Mark’s Comments (group member since Nov 04, 2016)

Mark’s comments from the Philip K Dick group.

Bester and Dick were earlier. Delany did not start until the early 60s.

I started on Solar Lottery. That and Man Who Japed are the only science fiction books of his published in the 50s that I have not read.

It is a sort of mid level book. Nothing near Dick's best but a quick read.

Dick was influenced by the Tibetain Book of the Dead. The most logical interpretation of the ending is the Runciter was dead as well as the rest of them. Jory created two fake realities. Not one. In the Bardo between life and death reality can be formed through pure thought by those who know how do it. That is one Buddhist interpretation of the afterlife.

That is a good question. It also may answer the one problem with the everyone died and is in a fake reality answer. That would be Why create a fake reality within another fake reality. The reason could be that Jory wanted to fool Runciter and his wife so she would not know he was dead and would not try to help him. He was put in first and he created the fake world and then when the rest were put in he created the second reality to confuse things further.

There is no reason to assume that those in half life could communicate with those in the real world without some device. Therefore it is better to think he died with them. Been awhile since I read this. If anyone has other ideas please share them.