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red smoky light The day wasn't a complete loss, but it came very close to being one. I wish I knew why I feel so bad about being lazy on my days off. Nothing is really expected of me, but at the same time I hate wasting my free time. One day of such behavior is tolerable at times, but two in a row is too much for me. I always have the need to accomplish something before I can really relax and do nothing. ... Reading books that predict the future when it has now become our past are odd things to read. Sometimes I find the predictions to be funny, but more often than not I find them to be sad. It doesn't matter whether the future that they offer up is dystopian or utopian, the end result is the same for me. What they thought was going to happen in the future didn't happen. Somehow or other they were wrong and I firmly believe that the future can not be accurately predicted in books even though people will continue to try. The novel Ubik by Philip K. Dick falls into that category of wanting to try and predict. The book had been given to me weeks ago, but with school taking priority I didn't get a chance to read it until now. So far the book has a certain charm and this was to be expected. I mean this is the same author who provided the source material for Blade Runner, Minority Report and Total Recall. If three major films could be made from what he wrote, there has to be something worthwhile in there. They say that an author writes one good story and then everything else is a variation on said story. Sometimes there is a glimmer of that greatness in these other stories, but usually the other efforts fall short of that one direct hit. Philip K. Dick is no exception to that theory. Recurring motifs are easily seen. As in Minority Report there are precogs that is to say people who can see the future or a possible version of it. As in Blade Runner there is an organization created to hunt down certain advanced beings and kill them except the word murder is never used. In Blade Runner the word was retire in Ubik the word is negate. |