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I could say that I love Dick, but that would be weird. I do very much enjoy Philip K. Dick's writing and though this is not one of his best, the "Pizza and Sex Rule" applies to him; ie. just as even bad pizza and / or sex is still pretty good, bad PKD is as well. And this is not bad at all. The first mistake that a new reader would make is to watch Blade Runner and expect a novelization of that film; it was LOOSELY based upon the book. I'm a big fan of the Ridley Scott film starring Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, but the movie diverged from Phillip K. Dick's literature early on. The book is far more bleak than the film, if you can believe that, and much more intricate and complicated. Blade Runner benefits from a simplified storyline. The author was far ahead of his time both in the complexity of his story and the perspective from which he writes. There are elements of Brave New World, I, Robot, and Dune; but the author has a unique voice and the story is an original. It is not an excellent work, as there are gaps and inconsistencies and many loose ends that are never tied in, but the concept and provocation are superb.One element of the book that was completely left out of the film was a sub-plot involving a Christ-like messiah and a faith system based upon what could have been a hoax. First published in 1968, this was one of his more theological based novels, and a trend that would continue steadily becoming more frequent and invasive until the end of his writing.A MUST read for PKD fans as well as SF/F fans period.

Anaïs Nin (Spanish: [anaˈis ˈnin]; born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell; February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) was an author born to Cuban parents in France, where she was also raised. She spent some time in Spain and Cuba but lived most of her life in the United States where she became an established author. She wrote journals (which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death), novels, critical studies, essays, short stories, and erotica. A great deal of her work, including Delta of Venus and Little Birds, was published posthumously.Anaïs Nin was born in Neuilly, France, to artistic parents. Her father, Joaquín Nin, was a Cuban pianist and composer, when he met her mother Rosa Culmell, a classically trained Cuban singer of French and Danish descent. Her father's grandfather had fled France during the Revolution, going first to Saint-Domingue, then New Orleans, and finally to Cuba where he helped build that country's first railway.

I've carted this book about for twenty-six years. In earlier attempts to read to the end I've gotten so far as page 186, because, I suspect, I read on p.168: "[L]ittle by little, as the woman becomes Poet, biography must shift its principal focus from the person to that Voice of the verse, for it was in her poetry and not in the world that ED deliberately decided to 'live'." Of course, this is nonsense - from my perspective. I'm persuaded that ED did not lead a disembodied existence for the thirty-six years of earthly life that remained to her once she had chosen poetry as her vocation. Moreover, although I didn't witness the event, I believe that her family buried her earthly remains on May 19, 1886. And there was and is that rather annoying and off-putting presumption of the gatekeeper/Redeemer that Wolff adopts for the printed page, as in "No one cometh unto Miss Dickinson, but by me."But I am not now the same person who bought a copy of Wolff's book in 1986. And for that I am most grateful. Now I can just about ignore authorial arrogance - having labored sporadically with biography myself for nearly thirty years, I understand and accept that such hazards are realized - with certain notable exceptions - Richard Sewall, for example. And now I pose the question to myself: What biographical facts does Wolff's work establish? How can the results of Wolff's labor enhance the sense of ED that I have created for myself over the years of my engagement with that extraordinarily gifted and preternaturally brave person, as heroic as Homer's depiction of Odysseus.And that approach to Wolff's book has paid munificent dividends.My sense is that Wolff's reading of the poetry that ED composed before 1862 - from my perspective much fuller and richer than any reading that appears in Vendler's compendium - provides an entirely plausible explanation of ED's choice of vocation. It seems to me that one could select and integrate several hundred pages of Sewall and Wolff and thereby produce a book that documents highly persuasive answers to questions - how and under what conditions did ED choose poetry as vocation? Highly significant biographical questions, I would say. [I suspect, however, that choice had little to do with her actions. How could she have "chosen" differently? An impossibility, so far as I can tell.] Wolff's readings of all of ED's poetry might also serve as perfectly splendid hypotheses regarding the trajectory of ED's inner life. Her poems document certain events of her inner life - as do her letters. I say events, because her poems do not represent a complete transcript of the contents of her mind over time, but rather single events separated by more or less lengthy intervals that together might represent a "trajectory." [I do wish I could avoid this metaphor - but for now I'm at a loss to state what I think I mean by this word.]I note, however, that Wolff does not appear to be overly scrupulous with chronology. That's understandable because those who have been, first Johnson and then Franklin, have produced very different sequences of events - from the bits and pieces of evidence that they employed to give us the best numbering and dating that we have. As a result Wolff describes the course of ED's inner life that I can't believe entirely, because the poems she adduces as evidence of sequence don't correspond to events in time as Johnson, whose chronology she had but dismissed, described or as Franklin asserts in his revision of Johnson's chronology. So I suspect that ED's inner life was much more various and complex than Wolff's account allows. Hardly a surprise. And Wolff admits as much near the end of her book (p. 504): "In the days of her youth, ED's religious attitudes were surely dominated by defiance and anger, yet even in those early days there had been pensive moments of hope and trust in the Lord - never enough to suffuse her with faith or to conversion, but enough to find some expression in the poetry. In those early years the Voice of faith was faint in both religious and aesthetic terms ... As the years passed, however, the balance shifted, at first only slightly, but more and more as time went by. By the mid-1860s or early 1870s, well before Father's death, a new poetry of faith had emerged." Why then didn't this perspective inform nearly 300 pages of her reading of poems that ED composed in those early years? Oh, never mind. It's there, here and there. So now I am persuaded that someone could devote a lifetime of study to ED, the results of which could be a biography that traces and juxtaposes events in ED's inner and outer lives - with uncertainties admitted and plainly stated. Someone who would give us a biography of ED to stand with Joseph Frank's life of Dostoyevsky (five volumes) or Brian Boyd's Nabokov. As for me I have purchased Franklin's variorum edition of ED's poems, and I think I'll devote a substantial number of the years of this life that remain to me in the company of ED and H. D. Thoreau.Wouldn't it be paradise enough to spend an eternity or two listening to a conversation between ED and Margaret Fuller? But then again an eternity or two might not be long enough for ED to get a moment's free air time. Well, then three or four eternities.

Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life and experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II, to the post-war years, with Billy occasionally traveling through time. The text centers on Billy's capture by the German Army and his survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, an experience which Vonnegut himself lived through as an American serviceman. The work has been called an example of "unmatched moral clarity" and "one of the most enduring anti-war novels of all time".

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.

Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio, and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city, and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author. Breakfast of Champions deals with themes of free will, suicide, and race relations, among others. The novel is full of drawings by the author, substituting descriptive language with depictions requiring no translation.

From the author of the underground sensation Fight Club comes this wickedly incisive second novel, a mesmerizing, unnerving, and hilarious vision of cult and post-cult life.Tender Branson—last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult—is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. Before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid- and collagen-packed media messiah, author of a best-selling autobiography, Saved from Salvation, and the even better selling Book of Very Common Prayer (The Prayer to Delay Orgasm, The Prayer to Prevent Hair Loss, The Prayer to Silence Car Alarms). He'll reveal the truth of his tortured romance with the elusive and prescient Fertility Hollis, share his insight that "the only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage," and deny responsibility for the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill, a 20,000-acre repository for the nation's outdated pornography. Among other matters both bizarre and trenchant.Not since Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night and Jerzy Kosinski's Being There has there been as dark and telling a satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world. Unpredictable, compelling, and unforgettable, Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk at his deadpan peak; and it cements his place as one of the most original writers in fiction today.

The Sirens of Titan is an outrageous romp through space, time, and morality. The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course there's a catch to the invitation—and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life that only Vonnegut has the courage to tell.

comic science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., published in 1959

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