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Originally Posted by PrinceAshitaka  I really liked this book.
The way Dick describes these schizophrenic / autistic / alternate mental states and experiences are brillint and really vivid. Totally gripping book.
It's probably not for everyone, and really the only flaw I have with P. K. Dick's novels are that they're too short, and quite often there is a strong anti-Russia/Communism/Socialism/Unionism vibe in there which is really hard to come to terms with.. It's a victim of it's time, I suppose, but having intelligent literature with such a uncomprehensible and alien bias can be challenging. |
It's a while since my last reading of Martian Time-Slip, so I can't comment directly on the vibe you mentioned. On the one hand, I know what you mean about Cold War paranoia, the arms race, etc., or I suppose I do. On the other hand, I think nowadays some people are inclined to pooh-pooh the whole thing a little too breezily. I think of the leading leftist commentator Susan Sontag, who said, "Imagine the preposterous case of somebody who read only the Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and somebody else who read only The Nation between 1950 and 1970. Who would be getting more truth about the nature of Communism? There's no doubt it would have been the Reader's Digest reader, and for a specific reason, which I'm sorry I didn't explain, because that too has been misunderstood. It's because the Reader's Digest was open to a lot of immigrant writers and their testimony about life in the Soviet Union."
SUSAN SONTAG - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE - NYTimes.com
FWIW.