God there’s nothing worse than doing something and then it messing up and having to do it again. My page refreshed for some reason and erased all the things I wrote about this book previously. It’s weird because that’s sort of what this book is about. This is the second book of my friend only book club where we’re reading his choice Ubik by Philip K Dick, which is about the vast future landscape of 1992. Remember back then when we had telepaths running amok and […]
My, what big teeth you have.
The inimitable H.G. Wells, from 1895-98, wrote The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and War of the Worlds. That’s an unbelievable concentration of brilliance that I can’t find in another writer. Someone like Stephen King has written numerous works that will (or have already) become classics of their genre, but they’re spread out over a career (for instance, 1978’s The Stand followed hot on the heels of 1977’s The Shining, but Misery came out in 1987 and The Green Mile […]
When I say “Nazis,” you say “No thank you!”
It’s 1962. The Allies lost World War II. Slavery is legal. The United States has been divided by its conquerors, with the Japanese ruling the West, and the Germans in the East, with a small No Man’s Land in the Rocky Mountains. The Nazis have exterminated Africans, drained the Mediterranean to make space for farmland, and developed and used the hydrogen bomb. Not content to only take over the world, they’ve started colonizing space. Meanwhile, there’s a book. It’s not banned, but it’s […]
Who let the androids out? Who? Who?
This last year, I finally convinced The Chancellor to watch Blade Runner with me. He absolutely hated the whole experience. He’s definitely more into Modernism than I am. I am entertained and fascinated by postmodernism, so I found lots of food for contemplation in the movie. This led to a discussion about the source material. I’d never read anything by Philip K. Dick, and I finally decided this summer was the time to start catching up. The novel (as with the film) focuses on Rick […]
What if the NAZIs had won?
I will admit to y’all up front that I have no idea what I’m about to say in this review. I don’t want this to become one of those roadblock reviews for me. You know, the ones where you just can’t figure out what to say because the whole book just overwhelmed you, and you can’t even figure out your own reaction, let alone how to sum up the book for other people. I have no idea what my reaction is, or how to sum […]
Revisiting a sci-fi classic.
“‘Everything is true,’ he said. ‘Everything anybody has ever thought.’ ‘Will you be all right?’ ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said, and thought, And I’m going to die. Both those are true, too.” Philip K. Dick isn’t an author I’ve had much exposure to. I’ve read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? twice now, and I just finished The Man in the High Castle this weekend. I remember liking Androids when I first read it sometime around 2006. I read it for a Film & […]