On Sat, 05 Apr 2008 04:58:14 +0000, Mike Van Pelt wrote:
> In article
<c886d76c-7471-4855-9ace-c045d17676da@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> <daijoudaijin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>>It took me way too long, but I finally picked up and
>>finished PKD's Ubik. It was every bit as great as I was
>>expecting. What is everyone's take on the last couple of
>>paragraphs though?
>>
>>When I first finished it last night, I assumed it meant
>>that Runciter had died as well (or was dead all along), and
>>was now about to go through the same process that the rest
>>of them had.
>
> My take on it was extremely negative. Alas, it was a
> borrowed copy, so I was unable to give it the treatment I
> felt it so richly deserved: Fling it on the floor, and then
> jump up and down on it over and over and over and over, then
> drop-kick it into the toilet.
>
> Basically, the whole book is setting up some kind of
> mystery, and you spend the whole book trying to figure out
> the mystery as it gets weirder and weirder, then in the last
> paragraph, PKD goes "Nyah nyah, neener neener, everybody
> died in that explosion in Chapter 1, and this has all been
> the dying hallucinations of the only one who wasn't killed
> instantly as his brain slowly deteriorates on life sup****t.
> I bet you thought it was supposed to make sense! Ha ha,
> fooled you!"
>
> Some people really like that sort of thing. I am not one of
> them.
>
> This was my first PKD story, and it would have been my last,
> except I got talked into reading "The Man in the High Castle."
> My reaction to that was that it was OK, but nothing special.
> I gather PKD stories tend to be more like "UBIK" and less like
> TMitHC, so I'm not inclined to give him a third chance.
_Clans of the Alphane Moon_. That's the only Dick novel I make sure to
keep around. It made me laugh just typing this thinking about it.
Woohoo!
I never understood _Ubik_, but it was OK if baffling, much as I
remember _Palmer Eldritch_ to be, too (it's been decades since I've read
either).
--
The hell with the Galactic Overlords
and their tastes in literature.
< _The Day of the Burning_
|
