WARNING: Do not read Philip K. Dick if you are at all in doubt about your own sanity, because by the end of the book you may very well feel schizophrenic, even though you previously thought you were in complete control of your mind. At least that has been my experience.
This novel starts out sounding like a conventional pulp fiction account of the hardships being experienced by the colonists from Earth on Mars. Ignore the fact that the kind of lives experienced by these settlers would be scientifically impossible on that planet. That's your first clue that Dick is not writing a conventional science fiction book. The events here could just as well have taken place in the Australian Outback (a setting this Mars strongly resembles, including the existence of mystical aboriginals).
As it turns out, Martian Time-Slip is not really about Mars at all, but about schizophrenia and the theory that those so afflicted are undergoing slips in time, experiencing the future or the past instead of the present. Dick cleverly (or instinctively) jumps back and forth in time in his narration of events to underscore this theme. He also includes many hallucinogenic visions from the viewpoints of those undergoing schizophrenic episodes. It's enough to drive you crazy, or discombobulate you, at the very least.
It is commonly accepted that Dick himself probably had schizophrenia. Whether that is true or not, he certainly had the ability to enter such a mind and convey it to a reader. This is for those who like their fiction skewed left of the so-called rational.
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