![]() ![]() Out into non-story, out into a kind of plant-like existence-life without consciousness, life without a story.īut what’s the story the others, the rest of the maze’s ensemble, create?. ![]() And yet the hero Morely still wants out of the story, and Dick lets him out. The end of the novel-am I spoiling, after I cut Sutin off for fear of spoiling? Very well, I spoil-the end of the novel posits storytelling as a kind of survival mechanism against the backdrop of the existential horror of endless and apparently meaningless space. But Dick’s Morely wants an out, an off switch, a way to break the circuit, to escape the maze. The ending that Dick gives to his main viewpoint character Seth Morley that I found so moving had nothing to do with plot. Sutin’s line “Morely alone escapes” echoes the actual language of Dick’s novel, which echoes the end of Moby-Dick, where Ishmael alone escapes the wreckage of the Pequod, which in turn echoes the book of Job, where a witness returns from disaster to exclaim, I only am escaped alone to tell thee. This is the core of storytelling, I suppose: witnessing, enduring, and telling again. Okay, wait, it looks like Sutin is eager to spoil the ending there-but honestly, the ending that I found so satisfying wasn’t the twist that Sutin goes on to describe in his summary. In Maze, Seth Morley alone escapes the dire fate of his fellow twenty-second-century Delmark-O “colonists” (who are in truth… In Ubik and Maze, by contrast, individual insight and faith are the only means of piercing the reality puzzle. Only in Eye, written ten years earlier, is the effort successful. The plots of Eye, Ubik, and Maze are strikingly similar: A group of individuals find themselves in a perplexing reality state and try to use each other’s individual perceptions ( idios kosmos) to make sense of what is happening to them all ( koinos kosmos). Okay, wait-I promise I’ll return to Sutin’s lucid summary-but Damn, that’s it right there- “Phil spun late-night theories” -much of Maze reads like a late night amphetamine rant about consciousness, man. … In his forward to Maze Phil cites the help of William Sarill in creating the “abstract, logical” religion posed in the novel Sarill, in interview, says he only listened as Phil spun late-night theories. They then learn the truth of Milton’s maxim that the mind creates its own heavens and hells. Okay, here, from the entry for Maze:Ī group of colonists encounter inexplicable doings-including brutal murders-on the supposedly uninhabited planet Delmark-O. ![]() I’m going to get up off my ass and walk across the room I’m in to pick up Lawrence Sutin’s 1989 biography of PKD, Divine Invasions and crib from the “Chronological Survey and Guide” at its end. But wait, that’s not the plot, that’s like, theme, which is just a way of condensing the plot. (And, like, how does consciousness mediate the ultimate promise of a life-maze that leads to Death, the apparent undoing of consciousness?). What is A Maze of Death about? I mean, that’s what a book review is supposed to do, maybe? Give up some of the plot, the gist, right? The short short answer is Death. ![]() Hell, Ubik probably peters out too, but it’s funnier and sharper. Still: A Maze of Death delivers a strong conclusion, a thesis statement that will resonate with anyone who’s ever envied a machine’s “Off” switch.īut book reviews aren’t supposed to start with endings, right? Too, A Maze of Death suffers perhaps in comparison to its twin, Dick’s bouncier 1969 ensemble satire Ubik. Or perhaps it was only an allegory assembled for its author’s sad delight. The thin allegory he’s patched together crumbles. Sad because I didn’t quite expect (hence that adverb unexpectedly) Dick to stick any kind of ending, what, after nearly 200 pages of cardboard characters wandering through a pulp fiction death maze, ventriloquized by the author to perform monologues on consciousness and perception and reality and religion and prayer and faith and afterlife and salvation and so on and so on and so on.Ī Maze of Death has some strong moments and strong images-one-way space shuttles, organic 3-D printers, riffs on a deity that would necessarily absorb the concept of a non-deity, a cosmic recapitulation of Odin, space sex, etc.-but on the whole A Maze of Death peters out towards the end, its energy sapped as Dick tires of revolving through (and killing off) the cast of characters (and consciousnesses) he’s assembled in his Haunted (Space) House. It’s a sad end, profoundly sad in some ways, and the unexpectedness of the sadness, is, like, particularly sad. The end made me tear up a little, unexpectedly. Dick’s 1970 novel A Maze of Death this afternoon. ![]()
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