THEY

Told in interconnected vignettes, this novella (originally published in 1977) follows an unnamed narrator who apprehensively treads an uneasy coexistence with a murky, decentralized movement known only as "they."

Falling somewhere between a haunting and a populist coup, "they" sweep through England, steadily growing their numbers and targeting artists and intellectuals, in particular, as well as those living alone or apart from partners or in otherwise nontraditional arrangements. Emotional expression is likewise discouraged through violence and through containment at reeducation programs in windowless towers that begin to proliferate like mushrooms after a storm. A tension of glinting malice pervades the narrator's episodic travels through seashore, town, and countryside, the dread of uncertainty tainting the safety of collective gatherings with friends and highlighting the dangers that lurk in simply conducting one's work and life in the world. They melt into shadows and steal into homes, unseen but often detected almost as a disturbance in the atmosphere, destroying books, music, paintings, any and all fruits of creative pursuit. Those who resist are made an example of; they mete out biblical-style punishments—blinding painters, amputating or maiming writers' hands—up to and including execution. They commit random violence against people going about their lives and drive others to madness, self-harm, and suicide in reaction to the strictures placed upon them by this new order, as when the narrator intentionally sprains their ankle to gain a temporary medical dispensation to express pain, allowing them to indulge in "the luxury of going utterly to pieces for forty-eight hours." Although the narrator's gender is never made explicit, there is a liberatory current of queer and nonmonogamous love and desire running counter to the increasingly stifling oppression enacted on the populace. (Dick was herself bisexual and, as noted in Lucy Scholes' afterword to this edition, once declared in a Guardian interview, "Gender is of no bloody account.") The implication that only professional artists appear to be resistant to "their" coercion and brainwashing tactics or that the only creators of note are professionals may rankle, but Dick's dreamlike rendering of virulent conformity and a quotidian bloodthirsty anti-intellectualism still resonate.

A timely reissue of English author Dick's slim dystopian fever dream.