A Maze of Death
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 Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | Philip K. Dick |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Released | 1970 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 216 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
A Maze of Death is a 1970 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. Like many of Dick's novels, it portrays a drab and harsh other-planet, human colony and explores the difference between reality and perception. It is, however, one of his few to explore the human death instinct and capacity for murder and is one of his darkest novels.
[edit] Plot summary
The plot revolves around fourteen colonists to the world Delmak-O. They all seem mentally ill and hostile towards one another in some way. After they fail to receive an expected message from an off-world authority revealing the purpose of the colony, they begin to lose control of their sanities. When one of them is murdered, the group falls into state of intense paranoia.
Delmak-O is mysterious and largely unexplored. It seems to be inhabited by both real and artificial beings and large, gelatinous cubes that duplicate items presented to them and give out advice. As various calamities befall each character, the group continues to go to one of the cubes for advice, triggering a total breakdown of the world.
One of the aspects of the novel is the completely made-up theology shared by all the characters. The chief text of their religion is a book called "How I Rose From the Dead in My Spare Time and So Can You" by Egon Spectowsky. The theology includes, among other things, the assertion that prayer is seldom useful unless it is electronically transmitted throughout the universe, the existence of the walker-on-earth, a divine manifestation that appears to intervene in the lives of chosen people, the form-destroyer, which embodies the forces of death and entropy, and the intercessor, which controls peoples destiny. This theology is an integral part of the novel.
