Hall of Mirrors

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Reading PKD reminds me of being in a hall of mirrors in a funhouse at that moment when you catch a glimpse of yourself ad infinitum. I get this feeling not only with his books, but also movies based on his books or inspired by his work, such as The Matrix.

I've tried reading The Man in the High Castle (1962) before and never could get through it, but this time I stuck with it and it paid off. Though the ending left me scratching my head, which I imagine is pretty typical, until you have that "Oooh" moment.

It's a book about a man who wrote a book about an imagined future, an alternate history of a world imagined that's a parallel to the real world, though diametrically opposed to the world of the book itself.

Although I'm not much of a reader of science fiction, I've been intrigued by the steady flow of movies since Dick's death based on his books, i.e., Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, Minority Report, etc and will probably be reading more.

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