Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Dick, Philip K(indred) (Vol. 30) - George Turner

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GEORGE TURNER

[The following excerpt was first published as "Back to the Cactus" in SF Commentary, November, 1970.]

I have always enjoyed Dick's work on the superficial level of entertainment and yet have been aware of dissatisfaction on deeper levels. After a year without him, Ubik crystallises the dissatisfaction; my day as a Dick fan is nearly over.

Here is the book of a man who shudders between the real and the unreal, who sees alternatives as realities and realities as a transient phase among alternatives. Alternatives and realities co-exist, and even influence each other (Ubik, Now Wait For Last Year, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch) and through this incredibly complex universe Dick tries to trace a path. It can't be done. The human brain cannot reduce an infinite number of possibilities to a story pattern simply by selecting what appeals, particularly when one realises that effects can initiate their own causes, as...

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1. Introduction
2. George Turner
3. Brian W. Aldiss
4. Stanislaw Lem
5. Roger Zelazny
6. Bruce Gillespie
7. Angus Taylor
8. Ursula K. Leguin
9. Philip Strick
10. Patricia S. Warrick
11. Copyright

1. Philip K. Dick