A Maze of Death: SF Masterworks

by Philip K. Dick

Book Overview

From Hugo Award-winning author Philip K. Dick, A Maze of Death is a sci-fi murder mystery set on a mysterious planet where colonists experience unexplained shifts in reality and perception.Delmak-O is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1407246380
• ISBN13: 9781407246383
• Release Date: January 2013
• Publisher: Gollancz
• Length: 190 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.9" x 0.5" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

a excellent taste of P. K. Dick

First off, Dick is the unsung hero of postmodern literature. If there is a sense of failure in any of his works it can only be attributed to his effort to take on too much of reality, to put complete portraits of men and women in an environment fully realized and even more complex than that in which we live presently. Call him Icarus or Ishmael, for his task is greater than the breadth of any of his novels is capable, which is to say that nothing seems to end satisfactorily, that Dick is more than ready to leave loose ends and frayed edges, not because of oversight or inability, but because he rejects conventionality. Simply put, if the universe were really in order, why would one be compelled to write? Like other novels, A Maze of Death ends ambiguously, but in a much different manner... A Maze of Death is sheer mastery, and yet to characerize this mastery is at once to applaud its unconventionality and to give away the plot. This I cannot do, but I will say this: nothing ends so sweetly as this work. Unlike other works, this one is the epitome of postmodernism--it will wrap you in its folds, stretching your imagination and forcing you to carry out endless deductions, and then it will give you nothing to walk away with. It is a purely reflexive experience: this book connects to nothing in the world and is yet a world unto itself, a maze that can only be appreciated by getting through it.

This one's good! Short but with amazing insight!

Realistic characters (all human this time), genuine suspense, a strange and oddly familiar view of religion and a really well handled twist at the end - for those reasons A Maze of Death is one of my favorite Philip K. Dick novels. It's a short book, but packs in a lot of insight about perceptions, the shifting nature of reality (of course), human interactions, paranoia and hopeless cases. I notice that the tone here is more dismal than Philip K. Dick usually offers, but (as always with his stories) reading it is an eye-opening and memorable experience. While many authors have expanded on themes in this story, written in 1970, I don't think that anyone's improved on his presentation of them. Read it with your mind open to all possibilities.

The first PKD I really liked

I drew on to PKD from his reputation. After reading a few of his works with bemused admiration, this was the first of his books I really enjoyed.SPOILERSA Maze of Death is genuinely readable; most PKD is a little shoddily put together, but this one is perfect. It is a wonderful allegory of loss of faith in God. These people create a world with a virtual reality machine. A world where God exists. The trouble is, when they get out, they can't face reality any more... This is indicative of Dick's own religious confusion at the time - this was prior to his "revelation" of 1974. I can sympathise with him.

CLUE in space

This is definitely in my top ten list of PKD's best. Here's the basic storyline: An odd group of people find themselves on a planet called Delmak-O. Just as they're about find out what they're there for, the satellite that's supposed to tell them does something strange, leaving them in the dark. Now, clueless as to their reason for being here, they try and find a way to regain communication. But then something else happens. Slowly, they start dying off, and no one knows who is killing who. It sorta reminded me of the movie CLUE. At first you might think that this is just a murder-mystery in space. WRONG. The ending was EXTREMELY unpredictable, but EXTREMELY brilliant. This story could only have come from one of SF's masters, PKD. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, but his character development is good enough that you can tell who's who most of the time. I can't believe that this book didn't win an award or something, it's really great. If you find it, read it and enjoy!

My first and favorite PKD book.

This was the first PKD book I read, and it still remains my favorite, even above such incredible contenders as 3 Stigmata and Ubik. It is his most cohesive piece of work, and the ending, which may at first seem like a cop-out, in retrospect is actually an ingenious twist on an old gimmick - without giving it away, endings with this gimmick usually are "uplifting" and give you a "whew!" feeling. In A Maze of Death, however, it propels you into a place that is even worse than the previous "place." An updated "...And Then There Were None (ten little indians)" (by Agatha Christie).