The Crack in Space : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: SF NOVELS OPUS EIGHTEEN
Review: CRACK IN SPACE is, in my opinion, a minor effort in Philip K. Dick's career. One will find in it good ideas but scarcely developed.

Later in the 21st century, the world population can decide to be cryogenized in order to quit for a while a society dealing with an endemic unemployment. Those who choose this solution are stocked in piles waiting for a better day. In the meantime, Jim Briskin, the black candidate to the U.S. presidential election, needs desperately new political ideas to gather votes. Incidentally, a little hole that has appeared in a translator seems to lead into a new world and could be the long-awaited solution to the cryogenized people problem.

Well, one recognizes in CRACK IN SPACE some of Dick's themes as the emergence of an unknown world that defies the intelligence of politicians and scientists. But don't forget that a "new world" in Philip K. Dick's terminology is not a world that suddenly appears light years away from the Earth, it's rather a world that is close to us, so close in fact that this world often exists in the mind of the characters only.

In short, if you want to make an agreeable trip through Philip K. Dick's main obsessions, you may enjoy CRACK IN SPACE but if you still don't know this writer , try UBIK or BLADE RUNNER first.

A book for Dick's fans only.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best.
Review: PK out did him self with this one. He put all of his reality into just about 10 pages and then expanded it to make a well detailed novel with just the right amount of character development. This book reads like a suspense movie. You are left sitting on the edge of your seat while reading page after page. To put it mildly there really should be no ending. It leaves you like a drug leaves you and you go into withdrawls until you either pick up the book to re-read or start looking for a substitute for such a good story to fill the void. I would say that this book ranks high than any other Dick book out there with the exception of Scanner Darkly and even then they are still very close to each other. If I left your mouths watering, good. They should have been watering in the first place. Dick has proven to have out done him self on multiple occasions after his death now find the book and charish it. You may have to search for it in every used book store in every town you come to. It is worth it. I was lucky and stumbled across it with out knowing how much it was worth.

Rating:
Summary: Lesser Dick
Review: The recurrence of the theme of the discovery of living ancient ancestors in modern times, as in Dick's The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike and The Simulacra, suggests a symbolic incursion into modern consciousness of the buried, primitive self. But despite flashes of the author's characteristic humor, The Crack in Space is substandard PKD. It relies on routine political intrigue and a meandering plot without compelling characters. Except for Jim Briskin, the first black man ever to run for president, there seem to be none who are not mired down in petty, personal, materialistic concerns. This novel also lacks both the themes of the problematical marriage and the breakthrough to a higher reality that mark much of Dick's best work. Probably only those who have read just about everything else Dick wrote need seek this one out.