Kim Miller
An early PKD work where he's exploring the mind swapping theme that appears in some later books. A few visitors go to witness the turning on of a particle accelerator. There is a malfunction and the particle beam sprays over them, burning them with radiation. They wake to find the world changed into a religious fundamentalist state where mere belief is the only currency of value.
Hamilton, the main man, realises they have been cast inside the mind of one of the other visitors and are living out his deep desires. They manage to break free, only to find they are now in a world of puritanical whim - once again inside the mind of one of the visitors. She turns things off that she doesn't like, loose women, cats, factories, puddles. They manage to force her to turn off so much stuff that everything disappears and they are free of her mind.
in this manner they cycle through the minds of other visitors, finishing in a brutal communist state. For this they blame Hamilton's wife, who has been called a communist because of her support for social justice issues. At the start of the story Hamilton has been dismissed from his job researching rocket propulsion as the bosses see his wife as a security risk. However, Hamilton works out that the real communist among the visitors is the very security chief who has charged his wife.
They emerge from this 'mind cycle' when the paramedics pull them from the rubble. Hamilton is back before his bosses and points to the security chief as the real communist among them. They don't believe this and he walks away and with another member of staff starts his own business building HiFi systems.
The book shows itself to be a manifesto of rebellion against the McCarthyism of the era by pointing out that pursuing people for thought crimes is ridiculous once we see what lives in the minds of the ordinary people around us.
An early PKD work where he's exploring the mind swapping theme that appears in some later books. A few visitors go to witness the turning on of a particle accelerator. There is a malfunction and the particle beam sprays over them, burning them with radiation. They wake to find the world changed into a religious fundamentalist state where mere belief is the only currency of value.
Hamilton, the main man, realises they have been cast inside the mind of one of the other visitors and are living out his deep desires. They manage to break free, only to find they are now in a world of puritanical whim - once again inside the mind of one of the visitors. She turns things off that she doesn't like, loose women, cats, factories, puddles. They manage to force her to turn off so much stuff that everything disappears and they are free of her mind.
in this manner they cycle through the minds of other visitors, finishing in a brutal communist state. For this they blame Hamilton's wife, who has been called a communist because of her support for social justice issues. At the start of the story Hamilton has been dismissed from his job researching rocket propulsion as the bosses see his wife as a security risk. However, Hamilton works out that the real communist among the visitors is the very security chief who has charged his wife.
They emerge from this 'mind cycle' when the paramedics pull them from the rubble. Hamilton is back before his bosses and points to the security chief as the real communist among them. They don't believe this and he walks away and with another member of staff starts his own business building HiFi systems.
The book shows itself to be a manifesto of rebellion against the McCarthyism of the era by pointing out that pursuing people for thought crimes is ridiculous once we see what lives in the minds of the ordinary people around us.
Internationally famous TV personality Jason Taverner wakes up in a run down motel with no idea how he got there. His ID is gone from his wallet, and it seems nobody knows him or remembers him. And in a tightly controlled police state where everybody is under surveillance that is a dangerous place to be.
Police databases don't know him, and yet here he is. The man standing before them does not exist. Jason bribes somebody to make false ID for him and it nearly works. He finds he doesn't know who to trust and who is a police informant. He tries to go on the run but it turns out not existing doesn't mean it's easy to hide.
He finds himself being taken to police headquarters and the commander is intrigued by his situation, but can't find anything to charge him with as not existing is not a crime. The entanglement tightens around him with the introduction of some crazy characters, and of course, this being PKD, drugs are involved. Weird drugs, not the normal mind altering stuff, but reality altering stuff.
And just like that it all ends. He wraps up the book like a 'Where are they now?" moment at the end of a TV documentary.
I would have given more stars but found Jason to be often unlikeable and inconsistent. He rarely made me care what happened to him, whereas the surrounding characters had more charm.
Internationally famous TV personality Jason Taverner wakes up in a run down motel with no idea how he got there. His ID is gone from his wallet, and it seems nobody knows him or remembers him. And in a tightly controlled police state where everybody is under surveillance that is a dangerous place to be.
Police databases don't know him, and yet here he is. The man standing before them does not exist. Jason bribes somebody to make false ID for him and it nearly works. He finds he doesn't know who to trust and who is a police informant. He tries to go on the run but it turns out not existing doesn't mean it's easy to hide.
He finds himself being taken to police headquarters and the commander is intrigued by his situation, but can't find anything to charge him with as not existing is not a crime. The entanglement tightens around him with the introduction of some crazy characters, and of course, this being PKD, drugs are involved. Weird drugs, not the normal mind altering stuff, but reality altering stuff.
And just like that it all ends. He wraps up the book like a 'Where are they now?" moment at the end of a TV documentary.
I would have given more stars but found Jason to be often unlikeable and inconsistent. He rarely made me care what happened to him, whereas the surrounding characters had more charm.
YA Sci-Fi about kids fighting off an alien invasion.
Bo is eleven and is escaping from captivity by the aliens. Lots of kids have been rounded up into warehouses and infected with a 'parasite' injected into their abdomen. The adults have been fitted with devices that render them zombie-like and living in some euphoric simulation. There is no help coming from any adult.
Bo runs through the dark city being chased by an alien blimp, and having gotten clear he's found by Violet, an older girl, who takes him to the abandoned theatre where a bunch of runaways, the Lost Boys, are hiding out.
Their fight the basic survival comes to a head when they capture one of the blimps, that turns out to be the alien itself, and in the ensuing chaos, Bo and Violet find themselves on the alien ship hovering overhead. They team up with another captive, Gloom, with whom the start forming a plan to retake the city from the aliens.
It turns out that the parasites in the kids are being tuned into powerful mind weapons to be used by the aliens to bring more ships to Earth.
With the help of Gloom, and fighting against the fear of betrayal of one of their own, they start putting the plan into action. There is a certain body count as some of the kids don't make it, and the stakes are raised as Bo goes for one last desperate rescue attempt.
YA Sci-Fi about kids fighting off an alien invasion.
Bo is eleven and is escaping from captivity by the aliens. Lots of kids have been rounded up into warehouses and infected with a 'parasite' injected into their abdomen. The adults have been fitted with devices that render them zombie-like and living in some euphoric simulation. There is no help coming from any adult.
Bo runs through the dark city being chased by an alien blimp, and having gotten clear he's found by Violet, an older girl, who takes him to the abandoned theatre where a bunch of runaways, the Lost Boys, are hiding out.
Their fight the basic survival comes to a head when they capture one of the blimps, that turns out to be the alien itself, and in the ensuing chaos, Bo and Violet find themselves on the alien ship hovering overhead. They team up with another captive, Gloom, with whom the start forming a plan to retake the city from the aliens.
It turns out that the parasites in the kids are being tuned into powerful mind weapons to be used by the aliens to bring more ships to Earth.
With the help of Gloom, and fighting against the fear of betrayal of one of their own, they start putting the plan into action. There is a certain body count as some of the kids don't make it, and the stakes are raised as Bo goes for one last desperate rescue attempt.
Updated a reading goal:
Read 75 books in 2025
Progress so far: 75 / 75 100%
This was my third Silverberg novel about exploring the mind and the dissolution of the self.
In a future world perpetrators of serious crimes are sentenced to have the inner self removed from their brain. Once that person is removed a new self, a new person, is inserted. With a new name, a lifetime of manufactured memories, and no real provenance, the new person is allowed back into the flow of city life.
Paul Macy walks out of the rehab centre, inhabiting the body of Nat Hamlin, a once famous artist convicted of multiple rapes. But something triggers a hidden danger deep in his brain, and he finds himself in conversation with Hamlin. And Hamlin wants his body back.
The bulk of the book is the back and forth struggle for control. One man is a work of fiction, a construct, but the legal person. The other man has walked the Earth in this body for decades, become internationally famous, but who allowed his inner danger to surface in multiple crimes.
There was a point through the story that I thought I could guess the outcome, but Silverberg brings a fresh imagination to the final confrontation.
This was my third Silverberg novel about exploring the mind and the dissolution of the self.
In a future world perpetrators of serious crimes are sentenced to have the inner self removed from their brain. Once that person is removed a new self, a new person, is inserted. With a new name, a lifetime of manufactured memories, and no real provenance, the new person is allowed back into the flow of city life.
Paul Macy walks out of the rehab centre, inhabiting the body of Nat Hamlin, a once famous artist convicted of multiple rapes. But something triggers a hidden danger deep in his brain, and he finds himself in conversation with Hamlin. And Hamlin wants his body back.
The bulk of the book is the back and forth struggle for control. One man is a work of fiction, a construct, but the legal person. The other man has walked the Earth in this body for decades, become internationally famous, but who allowed his inner danger to surface in multiple crimes.
There was a point through the story that I thought I could guess the outcome, but Silverberg brings a fresh imagination to the final confrontation.
Four college students drive into the desert to see who stays alive.
An ancient manuscript in a dead language sits deep inside the storage stacks of a university library. A student finds it, translates it in a rudimentary way, and is fascinated enough by the promise of eternal life in the text that he talks his roommates into driving across the country to find the mystical community that it references. Take no notice that the document is 1500 years old, the student is convinced that the community is still out there. Also, dismiss the thought of danger when the document prophesies that four people will go, one will be killed by another, one will take his own life, and two will go on to never die.
The story is told by each of the four young men, swapping between them chapter by chapter. There is their response to the invitation, the decision to take the Easter break and go west, the drive across the country, finding the monastery, and what happens once they are there.
The prose is tight and engaging, the move between narrators is not jarring even though the men are very different from each other. And the events in the monastery are somehow banal - eg. the daily life of the monks as they care for the garden - and unsettling at the same time. The end of the book approaches and nothing seems to be happening in relation to the prophecy, until it does. And once certain events are set in train we are struck again by the banality of the prophecy's fulfillment.
Four college students drive into the desert to see who stays alive.
An ancient manuscript in a dead language sits deep inside the storage stacks of a university library. A student finds it, translates it in a rudimentary way, and is fascinated enough by the promise of eternal life in the text that he talks his roommates into driving across the country to find the mystical community that it references. Take no notice that the document is 1500 years old, the student is convinced that the community is still out there. Also, dismiss the thought of danger when the document prophesies that four people will go, one will be killed by another, one will take his own life, and two will go on to never die.
The story is told by each of the four young men, swapping between them chapter by chapter. There is their response to the invitation, the decision to take the Easter break and go west, the drive across the country, finding the monastery, and what happens once they are there.
The prose is tight and engaging, the move between narrators is not jarring even though the men are very different from each other. And the events in the monastery are somehow banal - eg. the daily life of the monks as they care for the garden - and unsettling at the same time. The end of the book approaches and nothing seems to be happening in relation to the prophecy, until it does. And once certain events are set in train we are struck again by the banality of the prophecy's fulfillment.
This is a fun run through a metaphor of Ikea being a series of parallel universes.
A women goes missing in the furniture store. The management recognises that she's fallen into a parallel universe and they send two employees to go after her with the equipment necessary to find her and bring her back. And just in case she hasn't survived they are asked to bring back another version of her from another universe.
Through the barrier the two rescuers find chairs that eat people like those flowers that eat insects. They find dangerously psychotic versions of their workmates. They find other perils, but they also find an alternate lost lady. With the help of the author they make it back to their own store and deliver the alternate woman to her granddaughter and all is well. Or as well as it might be.
It's a light read with tongue in cheek narrative and crazy events, all wrapped up in the universally loved Ikea 'how do I get out of this place?' trope.
This is a fun run through a metaphor of Ikea being a series of parallel universes.
A women goes missing in the furniture store. The management recognises that she's fallen into a parallel universe and they send two employees to go after her with the equipment necessary to find her and bring her back. And just in case she hasn't survived they are asked to bring back another version of her from another universe.
Through the barrier the two rescuers find chairs that eat people like those flowers that eat insects. They find dangerously psychotic versions of their workmates. They find other perils, but they also find an alternate lost lady. With the help of the author they make it back to their own store and deliver the alternate woman to her granddaughter and all is well. Or as well as it might be.
It's a light read with tongue in cheek narrative and crazy events, all wrapped up in the universally loved Ikea 'how do I get out of this place?' trope.