Rach's Reading Club 2024-And Beyond!

Maze of Death

For my next science fiction book, I chose, Maze of Death by the great Philip K. Dick. This book is a strange thriller with a bit of theology thrown in.

It deals with a group of random strangers who have been offered a job on a planet. They make the journey to the planet in spaceships which can only travel one way so that once they are on the planet, they cannot leave. Upon arrival, they find the planet uninhabited except for themselves and a few mysterious robots which give no information.

The story becomes almost paranoid when they begin dying under mysterious circumstances,

I mentioned the theology in the story. It takes place in a universe where people practice a religion similar to Christianity complete with the Holy Trinity as well as a fourth individual who seems to be the devil. The difference is that these characters occasionally do appear to interact with the characters.

The story has two interesting twists at the end. The first one kind of makes the rest of the story seem irrelevant. i won't give it away, but it's kind of a version of ending a story with "it was just a dream". But there's another twist which is tied to the theology. It almost seems to be saying that gods become real if we believe in them.

I should also mention that typical of Dick, the story is often quite funny, particularly when showing the interactions between the characters and their eccentricities. One is a nymphomaniac, one is a hypochondriac, and still another is an addict.

I think it's a little less profound than some of Dick's other work, but it's definitely worth a read.