Showing posts with label time travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time travel. Show all posts

Philip K. Dick: Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s Review

Philip K. Dick: Five Novels of the 1960s and 70s
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Philip K. Dick: Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s ReviewProlific. Consistently thought-provoking. Scintillatingly brilliant with uncanny frequency. Hilarious. Living an adult life mostly in poverty but surrounded by many caring people. A binge fiction writer, letter-writer, and talker.
This was Philip K. Dick. He was kind enough to correspond several times with a nerdy high-school senior who had written a ten-page analysis of three of his major works.
That was me.
PKD's heart would soar at being included in a series of books featuring Melville, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. This latest volume includes FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID, still one of my favorites and the novel that sent me on my own binge of PKD reading.
With an oeuvre of over fifty novels, voluminous short stories, philosophical essays, and a final tome, THE EXEGESIS, which may resemble Prokofiev's Symphony Number 2 in its gargantuan length and ultimate inaccessibility for most fans, Philip K. Dick was a ceaseless writer who found revision a nearly impossible process.
His works are structured by his brilliant mind that thought aloud on paper in the form of stories that questioned the nature of reality but that also revealed a profound love for most of humanity. To read PKD is to become more deeply attuned to what it is to be human--to become an explorer held in suspense by a psychological realist who fabulated fantastic worlds that were strangely familiar.
PKD's best works--five of which are included in this latest volume--are a joy to read. Because he wrote fast and didn't often revise, these are blemished works of art. But all of us are similarly blemished: it's the nature of being human. Brilliance radiates even on pages where archaic slang, incorrect predictions, and other flaws are rife.
One leaves PKD's novels wishing that one could still talk to, correspond with, or hear lecture the author--or simply read brand-new examples of this genius's work. Even with his vast output, one wants more.
One cannot leave the pages of PKD without feeling a strange, perhaps singular, intimacy. These novels incarnate the mind of that brilliant friend who lives nearby and raids your medicine cabinet if you're not looking.
If one is attuned, one leaves the novels of PKD not just loving the words but also loving the man who wrote them, flawed as he may have been.
Rereading FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID for the first time in twenty years, I discovered how much I myself had changed. The jokes had a different tone; the philosophical and psychological dimensions had taken on different shadings and colors. But the engaging ideas, the idiosyncratic but compelling characters, and the sheer energy of the novel convinced me yet again that I was in the presence of a mind that never ceased to teach. Dick, a student of so many disciplines, channelled his deepest loves and fears into his books, and we, the lucky readers alive today who continue to peruse his pages, have been given by PKD a gift similar to Mary Anne Dominic's blue vase at the end of FLOW...-- works of enduring art that are loved by many.
I'm grateful that the Internet was unavailable to PKD: it might have ruined his output of novels and stories.
But I wish I could see the joy and pride on his face at having two volumes (so far) dedicated to his best work.
Emerson himself merited only two volumes.Philip K. Dick: Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s Overview

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Killing Kate: A Novel Review

Killing Kate: A Novel
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Killing Kate: A Novel ReviewThe headline above is an old Edward Gorey quote that I couldn't resist using. No, the eponymous Kate of Julie Kramer's fourth Riley Spartz mystery was actually bludgeoned with a baseball bat. So close. Kate's death basically opens the novel, and straight off the reader learns that she is the fourth victim of a serial killer. The authorities are not yet aware of this fact.
Local news reporter Riley has been lying off the violent crimes lately, since she had been making more news than covering it. But hearing the familiar address of this homicide, she grabs it before anyone can object. And her memory is correct. The crime happened at a house she once knew well. It was the home of her former college roommate, Laura, and the victim is Laura's younger sister, Kate. Kramer has the mechanics of creating suspense down pat. She keeps readers turning pages, ending chapters with lines like: "I didn't know yet that Kate had led a secret life, and that her secret did not die with her."
Riley and Laura, once the closest of friends, had split in a rift more than a decade ago. But this tragedy paves the way to an uneasy reconciliation. Investigative reporter that she is, Riley, of course, becomes far too involved in the hunt for this killer. As always, there's a "b" story in the novel involving an animal story her crazy news director wants her to cover. And the third narrative thread is Riley's long distance relationship with Nick Garnett.
I have outlined several things I like about this series in past reviews. I find Riley to be an immensely likable character with a distinctive voice. Reading each novel feels like visiting with an old friend. Also, I love the television news setting. I feel like I'm getting the inside scoop with each novel, and given the author's background, I guess I am. I can't watch a promo for the 11:00pm news with the same eyes after reading one of these books. It's fascinating! Plus, I like that while being fairly realistic, the novels aren't unnecessarily graphic. In other words, there's not too much sex and violence graphically depicted--which isn't to say there's none, but it's left more to the imagination.
One thing that was bugging me a little in this book was the relationship between Riley and Nick. There's always conflict between them, and conflict is what makes a great novel. But their relationship dynamics seemed a bit too simplistic and surface level. I guess four novels in, I'd hope for a little more depth there. But Kramer must be doing something right, because I'm always rooting for the two of them.
I don't know that I'd describe Killing Kate as a cozy mystery, but it's not entirely dissimilar. I bring this up, because while the mystery itself should not be predictable, there's a certain tone to these stories that is. Therefore, I have to tell you that the end of this novel shocked the hell out of me. And I LOVED it. Surprises are good. I have NO idea where this series is going next, but I will be the first in line to find out! Way to go, Julie Kramer!Killing Kate: A Novel Overview

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The Temple Mount Code (Thomas Lourds, Book 3) Review

The Temple Mount Code (Thomas Lourds, Book 3)
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The Temple Mount Code (Thomas Lourds, Book 3) ReviewLinguists Professor Thomas Lourds is at an archaeological dig in China when a tortoise shell marked with odd inscriptions is found. Lourds believes the ancient text offer clues to a mystery at the Scholar's Rock Temple in the Himalayas.
His Israeli colleague Lev Strauss asks him to come to Jerusalem to decipher a find in Cairo that the former believes leads to where Mohammad hid his handwritten original Koran. However, as Lourds arrives in Israel, assassins kill Strauss. Clues take Lourds to Tehran where Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei believes the Mohammad document bestowed on the prophet by Allah will enable him to establish a Caliphate and order a Global Jihad
The latest Lourds over the top of the Dome of the Rock Byzantium thriller is an entertaining tale that grips the audience from the moment the professor leaves for Israel and only slows down for detracting trysts in every city. Still readers who suspend credibility will fully relish Lourds' latest exhilarating bloody roller coaster adventures (see The Lucifer Code and The Atlantis Code) as he tries to prevent a global religious war from happening.
Harriet Klausner
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