The Broken Bubble
The Broken Bubble is an early mainstream novel by American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. It was written around 1956 under the longer title The 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 hardcover posthumously[1] with a shortened title in 1988.
Plot summary
The lives of two couples intertwine in mid-1950s California, and all learn important lessons about life. Jim Briskin is a classical music DJ. He and his ex-wife Patricia Gray are still very much in love but have divorced because he is sterile. The two divorcees meet a teenaged married couple named Art and Rachael and essentially swap partners.
Pat passionately loves the youthful but dysfunctional Art, almost as though he were her child, and the two of them have an abusive relationship in which he gives her a black eye. Meanwhile, Jim and Rachael hook up and Rachael offers to ditch Art and move to Mexico 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-endowed stripper who performs at an optometrists 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 a metaphor symbolizing the irreversible effects of the various life-altering events that occur within the orbits of the main characters.
Recurring character names
Jim Briskin is one of several characters whose names appear several times in Dick's fiction. Briskin reappears in The Crack in Space, which has no connection with The Broken Bubble, and there is a black man of the same name, now a news anchor, in two of Dick's short stories.
See also
References
- ^ "THE BROKEN BUBBLE | Kirkus Reviews".
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- 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)
- 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)
- "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)
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TV series |
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- 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