UBIK

UBIK.  The unusual title is foreshadowing to the kind of story this plays out to be.  Philip K. Dick starts off this story by recognizing two kinds of people, psionics and anti-psionics.  Both have their respective industries, the latter trying to stop the former from forcibly interrogating or invading the mind spaces of human kind.  They are both at a tug of war, or rather a checks and balances with each other to try to maintain the order in keep the system maintained.  Industries have been built to capitalize on this happenstance.   With this era, there is also a term called half-life in which people who have been injured/died can have their mind and body preserved in order to speak again to the living in order to give advice etc.  These play crucial roles in our story for Philip K. Dick, just like the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch uses the idea of half-life and psionic capabilities to play mind games and produce the feeling of uneasiness as one's mind is forcibly going through an experience unlike what he/she has been before.
 With any drug trip, one confuses reality with fantasy and questions both using basic logic in order to come back to any sense of order within one's surroundings.  However, when the world around you feels so real, but completely wrong at the same time, there are too many possible factors that could hurt the credibility of one's choice.  Dick fully exploits this in this wonderfully intense story of mental exploration and deterioration .  As always, the book starts off slow in order to encapsulate the tedium of day to day life and the politics and technology of the time, but gathers an intense speed in order to describe what is happening.  Just with any mental novel, the climax did not occur with action happening, but with the main protagonist going through his though process to figure out what is happening.  For once, the idea of psionic abilities sounded necessary in order to bring out the plot of the book, but again could have been replaced with another industry etc.  The main focus is the idea of half-life and should be noted extensively as one reads through the novel.  The idea is impeccable, but brings so many more questions than it answers.

I completely recommend this book to any fans of sci-fi, and can't wait to start on my next novel Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick.


HAPPY READINGS.

You Can Brew Beer in College too

On many a day, finding good beer is like going to take out.  You have to go out of your way to find what you like, pay lots of money to try out new things, and spend more just to get more of your favorites.  However, I have never really been accustomed to trying to make beer at home until I started reading You can Brew Beer In College too.  This simple $2.50 recipe guide and beginner engineering toolbox of beer brewing encapsulated the DIY spirit of traditional cooking into things I would love to be intoxicated to.  It amazed me how easy it could be to produce a huge amounts of delicious beer without creating too much of an initial dent to my wallet.  I have tried many of the beers advertised and nothing has disappointing me in the least.  Every beer, wine, and cider this man has created was delicious enough to buy many bottles off of.  I could not recommend this more to any DIY beer brewer and any future brewer there.

Tunnel in the Sky by Heinlein, and next on the list

Hello again,

Finished the book a tad late due to vacation timing, and the off chance of reading could only be done at around 12 to 3 am.  However, the book is over and I'm at the moment trying to find another to replace it.

Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky...was awkwardly disappointing.  The story basis itself on the fact that a group of kids that join a class go into a new world as a final exam, 10 days of survival.  People can die, animals from alternative planets can exist, and there is always the possibility of backstabbing.  However, this book feels more like the polar opposite of Lord of the Flies, where any arguments were truthfully petty.  The kids are definitely more mature being at around 16-25 years old (being from highschool to college), but I would imagine the impact of finding out that one could not go back home might be more substantial than what was depicted by Heinlein.  Imagining my homeland, my family, my crushes, my disappointments, my goals, my hopes, my dreams, all disappear in an instant, starting with the ultimate blank state is probably one of the hardest impacts ever whether for good or bad.  I feel as though none of my pertaining knowledge base would be useful in a survival situation, and I feel like the psychological impact is underscored by that fact that these kids are hyperintelligent/government makers that build  society within months.  No.  I have seen DayZ long enough and witnessed the true backstabbing of humanity to know that finding resources, finding supplies, and doing everyting with strangers in hope that cooperation spurs with the inclusion of guns and knives is nearly impossible.  It is almost like a slightly lighter hearted Watership Down in this case.

There are moments in the book, where I feel like custom and the times probably effected how Heinlein looked at this crises.  I mean marriage and baby-making was considered in formality and would be done by "mayors" and honeymoon-suites are made...yes...this is a thing when you are dropped into a new environments for a month...For some reason, it doesn't suit my notions of what happens in long-term survival.   There are moments where I hoped certain characters would be together...and it never happend (which is kind of teenage-girl-dramaticism, but I mean the signs could not be more apparent), , and the awkwardness involved in coed circumstance in sci-fi was obvious in the perspective of the prestigious author.

The book was not as impactful and did not delve much into the psychological aspect of happenstance, but I feel like this idea could be made seamlessly into a movie.

Beautiful, but shallow...creative, but lacking...I hoped for more, but it's okay.  I hope his other works will be better.

Next...I will say so in a bit...I have no idea, and I forgot to bring some books with me thinking it'd take longer.  I HOPE YOU ALL THEBEST...good bye.

Review on Palmer Eldritch and Start of Heinlein

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is simply about the product Can-D.  Can-D is a drug mainly used by the people of Mars to deal with the horrid boredom that exists with the conditions of colonization.  People living in small collective hovels take this drug, discorporate, and become new individuals.  However, the synopsis given and this is probably the biggest issue I have with the book, is not what it sets out to be.  The tag line was that a person wakes up to a new world and finds a note in which the world he inhabits isn't real, and it would seem it would be about the story of that man finding reality.  This is not the case.  The book is about the idea of leaving identity, reincarnation, drug states, monopolies, time-space adjustments, God, religion, and government scandal. Philip K. Dick constantly makes me question what it means to think about the world, and he does it again with the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.  Nothing I thought would be there was, and every single notion I had coming into the book was dissipated.  I would suggest highly for anyone to read this book.  It starts out slow that builds intensity over time, though it gets a bit awkward in the fastest part.  During the climax, the wording changes and perspective alters weirdly between time and between planets.  The only other issue would be Philip K. Dick's fascination with "pre-cogs" (future tellers) feels more like a stand-in rather than any plot device, and doesn't really do anything to the other all story.  Besides that, I found it a wonderful read that everyone should check out.

Now to continue my book week special, I'll try to finish Robert A. Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky.  The Synopsis in the back reads "It was just a test...just a test...just a tests, but something had gone wrong.  Terribly wrong.  what was to have ben a standard ten-day survival test had suddenly become an indefinite life-or-death nightmare.  Now they were stranded somewhere in the universe, beyond contact with Earth...at the other end of the tunnel in the sky.  The small group of young me and women, divested of all civilized luxuries and laws, were being forced to forge a future of their own...a strange future in a strange land where sometimes not even the fittest could survive!".  Sounds interesting, but I'm kind of worried it's going to be too obvious or simple.  However, time to hope for the best.  Heinlein is considered one the three greats of science fiction, which include Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and the current author Heinlein.  This is going to be another adventure...HAVE A GOOD READING WEEK.