From Dick to Lethem: The Dickian Legacy, Postmodernism, and Avant-Pop in Jonathan Lethem’s Amnesia Moon

This article attempts to map the relationships among postmodernism, science fiction, and Avant-Pop by focusing on the writings of Philip K. Dick, a purportedly postmodern sf author, and Amnesia Moon, an sf novel by an Avant-Pop author, Jonathan Lethem. The Finite Subjective Realities that are depicted in Amnesia Moon are read as an important element of the “Dickian legacy,” since ontological fragmentation is such an important feature of several of Dick’s works, such as The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Eye in the Sky. The fragmented, amnesiac, and post-catastrophic US shown in Lethem’s novel through Dickian lenses is discussed in context of Jameson’s analysis of postmodernism and late capitalism (especially his study of enclosed social/architectural spaces, and his idea of cognitive mapping through “portulans”) and Dick’s early insights about politics in a mass-media-saturated society.