I am a big fan of both The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Neil Gaiman, so when I saw that this was one of Neil's recommended/produced audiobooks, and that it was very similar to HHGTTG (though it came first), I decided to give it a listen. And it was... interesting. It was quirky and different, and some parts of it had me giggling, but I didn't like it nearly as much as I'd hoped to. I thought about this book for a full day before writing this review, trying to figure out what I thought about it rather than just doing a knee-jerk review (as is my usual style), but I don't think it made a difference, or at least not one in favor of the book. The more I think about it, the more disappointed I am in it. For one, I think there's just something about British humor (is it "humour" when it's British?) that just does it for me. If I had to put my finger on exactly what it is that makes it so appealing to me, but I think it's the sheer outrageousness combined with a straight-faced "Yeah, I said it. What? You know you want to laugh. Go on, then. Laugh." quality. It's just so dry and almost serious that that in itself makes me laugh because it's so absurd. And that makes me happy. I love it. Dimension of Miracles is American, which can be funny too, and while it was certainly absurd and quirky, it just didn't strike that funny nerve in me. There were some things that did, like the toddler T-Rex, but on the whole, it just didn't really mesh with my sense of humor. (No "u" this time. I'm American.)Secondly, DOM is short. Very short. The audio was 5 hours, and the book is around 190 pages, depending on which edition you look at. I felt like it should have been longer, a little more fleshed out, a little more... something. HHGTTG is the trilogy that just won't quit, which gives the story time to grow and fully be something other than just random slideshow pauses. "...And here's when I visited wrong Which Earth #3. That city was so dull and naggy! Nag nag nagnagnag! Pretty! Yes, pretty, and I could have and do anything I wanted, because I was the only one there, but my goodness was that city controlling. And then I couldn't take the nagging and passive-aggressiveness anymore and I left.And wrong Which Earth #4 is..." Dull. That's what it was. There are quite a lot of similarities to the two stories, like how worlds are created, and the atheistic leaning, and interesting physics and philosophy questions, though again I have to say that I prefer HHGTTG's storyline to DOM's, because, oddly, it seemed more realistic. I found it a little hard to believe that a Galactic Lottery system would be able to select a winner out of billions of possible entities, locate that winner, teleport a messenger to alert the winner, who never even knew the lottery existed, let alone entered, transport said winner back to the Galactic Lottery headquarters for processing (promising that they'd be returned afterward, mind you), award the prize, and then not be able to actually return them because there's a rule against calculating where/when/which coordinates for non-winner-selection purposes. I mean, it's ridiculously bureaucratic enough to be realistic, but I remain unconvinced. Carmody should have asked for a supervisor, and then their supervisor, and so on, until he got his ride home. But he didn't. And so he tries to find his own way. Or, that's the most succinct way I can think of to say that he's entirely useless and that well-meaning aliens/people/gods/whatever shuttle him around space & time in search of his Earth, repeatedly saving his ass from a Predator that spawned out of the out-of-true nature of the universe because Carmody isn't where he's supposed to be, and will hunt him until he either returns to his proper Earth or is eaten. Carmody is accompanied throughout space & time by his Prize, which is sentient, rather annoying, and I-still-don't-know-what-it-was-other-than-that. Really. The Prize is the damn catalyst for the story, and I have no idea what it actually was. Why was it worth winning? What is its value? I know its value to Carmody as a companion, now, but what is the value that the Galactic Lottery folks thought that they were giving away? Honestly, if it weren't for the Prize's constantly referred to self-aware prizedom status, I'd swear that the Lottery folks "awarded" away their irritating know-it-all intern just to get him out of their hair or something. Finally, the ending of the book just really annoyed me. I get it, and I get that it's supposed to be profound and brave, and whatever, but I just can't help thinking that it's pretty damn selfish and entitled, and any small liking that I had for inept and dull Carmody was wiped out with his final decision. (view spoiler)[At this point, Carmody has discovered his Where and When coordinates, and is being assisted in the Which selection by a being who, beyond all reason, wants to help Carmody find his home. He teleports him through alternate Earths, and it's up to Carmody to decide if that's HIS Earth. If not, he just has to say it's the wrong one, and they'll go on down the list. There could be billions, trillions of them, but only after 3 or so Carmody stumbles on the right one... only he doesn't like it anymore. He no longer wants to live that life, and so he pretends that this is another wrong Earth and abandons it. This means two things: 1) That he's prevailing on the time and generosity of a being who owes him nothing at all to continue chauffeuring his ass around the universe in search of a home that Carmody's rejected. Which, of course, extends to the additional responsibility of getting him out of trouble when his Predator shows up and Carmody is too stupid to get himself out of the danger.2) That he doesn't give a shit about his wife, or friends, or job, or commitments or responsibilities, or anything at all. That he's content to let his wife worry and wonder and fear and grieve him when he just decided that he was bored and didn't want to go home anymore is pretty fucking despicable. (hide spoiler)]
Metaphysical, Philosophical, Satirical, Comical SFEveryman Tom Carmody is melancholically living his unsatisfying life in NYC in our present (more or less) when he unexpectedly wins the Galactic Sweepstakes and goes to Galactic Centre to receive his Prize, thinking that being a winner must bring with it privileges like wealth, prestige, women, or knowledge. It develops that Carmody won his Prize, a sentient shape-changing being with an attitude, due to a computer deciding to exercise its free will by committing a one in five billion error by incorrectly choosing him. The rest of Sheckley's 1968 novel Dimension of Miracles depicts Carmody's attempts to return to home and to avoid being eaten by his own unique and persistent predator. As Carmody converses with his Prize, meets various beings (like an unfulfilled and jaded God, an engineer who creates worlds like earth, an agent of the Galactic Placement Bureau, and an overly solicitous city), and visits various alternate earths, Sheckley revels in philosophical, metaphysical play and sharp satire. He targets racism (via dinosaurs!), religion, gods, human pretension, science fiction, and especially consumer culture. On one earth people wear clothes with the designer labels visible and converse in advertising catchphrases as they try to increase their consumer ratings, while on another an artist-designer has just made the first Museum of Human Waste: "We consume, therefore we are." The novel percolates with interesting and funny lines:--"Comparative knowledge is one of the few deficiencies of godhead."--"How do you expect us to run it [the galaxy]? We're only sentient."--"Intelligence counts for nothing more than claws and hooves."--"Any creature that doesn't know its own location should never leave home."--"How do you tell a god what his function should be if you're an atheist?"--"The most fundamental fact in the universe. . . is that species eat other species."--"Men remain inexorably true to themselves and their interests. They stay in character, even if that character is suddenly transported to Timbuktu or Alpha Centauri." --"The secrets of the universe are overrated."John Hodgman reads the novel with amusing aplomb, changing his voice for the various characters (and for the various voices of the Prize), including monotonously intoning (almost in a religious chant) as a computer and singing as the Prize when it's flute-shaped and doing a fine proud T-rex. Just several times rather early on a disconcerting quick scratching noise in the audio occurs, a bit like on an old vinyl record. The audiobook ends with an interview between Neil Gaiman (the book is an entry in the Neil Gaiman Presents line) and reader John Hodgman, humorously offering insights into the novel and into Hodgman's mindset and approach to the novel as its audiobook reader. Because Sheckley's novel is a picaresque, galactic travelogue, one gets the feeling that it could run longer or shorter. A conversation between the Prize and Carmody regarding the former's being a "self-eater" goes on a bit too long, given the short length of the novel. A few times Sheckley may try a bit too hard to be funny, as when he has the Prize "talking away like a senate sub-committee," or has Carmody say, "'Sounds good to me' in exactly the same tones that Napoleon used when he was shown Ney's dispositions for the Battle of Waterloo." (Hey, maybe that one is pretty funny. . .) Finally, although Dimension of Miracles may not be quite as funny as it's reputed to be, its small space is packed with interesting and innovative ideas, riffs, and features, and I like its satisfyingly anti-Wizard of Oz ending. People who like Kurt Vonnegut Jr. would probably like it (as would people who like Douglas Adams, though I haven't yet read his work).
What do You think about Dimension Of Miracles (1979)?
Dimension of Miracles is a bit fun, often very absurd, but not particularly engaging. For all the similarities, it is surprising that Douglas Adams never read this prior to writing the Hitchhiker's Guide. It even has one of the problems of Adams' series - that the main character is almost entirely acted upon, an unwitting bystander in his own story, rarely the actor. Adams overcame this by making Arthur Dent funnier and surrounding him with outlandish characters and situations. Sheckley provides the outlandish situations, but doesn't come through with the rest. He makes a last gasp at something profound to wrap it up, but it was all out of sorts with the rest.I have just listened to this as an audiobook and rarely have anything to add about that, but this time I was incredibly impressed by the abilities of John Hodgman as a performer. Yes, that John Hodgman. I have enjoyed his writings and podcasts in the past, but I thought he was kind of a one-trick pony. I'm very pleasantly surprised with his versatility with characterization in this book.
—Jamie Bradway
It is impossible to separate the experience of reading Dimension of Miracles from it's thematic twin The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Robert Sheckley's novel precedes Douglas Adams' novel by eleven years, but they share the same absurdist humor, twinged with wry wit and social commentary. Specific scenes and plot points converge as well which makes it difficult view Adam's work as entirely original. It is unfair to both to review through this lens because where Sheckley is clever, Adams is genius. I cannot remove my familiarity with Douglas Adams' work, despite the anachronistic comparisons it creates. I enjoyed Dimension of Miracles, and as read by John Hodgman you can almost get the feel of that same irreverent ability to turn a phrase of which Douglas Adams was so brilliant, but in Sheckly's hand it is a bit off, a bit less. I am glad I know of Robert Sheckley and his place in science fiction.
—rick.
I read this book after reading an interview with Neil Gaiman. Neil's contact at a publisher was Sheckley's daughter - something Neil didn't know at the time.It is had to believe that Douglas Adams wasn't exposed to this book before writing "Hitchhiker's Guide," but that's his story, and both writers seem okay with it. Maybe they found some amusement from living in a universe where two such similar books could be written independently.I love this book. It was written in an era when "science fiction" often had complex themes of philosophy and morality woven into the stories. Heinlein, Bradbury, Clarke - heavy hitters, and here Sheckley is as good as any of them. Between "Hitchhiker" and "Miracles," Sheckley's is the better of the two. Don't be persuaded by the goofy cover shown here - it's a rich, detailed work, and the ending in particular leaves Hitchhiker far behind.
—Ddb61
