h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Intriguing. The value of memories, especially in a society where everything is changing.

I like the clothes sense of your characters. Pink mohair sweater and tartan rucksack, khaki shorts and safari vest.

But... I kept expecting our hero to come to some sticky end. And, somehow, I was disappointed that he didn't, Maybe it's a lack of conflict within the story.

I'd like him to come out of the skyscraper and find that he's forgotten absolutely everything.

MVP, that clothes sense came out of the PK Dick novels. He always had characters in his science fiction stories who were dressed in a style charitably described as 'eclectic'.

This story also proceeded from a dream. I'm afraid the lack of conflict was deliberate - Elektra cried a bit at the end. She realised that I was saying that he'd never have such a vivid experience again. It was a one-time thing.

Now, to us, that's sadness enough.

A bit like the sadness of my dad's funeral. It was glorious as a celebration of a remarkable life, complete with the Last Man Club proving that shotguns make a really cool graveside military salute.

But it's sad. We miss him.

My thoughts are with you.

Thank you. It's going to sink in, now that we're back home and all the relatives have gone.

But it was a really fine funeral. He'd have loved it.

Yes. It does kind of catch up later. I find. . hmm



Re this story. Cheat I am! I read the conversation first, and then I was curious, so I read the ending next. hahah.

but I think I will go read the middle bit, and even the beginning, hahah, before I go on any more.

Funny thing. Just the other day a friend sent me some clips from a brilliant documentary about PK Dick. I never knew much before. I get it now. A bit. Sort of. The and all.

h

Aha, Helen. I KNEW it. I knew you'd love PK Dick.

Did you learn about his obsession with the delivery girl from the pharmacy who was wearing a fish necklace? How he misnamed it the 'vesicle piscinis' (instead of 'vesica piscis') and became convinced he was a re-encarnated Early Christian Martyr?

You would love 'The Transmigration of Timothy Archer'. It's about Bishop Pike, the Anglican (US) clergyman who went all New Age...friend of his...

Frankly, my dear, you and PK Dick were made for each other.

Ignore the overdone films. But hey, I recommend the film version of 'A Scanner Darkly'. First, it's about him and his young hippie friends. Second, it uses a brilliant animation technique....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly_(film)

My favourite novels are, of course, 'Ubik' (about the role of the Holy Spirit in sustaining reality) and 'A Maze of Death', in which hopelessly lost space travellers play an endless virtual realiity game. (That sounds unoriginal. It was written before people had computers, let alone MMOs. The words 'virtual reality' had never been uttered.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Maze_of_Death

Holy snakes and roses, this is a weekend study for sure. I know nothing! Nothing! I know nothing! Yet firstly I shall read your story, from the end to the beginning, via the middle bit and Clapham Junction, and consider your mastery and your silken light. Then, after the weekend I might have pitch a tent in a field full of dandelions, and eat lemon and honey lozenges for twenty minutes, washed down with whisky, or maybe chocolate milk, whilst considering the inspiration of the word made word. And thankyou.

h

All via Clapham Junction. Naturally. As PKD said, 'Know your dealer.'

Yes! and yes! again. Which, is a very clear headed statement, considering it is very early in the morning on a Sunday. haha.

And I haven't started study on PKD yet, but I just read your story here, in a logical order, Mister DG, and it has made me go a bit bendy, in a good way, and now I really really really want to hail a hovercab.

The thing about a story like this, for me, is that it has echoes of life as I know it, and yet it has echoes of a place of dream that I almost know, or that I have somehow been to before, except I have never hailed a hovercab, so I can't have been here before.

hmm.

h

It's the same world where, to get a ride in a lift, you have to get five other people to stand in the corridor with you in a certain configuration.

Then the lift forms around you.

This is from my dreamworld, not Dick's. In Dick's world, the appliances complain at you and make you feed them coins......and the robots that run the hovercabs (or 'flapples') greet you with, 'Good afternoon, sir or madam...'