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Dystopia? Straight-up horror, more like! Artists and writers who persist in creating are maimed (like some kind of Dantean contrapasso); people who live alone are forced to relocate to windowless, doorless communal "retreats" where the TV is always on; those who show emotion are "cured"; mindless cruelty to animals... thank goodness this disorienting novella in connected stories wasn't any longer 'cause it's given me the heebie-jeebies, big time!

This strange slim book of linked stories first came to my attention over a year ago on an episode of Backlisted on Hughes' In a Lonely Place. Lucy Scholes' afterword compares They to Kavan's Ice. I was reminded of Kavan while reading They, but I was also reminded of John Wyndham's cosy catastrophes. In villages while friends & romantic partners talk about art & life they also wait for roving anonymous bands of people who sneak in & vandalize👇

Ominous! Not outright scary, but enough to keep the pages turning! Rich detail.

In this lost queer dystopian horror novel from 1977, artists are under surveillance and threat of mutilation from “them,” a mysterious and pervasive mob. Dick is spare on the hard details and character development, but the sense of unease is masterful and in some ways this novella reminded me of the subtlety of Ishiguro‘s Never Let Me Go and the quotidian focus of Atwood‘s Handmaid‘s Tale. Important, but it doesn‘t make for a very satisfying read.

Think Fahrenheit 451 crossed with, say, The Wicker Man or The Midwich Cuckoos, add a splash of Orwell & a touch of McGooghan's The Prisoner, & that might be close to They.
The overt brutality used by Them is relatively rare, but extreme when used. The menacing feeling of presence and surveillance results in a society which brutalises itself, through suspicion of difference & non-conformity. Artists are most despised for their personal vision, 👇🏼

Subtitled, "A Sequence of Unease", Dick's '77 dystopian novella won a regional literary prize, & was largely forgotten until its recent republication.
"They" are a group of anti-intellectual demagogues, initially mocked as irrelevant philistines, but who build a base of populist support, resulting in the banning of books, the closure of art galleries, & the rounding up of writers & artists in concentration camps.
Thank goodness it's all fiction ?