The Ganymede Takeover

infobox Book |
name = The Ganymede Takeover
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Cover of first edition (paperback)
author = Philip K. Dick and
Ray Nelson
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Science fiction novel
publisher = Ace Books
release_date = 1967
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
pages = 157 pp
isbn = NA
preceded_by =
followed_by = "The Ganymede Takeover" is a 1967 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson. It is an alien invasion novel, and similar to Dick's earlier solo novel "The Game-Players of Titan". Dick later admitted that The Ganymede Takeover was originally going to be a sequel to his Hugo Award-winning alternate history novel The Man in the High Castle with the Japanese occuping the United States not Ganymede.

Plot summary

Giant wormlike aliens from Ganymede, Jupiter's largest satellite, have invaded and occupied Earth, although they have some interest in the activities of their newly conquered world's dominant human species. Marshal Koli is the Bale of Tennessee's military governor, and aspires to apprehend Percy X, leader of the Black Muslim-derived "Neeg Parts," who are one pole of resistance to the Ganymedean occupiers. He is also a telepath. Once Percy X has been apprehended, Koli intends to add him to his human pelt collection, in addition to his treasured model World War I combat aircraft complement. Against him is pitted Mekkis, who is more humane, and is about to take over jurisdiction of the Bale, so that he can implement a more pragmatic scheme to suppress human resistance.

Rudolph Balkani is an unscrupulous collaborator. He tests an experimental device on Joan Hiashi, who was a former Buddhist ministry student at the Pacific School of Religion, inducing schizophrenia within her mind, before he commits suicide. Percy X and his guerillas obtain control of the device, although that does not prevent Percy X's apprehension and imprisonment. The World Psychiatric Association is led by Paul Rivers, another telepath, who attempts to contact Percy X, and also discovers that Mekkis is gravely concerned at the collusion of the Ganymedean "Great Common" hivemind with Marshal Koli, who intend planetary genocide through cutting off all solar radiation to Earth. Despite the apocalyptic predictions of the Oracle, a Ganymedean capable of precognition, Mekkis determines to experience the device himself while linked to the rest of the Great Common. He does so, destroying the Great Common, but insuring permanent existential and experiential 'hell' within a dark void, unable to contact any other sentient being. In a coda, white supremacist feudal landlord Gus Swenesgard of Tennessee has his aspirations for global domination short-circuited when he experiences the mind-wipe device as well. However, the Ganymedean takeover has been curtailed, albeit at the cost of the implied genocide of that species by a kind of 'virus' in the form of a 'poisonous idea'; much like the computer viruses of today, to result also in the death of the altruistic and likeable Mekkis.