"Martian Time-Slip" - Philip K Dick. (1964)
Review by Alex McLintock
This review and many others can be found at www.DiverseBooks.com

Dick's story is about Earth colonists on Mars, their problems, and their
future. The first half of the book is simple character building and scene
setting. Then we see a major development which leads us into the second
half of the book which kind of unfolds into the final pattern - rather than
going straight to its destination. PKD sets the scene and then lets it play
though without forcing it to any expected outcome. (There are no ancient
alien air making machines you will be pleased to know, the air is already
breathable.)

The characters include an all purpose handy-man (who fixes almost anything
because importing from earth is so expensive), his family, his neighbours,
his boss, and his customers. His most important customer is the most
powerful man on Mars, the leader of the Union of Water Workers. The canals
of Mars are the only means of transporting water to the thinly spread farms.

Finally comes an autistic child whose disability is attributed to a problem
with his time-sense. Little progress is made with the large number of
autistic children on Mars - but when one of the psychologists hits on
building a device to slow down all the sense data reaching the autistic
child progress is made. The fixit man is called in to build the device
which is part of the cause for the "Time-Slip" in the title.

Add a little schizophrenia and chapters which don't go in sequence and we
have a typical PKD novel: mental illness, mars, a world which may or may
not be real, and that permanent paranoia that perhaps there is something
bigger that we have yet to discover.

[Martian Time Slip was read in July 94 in the UK and on a plane over
Europe.]
This book has just recently been republished in the SF Masterworks Series
by Victor Gollancz.