I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon - Philip K. Dick
(found at the library-in-the-mall in Erie, PA, then requested through ILL)
This one's out of print, so you'd do best to look in the library or used bookstores, although with the renewed popularity of Philip K. Dick recently, I wouldn't be too surprised if a new edition of this showed up soon. If you've seen the film "Waking Life" then you may remember Richard Linklater's character talking about Dick's book Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said and how it's the same as the Book of Acts. And if you've read the book and you're familiar with the Book of Acts, you may also wonder what the two have to do with each other at all. Well, the introduction to I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon is titled "How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later," addressing the question "What is reality?" And in this introduction, Dick spells out several incidents and conversations regarding Flow My Tears, the Book of Acts, and how time is possibly an illusion.
That aside, there are some decent short stories in the collection, although there are others of his that I've liked better. "Explorers We" reminded me of something from Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, and "The Exit Door Leads In" had a clever ending (though some of the story was more drawn-out than I thought necessary).
Fed to jonathan's brain | January 28, 2003
