Puttering About in a Small Land
On sale
14th August 2014
Price: £9.99
Genre
Written in the late 1950s but unpublished until after his death, this is one of Dick’s greatest realistic novels
When Roger and Virginia Lindhal enroll their son Gregg in Mrs Alt’s Los Padres Valley School in the mountains of Southern California, their marriage is already in deep trouble. Then the Lindhals meet Chic and Liz Bonner, whose two sons also board at Mrs Alt’s school.
The meeting is a catalyst for a complicated series of emotions and traumas, set against the backdrop of suburban Los Angeles in the early 1950s. As Roger, Virginia, Chic and Liz orbit each other in ever-decaying circles, their lives threaten to run out of control.
This is a realistic novel filled with details of everyday life and skilfully told from three points of view. It is powerful, eloquent, and gripping.
Winner of both the HUGO and JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARDs for BEST NOVEL, Philip K. Dick is widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day. The object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.
When Roger and Virginia Lindhal enroll their son Gregg in Mrs Alt’s Los Padres Valley School in the mountains of Southern California, their marriage is already in deep trouble. Then the Lindhals meet Chic and Liz Bonner, whose two sons also board at Mrs Alt’s school.
The meeting is a catalyst for a complicated series of emotions and traumas, set against the backdrop of suburban Los Angeles in the early 1950s. As Roger, Virginia, Chic and Liz orbit each other in ever-decaying circles, their lives threaten to run out of control.
This is a realistic novel filled with details of everyday life and skilfully told from three points of view. It is powerful, eloquent, and gripping.
Winner of both the HUGO and JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARDs for BEST NOVEL, Philip K. Dick is widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day. The object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.
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Reviews
Dick sees all the sparkling - and terrifying - possibilities that other authors shy away from
The fascination of the novel lies in spotting the themes that Dick would later develop and make his own: the malleability of perceived reality, the imposition of the fake on the real and the struggle between good and evil
Dick was one of the genuine visionaries that North American fiction has produced in this century
"The fascination of the novel lies in spotting the themes that Dick would later develop and make his own: the malleability of perceived reality, the imposition of the fake on the real and the struggle between good and evil. The Cosmic Puppets may be a minor work, but is nevertheless interesting."
A kind of pulp-fiction Kafka. A prophet
Most perceptive about the relationships between men and women ... Dick crafts the story with such skill that, though the conclusion has the inevitability of a Greek tragedy, it is fresh and unpredictable
Subtle, excellent, memorable