Think of a world with its people and their politics, their fears and prayers, their religions and their faiths … now imagine this world with 14 people. Who don’t know how they got here. Or what they are meant to do. And, in the end, how they are supposed to get out.
In yet another fantastic work by Philip K. Dick, we follow the life-changing events of the colonists of Delmak-O, and travel from concepts of god (whom you can actually communicate with, through a network of prayer amplifiers and transmitters!) to questions of reality (what does ‘Persus 9’ mean?)
To talk too much about this story - in terms of the plot or its telling - would quite ruin the fantastic reading experience. From Ben Tallchief’s very tangible transfer, to Seth Morley’s very inexplicable one; from Maggie Walsh’s undying faith in ‘The Book’, to Milton Babble’s declaration of “there are no miracles … a miracle would be a sign of god’s weakness … If there was a god”; from the enormous gelatinous ‘Tench’ that gives out advice, to the ‘Building’ that raises more questions … this is the story of “rats in a maze of death” in the kind of surreal world that only PKD can create.
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