In A Maze of Death, people go as a small group to another planet--also part of the plot in UBIK--but now they are getting picked off one by one, as in a murder thriller.
Will a detective arrive in a noser (small spaceship with only enough fuel for a one-way trip) to sort it all out?! Or is it all a metaphor for death? (That seems likely, given the title. Don't tell me, though!)
In both books, it's important to stick together. People die when they go off by themselves....
It's interesting to note the parallels and to discover Dick's obsessions. I see why people like him, and how these novels can turn out as really cool movies. I know (from Wikipedia) that a film version of UBIK is in the works! It's great that the age of special effects can handle Dick's ideas about perception and alternate versions of reality. What is reality?
Answering a comment from Kim, I tried to clarify something about my preference for realistic fiction, as it's true I have complained before about 1) easy happy endings in feel-good or genre fiction and 2) fiction that is really disguised autobiography. She is reading Widow for One Year, by John Irving, in which characters discuss writing and particularly fiction based on real people and real events...
Write what's at hand, so to speak.
What I admire and desire, then, I guess, is the transcendence of self through art. That might sound uppity! I mean that I find it disappointing to learn that such and such a novel is a roman a clef, unless it was a really, really funny satire. If it's a personal vendetta, or an achingly sensitive self exposure, then, pfft! I still sound uppity. Well, pfft! on me then.
Meanwhile, 1) my flowerbeds are a maze of Gloriosa daisies and 2) I am still reading the baseball book (but it's hardcover and signed, so not poolside or lakeside). And soon, for book group, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon.
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