in 1984, they retitled the novel LIES, INC. and once again the text was changed. Apparently PKD had revised the text in 1979 but these changes were not discovered until after the Berkley edition was published in 1983. So Gollancz incorporated these 1979 changes in the rejected expansion text into their edition of LIES, INC. What Dick’s revision amounted to was elimination of the third gap. So in the Gollancz edition of LIES, INC. the third gap is eliminated by PKD’s changes but the first two gaps (which at this time were still there) were smoothed over by science fiction writer John Sladek who was asked by Gollancz to write some short bridging material. This is indicated in the Introduction.

    The 1985 paperback edition of LIES, INC. from Granada in the United Kingdom duplicates the Gollancz text.

    But, and as if that wasn’t enough, after all these editions were published Paul Williams, executor of PKD’s estate, found the missing pages of Dick’s expansion text and published them in The Philip K. Dick Society Newsletter in 1985. But, so far though, no publisher has yet reincorporated these missing pages into either the 1983 Berkley text or the 1984 Gollancz text

    With all this confusion one can only sympathize with serious PKD collectors trying to determine which of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN texts is definitive, hence most valuable. Here one describes the situation:

    The really collectable items are seldom the true first editions, and that the first editions themselves may not necessarily be the only first edition. Take the case of "The Unteleported Man", for instance, which was first published in book form by Ace Books as part of an Ace Double in 1966, and reprinted in Britain by Methuen ten years later. Neither of these were the full version since the second half of the book, amounting to some 30,000 words, had been omitted due to space restrictions. The first printing of the complete issue was issued under the original title by Berkeley Books as a paperback in 1983, but even this edition was full of printing errors and there was no attempt to bridge the gaps left by missing pages in the manuscript. Gollancz eventually published the only really complete and definitive edition in 1984, the only version to be published in hardback, with a new title, "Lies, Inc.". Ironically, this edition was eventually remaindered. So which is the real first edition, and which version will ultimately prove to be the most collectable?

    Thus Kruse Demon reiterates what we’ve expressed above. But this still leaves us with the question, which is the definitive text for THE UNTELEPORTED MAN?

    Well, from our research there is no one definitive text. The closest we can come is to combine the 1983 Berkley text with the missing pages published in 1985 in the eighth issue of the PKDS Newsletter. But that combination doesn’t cover the discovery of the revisions made by PKD in 1979 and which are incorporated into the 1984 Gollancz edition of LIES, INC. So, really, for a comprehensive reading of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN, one would have to have both the Berkley and Gollancz editions as well as PKDSN#8 to hand and flip back and forth at the appropriate times…

    This novel is certainly indeterminate and I’m not even sure if I’ve got it right. But the story, in its two parts, is a good one. Here’s a brief description courtesy of Lawrence Sutin:

    A fascistic megacorporation lures colonists to a mysterious far-off planet named Whales’ Mouth through a one-way-only teleportation system. Protagonist Rachmael ben Applebaum decides to investigate by illicitly commandeering an interstellar spaceship. After numerous twisted drug trips, Rachmael alerts Earth to the Nazi-like terrors on Whale’s Mouth.

    This is a personal favorite of mine and in the fan poll run in For Dickheads Only I selected it as my #1 fave:

    I know you all'll think I'm being perverse by picking THE UNTELEPORTED MAN as my #1 Fave of all PKD novels. But it's not so. I've thought a lot about it and I love this book. First because it has the funniest opening of any of his novels with Rachmael Ben Applebaum being hounded by the creditor-jet balloon. And the story really grips you. What the hell is going on at Whale’s Mouth? And the sub-plots all work in perfectly. Then, at the end -- which is what a lot of fans have bitched about -- you have that great bit where reality breaks down and the worst thing that could happen is that any two of the characters can agree on it!

    And with that I give THE UNTELEPORTED MAN in its longer versions ó ó ó ó ó

OTHER ENGLISH EDITIONS:             For Cover Pix Click Here

• Sidgwick & Jackson, hb, 48450-0, Oct 1970, 424pp, L1.95 (?){in A PHILIP K. DICK OMNIBUS. Levack: "Bound in blue paper boards with silver lettering on the spine. No date on the title page. "This omnibus edition copyright © 1970 by Sidgwick & Jackson Limited" on the copyright page."
• ACE//DR.FUTURITY, pb, 15697, Sep 1972, 107pp, $0.95 (Bergman)
• Magnum, pb, 04600-X, Aug 1979, 124pp, 80p (?)
• Berkley, pb, 06252-X, Aug 1983, 202pp, $2.75 (?) {revised}
• Gollancz, hb, o3449-1, Jul 1984, 199pp, L7.95 {revised, as LIES, INC}
• Granada, pb, 06464-8, Oct 1985, 223pp, L1.95 (Trevor Webb) {revised as LIES, INC.}
• Millenium, pb, ?, 2000, ?, ? (?) {in THREE EARLY NOVELS}

FOREIGN EDITIONS:

• La Tribuna, ?, Galassia 93, 1978, 222pp, Lit 350 (Paolo Pallottino) {tr. into Italian by Giancarlo Bonetti as UTOPIA. ANDATA E RITORNO}
• Bastei Lubbe, pb, 22 069, c1984, ?, ? (?) {tr. into German as DER UNTELEPORTIERTE MANN}
• Meulenhof, pb, 1538-1, Dec 1984, 112pp, ? (John Harris) {original magazine text tr. into Dutch by Jaime Martijn as DE EENLING}

• 		Laffont, pb, ?, 1984, ?, ? (?) {tr. into French by Henry-Luc Planchat as MENSONGES & CIE} ISBN: 2-221-01290-9
  		?, pb, sf 3O, 1985, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Japanese as }
  		Livre de Poche, pb, 7103, 1989, ?, ? (?) {tr. into French as MENSONGES ET CIE}ISBN: 2-253-04863-1
  		Presses de la Cite, ?, ?, 1993, ?, ? (?) {tr. into French by Dominique Haas as MENSONGES ET CIE in Omnibus DEDALES SANS FINS} ISBN: 2-258-03698-6

•  
• Mondadori -- Classici Urania, pb, 212, 1994, ?, ?, (?)  {tr. into Italian as  UTOPIA. ANDATA E RITORNO}

• 		Laser, ?, ? 1995, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Czechoslovakian as NETELEPORTOYANY MUZ}
  		10/18 Domaine Etranger, ?, 3125, 1999, ?, ? (?) {tr. into French by Henry-Luc Planchat as MENSONGES & CIE} ISBN: 2-264-02974-9
  		Zysk i S-ka -- Poznan, ?, ? 1999, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Polish by Miroslav Kosciuk as PASZCZA WIELORYBA}

NOTES

PKDS-8 2: From ‘The Missing Pages Of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN.’ {The name of Dr. Bloode’s book within TUM is The True and Complete Economic and Political History of Newcolonizedland, By Dr. Bloode.}

PKDS-6 9. Terry Carr to PKDS, 1985.

PKDS-8 2. ‘The Missing Pages Of THE UNTELEPORTEFD MAN.’

FDO #2

FDO #6. ‘PKD Horserace’; fan fave by Lord RC

DI 136

DI 304

DI 305: "In 1984, after the discovery of further 1979 revisions by Phil, Gollancz published a third version as LIES, INC. (with two brief gap-filling passages by John Sladek). A summary of the whole: The part-one tale of overpopulation and migration to an alternate world is transformed into a part-two horror story of invasive irreality like PALMER ELDRITCH and then back again, with some 2-3-74 reflections (by way of the 1979 revisions) for good measure…"

See http://www.kruse.demon.co.uk/philip.htm

SL-38 123:

    {...} Now let's get to Ace, which you may possibly have discerned, has published most of my novels. What would (again I'm asking off the cuff) Ace's reaction be? For instance, in the expansion of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN, what if Ray was brought in? And his name -- despite the contract being in my name only -- appeared with mine? (this would not apply to CANTATA 140, which is written already.) After all, I am dividing, as in the case of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN, the sum with someone else, cutting my earnings in half; obviously I must believe in Ray's intrinsic contribution to the piece, since as you know; I write fast, and escalating the piece from 20 thousand to 50 thousand would be easy for me... but would it be as good if Ray worked on it too? {...} Let's put it this way. Ace let the contract for THE UNTELEPORTED MAN to me, and if they want only my byline on it, etc., naturally they are entitled, legally and morally, to that; no question there. I'mjust arguing that it would be to their advantage to have both bylines. And both of us at work on the piece. Ray sees so many things that I don't; I picked him because of a comment he sent in to Fantastic about a short story of mine; I knew at once that I had hold of someone whe "fused" with my mind -- and then some. For instance, I have let him read the gallies of the Fantastic novelette THE UNTELEPORTED MAN, and he has already made several terrific suggestions -- informally -- as to how best it could be made into 50,000 words -- and his basic suggestion would never have occured to me. I can tell you this, for what its worth: doing it along Ray's suggestion, there would not be a mere padding of the magazine novelette, no overwriting which really added nothing to the 20,000 piece; the additional 25,000 words would be new, original, and in my mind beyond dispute exceptionally good. (I don't mean that Ray would write the needed 25,000 additional words; I mean that he would, in plot sessions, mostly orally done, would interact with me -- you know; what they call brainstorming. Then each of us, using the notes he had made, or perhaps a tape of the session or sessions, would repair to his study and conscientiously do an outline of the 25,000 word additional material. Then we would go over carbons of each other's outline and, from the two, find the best part and finalize on one joint outline; then this would be written, with me doing the final, so that style, pace, etc., would coincide with the already written 20,000 words. Now, who is being gypped by this? Ace? Hardly As I say, it's me that pays out the money to Ray, not them. {...}

    So, please, Terry, old U-No bar comrade, answer me informally, in confidence (like the confessional) which I ought to do:
    (1) Expand THE UNTELEPORTED MAN solo.
    (2) Expand it in collaboration with Ray, but under my byline, and give him no credit (though he deserves it, and will let it be   known anyhow, as I said before; and I see lots of trouble there)
    (3)Expand it in open collaboration with Ace's official approval, in that I would serve formal notification to Don, via Scott, etc.      {...}{...}

    {PKD > Terry and Carol Carr, Nov 11, 1964}

SL-38 172:

{...} After New Year's I went back to the expansion of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN and so, except for my relatinship with Nancy, there isn't much action in progress, here in East Gakville ... except of course for the Morman Temple turning on and off allnight. {...} Anyhow, it seems almost certain that she and I will be leaving here, probably for the East Coast, most likely as soon as I finish the work on THE UNTELEPORTED MAN for Ace. {...}
{PKD > Carol Carr, Jan 10, 1965}

SL-38 190:

    Don's reaction to the expanded UNTELEPORTED MAN must have been as great a surprise to you as to me, in view of your earlier remark to me that I had nothing to fear; in fact, "that my fears were unfounded," a rather ironic statement in that my fears were justified. {...}

    {...} And it has been some time since I was capable of turning space opera out; THE UNTELEPORTED MAN, in its origina; form in Fantastic, was just about it; the end of the line for me in that drection. However, when I went to expand it for Ace, I did not pad it -- a suggestion which is, at best, an insult as to my integrity -- but to transform it fromwhat was actually not a novel at all but a long story into a true novel -- which I did. And the "far-out" elements which I added, which were not there in the original, i.e., all which Don objects to, were necessary if the piece became a true novel and not merely a longer story. There is a real irony here, too, because a much better case could be made against my additions than the one Don chose to make; fundamentally, the additions follow the lines laid down in my Ace novel THE GAME PLAYERS OF TITAN, which Don nominated for the Hugo.
    I wish, too, to complain of something else: Don's tying in the purchase of my story collection with the completion of the contract for THE UNTELEPORTED MAN. This is a club held over my head, entirely unnecessary, since I frankly worked my goddam ass off over the expansion -- as everyone who knows me is aware of. If Don sees fit, in veiw of his rejection of the completed -- and to my mind satisfactory -- UNTELEPORTED MAN, to reject the story collection as further punishment, then I will insist that the Agency take note of this violation of what Rick Prindle called a "quasi-contract", by that meaning that Ace's statement that they wished to buy a story collection of mine did in no way originally hang on the purchase of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN as a seperate expansion; nor, in fact, did such a seperate expansion even exist. What has happened here is that by failing to satisfy Don on THE UNTELEPORTED MAN I may find myself facing the loss of other sales which have absolutely no connection with it. In professions other than fiction writing a good strong union generally can take care of fink tactics like this; unfortunately we s-f writers do not have a union {...}
    c.c.: Don Wollheim, Ace Books, Inc. {PKD > Scott Meredith, May 22, 1965}

Collector's Notes

Phildickian: THE UNTELEPORTED MAN, Ace, pb, 1966. VG+ $25

Phildickian: THE UNTELEPORTED MAN, Ace, pb, 15697, 1972. VG $15

Phildickian: THE UNTELEPORTED MAN, Berkley, pb, 1983. VG+ $25

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