Permutation City Blog

I've heard of this book mentioned many times but only just got arrond to reading it. A alternate history in which Germany and Japan won the second world war. Can't say it really caught my attention.

A collection of short stories, none of which made a particular impression on me. Several just seemed implausible, not because of technological change but because of the society. Dick was probably trying to say something when writing a story about the abortion age limit being extended passed birth up to 10 years old, but it didn't work for me.

A TV star slips from one world to the next and becomes an unknown without a past in a police state. This didn't engage me. It just seems to be another one of Dick's books dealing with reality and drugs.

I suppose this a classic version of Mars of a desert mars with the little remaining water in the canals. Settlers have arrived from Earth and are doing badly. The story features autism and schizophrenia and the alternate world views that they create. The title refers to an attempt take advantage of these illness to look into the future. Didn't enjoy this one, several of the characters got on my nerves.

Dick writes a book in which he appears as several people representing different personalities. He talks about the world being an illusion and about the reality of god. I didn't enjoy this one.

This had some fairly interesting ideas. A society in which you can say anything you like as long as it's provably true. Human mutants that had been created as a result of a war, one of whom could accurately predict the future. He experiences his life one year before it happens, the present day is already an old memory for him. In a side story mutants are being deliberately created to colonise Venus. Then there are the alien "drifters". However the exploration of these ideas is patchy and I left the book thinking something was missing.