The action opens on mars, but the circumstances are purely prosaic: colonization has been mostly successful, but on the arid martian surface humanity is eking out an existence with rationed water, failing equipment with replacements from Earth costly to ship out, bills to pay, power to hunger after, petty business conflict, domestic boredom, etc. As the main plotline emerges from the stories of a handful of initially disparate characters, it resolves into one of real estate speculation. Circumstances change, humanity doesn't. In the meantime, there's colonialism, eugenics, racism, appropriation of indigenous lands. So classic new wave sf concerns, and classic Dick in that this is more ambitiously psychotropic than its initial terms but also rather messy about getting there. Particularly around the most ambitious, most hallucinatory aspects, which deal with the altered time sense of schizophrenics. This was probably based on some kind of an actual theory of the 60s, but neuroscience has come a long way since then (and was Austism actually ever classed as a type of schizophrenia?!) so this comes across as a total muddle now, and even somewhat fetishizing of mental health issues. As plotting and formal devices these elements elevate the novel into stranger and less predictable territory, but they really show the novel's age. On the other hand many of the social concerns remain sadly evergreen.
