The Game Players of Titan

By -
I love this new series of covers.
The Game Players of Titan, by Philip K. Dick

It's turning out to be a very PKD and Bester-heavy month for me!  This time I read The Game-Players of Titan which, in classic PKD fashion, involves an awful future scenario, much questioning of reality, and lots and lots of drugs.

After a devastating world war and fight with slug-like aliens from Titan, there are not a lot of people left and fertility is nearly gone.  The alien vugs dictate a lot, and they make people play the game of Bluff to trade property and spouses.  Pete Garden has just lost his home base of Berkeley (and his wife, but no big deal) and he's determined to get it back, but this particular loss sets off a chain of events that lead to a murder, an unexpected trip to Titan, and a game of Bluff against the expert and telepathic vugs.

This was a great read.  Part scary SF scenario, part murder mystery--but then it goes way off the rails.  The second half is just nuts, but if I tell you about it, it will just spoil the story.  So I'm not quite sure how to tell you much at all, but it's a great example of PKD's writing and would be a reasonable
choice for a first try.



I have just one more SF title that I'm thinking of reading this month.  Dune.  Would you believe I've never read Dune?  I'm not sure I'll really get to it, or at least finish it before the end of January, but it does seem like it's about time I read it.

Comments

  1. ArenelJanuary 20, 2014 at 9:10 AM

    READ DUNE!!! It took me two days, so don't worry about not being able to finish it :) You will rather not be able to eat, sleep and do other stuff :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanJanuary 20, 2014 at 2:00 PM

    Ha! Just what I need. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. CleoJanuary 20, 2014 at 2:58 PM

    I haven't read much Sci-Fi so I really appreciate your comments on the books you're reading for this challenge, Jean.

    Thanks for the glowing recommendation, Ekaterina …… I'm going to put it on my list right now!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJanuary 24, 2014 at 5:43 PM

    'The second half is just nuts'. Haha, dear old PKD.

    And yes, read Dune!

    ReplyDelete
  5. JeanJanuary 24, 2014 at 7:56 PM

    I am pleased to tell you that I am over halfway through Dune and finding it good. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more