THE PHILIP K. DICKATHON (6)

Dr. Futurity by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I hope Phil was able to pay some bills with whatever money he got from this. It is filled with the kind of prose that sounds like the author is thinking through what his character might do next, making notes rather than telling a story. This one is definitely for completists only.


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KIM KARDASHIAN REVEALED !!! (6)

Though they flourish many times, such temporizing foxes, and blear the world's eyes by flattery, bribery, dissembling their natures and other men's weakness, that cannot so apprehend their tricks, yet in the end they will be discerned, and precipitated in a moment: "Surely," David says, "thou has set them in slippery places." (Ps. lxxxiii, 18.) ...Or put case they escape, and rest unmasked to their life's end, yet after their death their memory stinks as a snuff of a candle put out, and those that durst not mutter against them in their lives, will prosecute their names with satires, libels, and bitter imprecations, they shall be in ill repute in all succeeding ages, and be odious to the world's end.

Robert Burton,   The  Anatomy of Melancholy

MONDAY MORNING

ThE PHILIP K. DICKATHON (5)

Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Throughout the 1950's, Philip K. Dick continued to write mainstream novels involving working class characters and realistic situations. His agents were never able to place any of these titles with publishers, at least not until several years after Dick's death when the Dickian industry began in earnest and publishers were scrounging for new material. Dick sometimes disparaged sf output, but he continued to have faith in these realist novels into the 1960's.


Time out of Joint, published in 1959, is a science fiction story that reads, for much of the time, as one of Dick's mainstream efforts. The characters are middle management types, one manages the produce department of a local grocery store, another works for the water department. They live in a new suburb of modest homes and are somewhat civically active. One couple, Vic and Margo, share their home with Margo's brother, Raigle, a war veteran who makes a comfortable living by answering a daily newspaper quiz, Where Will the Little Green Man Land Next. He is always right and has become something of a celebrity.


The first odd moment arrives when Vic looks through a newly arrived brochure from the Book-of-the-Month Club and wonders who Harriet Beecher Stowe might be. It's possible he wouldn't know, but later Raigle sees a layout in Life Magazine and marvels that the featured starlet's breasts can maintain the tilt they have in the photographs. Since this is a Philip K. Dick novel, all three characters analyze the breasts in some detail but then also wonder among themselves just who Marilyn Monroe could be that she would merit so much attention.


The next day, while Raigle contemplates adultery with the neighbor's wife, he takes her to the municipal swimming pool, and when he goes to the refreshment stand for cokes, the stand and its manager fade from sight leaving behind only a piece of paper with the printed words SOFT-DRINK STAND. Raigle puts the note into a box he keeps in his pocket where similar messages read DOOR, FACTORY BUILDING, BOWL OF FLOWERS.


We are now in Dickian territory, where few people are who they claim to be, and  a trip past the city limits is a trip to another world. Dick earns his standing as the connoisseur of American paranoia with this one. Early on Raigle has the insight that he may be the most important person in the world. He's no dummy.




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BOOK REVIEW: THE LITTLE SLEEP, by Paul Tremblay

The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

How many physical and mental challenges can a private eye face? Raymond Burr was wheelchair-bound in Ironsides, and I remember a self-explanatory series called The Blind Detective. Monk has OCD, and the character in Eric Garcia's novels is a tyrannosaurus in human drag. What's left?

Paul Tremblay has made his hero, Mark Genevich, narcoleptic, the result of a car accident where he should have been wearing a seat belt. Narcolepsy seems to be a disorder that would take you out of the private eye game, especially since Genevich has all the worst symptoms, He not only falls alseep, he also suffers elaborate hypnogogic hallucinations that allow him to experience conversations and encounters that simply never happened and cataleptic seizures that leave him paralyzed. In one scene he is unable to tamp out his own flaming pants leg. But the type of detetcive work he does involves mostly searching for runaways spouses or tracking down real estate deals on the internet. No stakeouts and certainly no driving. (Actually there is one exceptional driving incident that leaves you rooting for both our hero and everyone else on the road between Cape Cod and South Boston.)

Then into his life comes Jennifer Times, the daughter of the Boston D.A. who just might have a chance at winning the American Idol style program most characters in the book are fixated on. But then again, she may not even exist, the nude photos she leaves behind look like her but are too old to be her, and Genevich's missing father is somehow involved. Tremblay may feel that his not-so-sly reference to The Big Sleep  frees him from constructing too convincing a plot, but he keeps things moving with a genuinely likable main character whose best friend is his mother, along with the usual array of goons, crooked politicians, smart-mouthed cab drivers, and a plot where you know early on that people are going to learn things they would rather not about family members.

Narcolepsy goes to the heart of detective work in a way being paraplegic or a tyrannosaur really can't. Detectives gather clues and figure things out, but Genevich has to contend with unwanted ten minute naps and hallucinations, both real hindrances to fact gathering. Trembly has already written another Genevich novel and he could be onto something here.


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And just in case you thought I made these other books up

  

A DISTURBING ACHIEVEMENT

Not much more than a month ago, a friend introduced me to the Boggle App for the iPhone.

 I think it cost $1.99. I was willing to pay it, because for over a year I had been playing a couple of Boggle wannabes on my phone and computer. They had a 4x 4 grid of letters just like Boggle, but for trademark reasons they could not call themselves Boggle, one was Scramble and the other Wordtwist, and they had to employ different scoring criteria. They were enjoyable and sufficiently time-wasting, but they were not the real thing. Wordtwist was remarkable for its inclusive dictionary that did not shy away from obscenities or even most racial terms. It scored on a bell curve, where I usually found myself listed as "high average." For some reason this seemed more insulting that simply "average." Scramble's only advantage was its presence on the phone as well as the computer, but it made so much noise it had to be played with the volume off.

But then there was Boggle, the real thing, complete with the letter dice that rattled when you shook the phone to start a new game. I loved it and I played a lot. A whole lot.

When I played I never did anything more that bring it up on the screen and click "quick play," That got me directly to the game board. It was not until a month or so later than I looked more closely at the menu and noticed a tab for "Achievements."  "Ooh," I thought, "I wonder how I'm doing."

Turns out my longest word is "quietens," and yet for some reason my best word shows up a "cleavers." I don't know why one eight letter word should be better than another. There was an entry for the letters I used the most, which were unsurprisingly the most common letters in English words. In all my playing I had found a total of nearly 30,000 words. And then I saw it.

There was a heading for "Play Time." The information that followed was in a form that I at first didn't fully comprehend. There seemed to be too many slots for the numbers. Then I read it correctly. Over the past five or six weeks I had spent 1 day, 36 min playing Boggle. Yes, I had moved one day and thirty six minutes closer to my death playing Boggle on my iPhone.

That's an achievement? I guess it wouldn't be good marketing to list it as a disgrace.

Since then I have instituted some new rules for Boggle time. I try to play only when I am waiting for something, like water to boil. But my major playtime is while watching something I don't really care about on television.

(For other disturbing posts follow the "disturbing" label.)

KIM KARDASHIAN REVEALED !!! (5)

But no man hears us, we are most miserably dejected. Our bodies have scarce room for a new stripe. We can get no relief, no comfort, no succor. We have tried all means, yet find no remedy; no man living can express the anguish and bitterness of our souls, but we that endure it. We are, forsaken, in torture of body and mind, in another hell: what shall we do?...our estate is far more miserable, much more to be deplored, and far greater cause have we to lament; the devil and the world persecute us, all good fortune has forsaken us, we are left to the rage of beggary, cold, hunger, thirst, nastiness, sickness, irksomeness, to continual torment, labor and pain, to derision and contempt, bitter enemies all, and far worse than any death; death alone we desire, death we seek, yet cannot have it, and what shall we do?...comfort thyself with this yet, thou art at the worst, and before long it will either overcome thee or thou it...misery is virtue's whetstone.

Robert Burton,   The Anatomy of Melancholy