The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick

 



"He wandered about the ample pile, or along the garden-terrace, with 'his cogitative faculties immersed in cogibundity of cogitation.'" --- Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey

Like the gent above in TLP's story, immerse your brain waves in a cogibundity of cogitation by reading PKD's The Simulacra.

So much PKD craziness, so many plots and subplots, it is as if the great SF author had notes in his bottom drawer for a dozen novels and decided to combine them all into one mind-blowing extravaganza.

You want Nazi conspiracies, you want AI versions of Martians, you want a critique of psychoanalysis, you want intellectual Neanderthals, you want Bach and Mozart played by jug artists? If so, you've found your novel.

One of my favorite parts: Al Miller and his partner Ian Duncan audition at the White House to play Beethoven sonatas on their jugs but, alas, the talent scout tells them "no."

Al and Duncan must leave the stage to make way for the next act: a group of dogs all dressed up in Elizabethan costumes for an authentic performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

To be or not to be. Or it is, to woof or not to woof. Actually, I would love to see those dogs perform their Shakespeare at the Globe Theater in London.


American New Wave SF author Philip K. Dick, born 1928

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