More mind bending PKD but far from one of his best. ( )

Weirdest PKD I've read so far (which is good), no schizophrenia here, but endless paranoia(which is different), but with the most disappointing end (which is bad, therefore my first and only PKD not getting 5/5).
Review in Romanian here: https://recomandarisffh.wordpress.com/2018/05/26/a-maze-of-death-philip-k-dick/ ( )

Catorce colonos llegan al deshabitado planeta Delmark-O para llevar a cabo una misión que desconocen. No tienen nada en común y lo único que saben es que es imposible salir del planeta. No tardarán en descubrir que su nuevo hogar es mucho más extraño y peligroso de lo que habían imaginado, y que un poder oculto podría estar detrás de los extraños accidentes que han empezado a suceder y que, uno a uno, están acabando con sus vidas... Laberinto de muerte es una de las novelas más accesibles y desconocidas de Philip K. Dick, un juego de cajas chinas donde nada es lo que parece.

This is a really strange and dark story. The scenario unfolds with a group of 18 colonists on a planet with no understanding of their purpose and no outside contact. As people start getting killed, there is an effort to explore and understand the planet. The remaining colonists interact with what appears to be people conducting an experiment with them. The plot rapidly changes to the whole story is merely a computer simulation in virtual reality. The personnel are actually on a spaceship stranded with little hope for contact. The story ends with the personnel going back the same simulation scenario possibly without the main character Seth Morley. The story touches on futility, hostility, religion, and sanity. Although intriguing, I found it depressing and confusing. ( )

Who would expect a book titled "Maze of Death" to be so tender, so moral, and -well this is less surprising- so brutal? I'd totally have expected it to be brutal. Duh. But seriously this is a tender book. Or is it about a tender soul in a brutal existence? But even the brutal Ignatz Thugg is in a weird way quite vulnerable, but less so than our protagonist, who cannot control his appetite for cheese nor choose to love nicer people or creatures than he does. And he tries so hard, sometimes, so very hard.

PKD is much lauded as a creator of bizarre and comic futures, but it's rare to read anything of what a sensitive and moral person he so clearly was, how his books are full of care, concern, suffering, and compassion. PKD is one of the finest, best examples of authors to reflect the Judeochristian grounding of Western Culture. He shows us his characters thru a lens of compassion and empathy, as he illustrates them warts and all. To many intellectuals the Abrahamic God and accompanying religions carry lots of negative connotation. What I find attractive in PKD's writing regarding this is its emphasis on acceptance and redemption not of people despite their evils but of people despite their real weaknesses, and because of the real merits which invariably coexist with our weaknesses. It's a shame that this message is so blotted out, because it has real value.

This is one of the earlier sf books dealing with simulation/virtual reality, written before the term "virtual reality" existed and before simulation theory became a big thing amongst the pretentious intelligentsia of recent decades. Honestly, tho', this isn't what's important about the book. The author being who he is, this book also deals with God, love, ethics and morals, and what drives our choices. Dick may not have been a great novelist, but he obviously meditated upon what was important to him in his writing, and his science fiction novels can be very good because they focus narrowly on exploring certain what-ifs and that exploration holds a more important place in his writing than style and world building and he doesn't trap himself in serial novels. Few of his books ring hollow the way so much of today's science fiction comfort reading does. This oft overlooked title, like all his better (and most of his worse) books stands on its own, self-contained and compact.

The question arises in me whenever I read PKD's better novels(this is one of them), "do any of us really have any choice but to be who we are?" This book, like much of his writing implies question and explores the inner struggles which accompany important life choices.

What is lovely about Philip K Dick is his interest in agape, or caritas, in compassion, in personal struggle, and the divine. In this book, we find a deity so real that it extends beyond the simulation wherein it was seemingly invented and into the real world. Who is saved and why? A glutton who cares enough to love a fellow glutton for who he is, an old alley cat, in all his greedy and mendacious nature. Our protagonist asks of God's representative, the Walker on Earth, will his old cat be waiting for him in heaven. "He waits for you now." ( )