"Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)

Philip K. Dick's contribution to Dangerous Visions went on to get a nomination for a Hugo Award, more bounty for the reputation of Harlan Ellison's collection. There is also more interesting material here to speculate on the dynamics between Ellison and these writers. We have already seen Ellison request a specific story from Robert Bloch and then write his own version of it. For this one Ellison asked Dick to write it "about, and under the influence of (if possible) LSD." I can only wonder what Dick thought. I don't know his biography or writing habits well enough to even guess. In 1967 Dick was beginning to come into his own publicly yet with much of his work done. What he came up with is typical of his inversions. In this story, everyone is continually high on a mild hallucinogen. It's in the drinking water, administered by Communists who have come to worldwide power. China appears to have won the Cold War. TVs in the home monitor activity—that old schizophrenic chestnut—and citizens are required to be present in front of the screens with their eyes open for political speeches. The illicit drug that commands prices on the black market is phenothiazine, which counteracts hallucinogens. (Phenothiazine is "highly bioactive," it says in Wikipedia, and is the source of thorazine.) Political resistance forces spread the drug to enable people to experience actual reality. However, when it is used during the mandatory televised speeches something strange seems to be happening. The mysterious leader of the world government, known as the Absolute Benefactor, takes on many different appearances according to the phenothiazine users. Of course, someone from the government is out there classifying them (it wouldn't be a Dick story without such natural bureaucrats): the Clanker (a hideous machine), the Gulper (a hideous whale), the Bird, the Climbing Tube, etc. So the story is about solving these various mysteries, including the nature of reality and hallucination, and it also roams into inspired areas of religion. Dick is obviously trying harder here—everyone is, under Ellison's wheedling and pushing—and this story ends up in some pretty amazing places. It's a classic Dick story and maybe one of his best. It's also one for the tally of stories in this collection that rise to the level of dangerous, though it is dangerous in a way that is hard to describe exactly. Better to read it. Or consider this, from Dick's afterword, quoting a 9th-century Irish theologian and poet in the court of Charles the Bold named John Scotus Erigena (Wikipedia corroborates he is real): "We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being." A mic drop if ever there was one. It might actually be the most dangerous (religious) line in the whole book.

Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison