Glorious, just glorious. Taxonomizing Robert Sheckley’s 1968 Dimension of Miracles brings me to no different
term. I can think of no other category, no other fiction
type, nothing to reduce its cleverness, humor, philosophy, its… dynamic metaphysicality to a set term. I fear even writing this review will render it
absurd, skew it beyond focus to the point the commentary does not resemble the
novel. Best to start with the salient
facts…
Tom Carmody is a winner of a galactic lottery—incorrectly
so, but the prize insists he not give up the position. The prize itself an object of chaos, Carmody
is whisked away from Earth on a galactic tour that leaves him not only
breathless, but desperate to return home.
Lacking the coordinates of Where, When, and Which, however, sets him on
an urgent search—a search that gets even more desperate when Carmody learns a
predator of his own creation chases him through the universe.
A whirlwind tour of a profoundly zany galaxy, Sheckley is
all wit in dreaming up the variety of scenes and encounters Carmody has
traipsing the Milky Way and beyond.
Often laugh out loud funny and other times more sly, Sheckley brings to
bear a sharp, cynical incisiveness that does not take anything in Western
society for granted. From its religions
to its economic practices, its urban environments to social conventions, each
are laid bare with intellect and humor. But
while Sheckley bats about profound ideas regarding science and philosophy like
flies buzzing around his head, the conclusion of Carmody’s adventure is something
no reader can predict. A sobering note, they have to keep
trudging.
Just go by this book.
It’s lovable, it’s intelligent, it’s imminently quotable, it’s stomach-grabbingly
funny, and through it all, it speaks a wealth of truth about human nature; sometimes the truth needs to be
couched in absurd tones to ring properly true.
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