--=[ The Variable Man ]=-- --=[ Reverend Randollph and the Avenging Angel ]=--
Like eating Cotton Candy (Candy Floss to some of you), this book is entertaining, but ultimately empty and ethereal. Several short sci-fi stories by PKD standing solidly in schlock. The most famous of these is now Minority Report, although the movie by the same name shares almost nothing else with it's namesake.
Here's your book review: It's a pulp detective novel that I didn't finish. The first few chapters went to great lengths to give almost everyone a motive to kill the victim. Then she was killed. Then I closed the book and put it away.
Here everything else: I'm probably being too harsh on it - it's just a pulp novel, doubtful that the author was intending it to last for 25+ years. However, this book and the last 1970's-era book that I read (The Glass Inferno) had this strange fascination with a sort of cultural navel-gazing. The author goes to great lengths to throw in 70's-era 'atmosphere', much to the delight of this reviewer. Let me give you a taste...
The Reverend, respledant in his polyester orange-checked dinner
jacket and corduroy pants, stepped out from his keen avacado and brown
AMC Pacer with optional 10 ft. CB whip antennae. Bob Smith was waiting
for him at the entrance to Hot Dog magazine. The Reverend noted
that Bob's baby blue jumpsuit was a little disheveled, but that the
goldfish in his clear platform shoes were still alive, showing that they
must have recently been purchased at Mongomery Wards' $1.05 Sale at the
newly constructed SuburbiaTopia Mall, just outside downtown.
"Reverend!", said Bob, "You look righteous. Come on up - I've just
purchased some new 8-tracks and we'll watch the Baltimore Colts on my 12
inch quadrophonic television! Have you seen my new fondue set?"
"Dy-no-mite." said the Reverand.
Then Bob died.
I might have exaggerated a little, but not much. It comes off as somewhat tragi-comic, the sort of heady self-puffery that is unintentionally amusing to read.