Dimension of Miracles

There was always something about Robert Sheckly's writing style that appealed to me. His chapters were short and usually very to the point so he had already waded through the tendency for authors to ramble and over edit themselves and I was spared having to read all that to get to the good stuff. It isn't surprising that Sheckly was known as a master of the short story. 'Dimension of Miracles' is not a short story but it feels like a short story that got gratuitously extended to novella length. Nevertheless it's still classic Sheckly. He knew science in a superficial way but yet enough to keep his stories believable. He is a nihilist philosophically speaking so if you take your religion or your science very seriously he might offend you. He also can come across as smug because he sees humor in irony and those little ironies continually pop up in his writing. Concretely a paleontologist might be put off by a talking T-Rex who lived 100 million years ago because they were ruthless predators that evolved perhaps 2 million years before the dinosaur extinction. In an Ed Whitten parrallel brane Universe perhaps they talked and were civilized but .... prepared for the big Sheckly ironic ending which I won't give away. I'm still trying to figure out why Carmody's prize was so valuable which ofcourse is just another Sheckly irony !

This is one of the wittiest, craziest, most profound books I have ever read. It's a cosmic mind-youknowwhat with a strange bittersweet ending. I have had hilarious times hearing friends discuss Sheckley's concepts in DIMENSION, in his other two brilliant books MINDSWAP and JOURNEY OF JONES, and in his lean-and-mean short stories. Rudy Rucker (before he wrote his weirdly mean-spirited Saucer book), told me Mindswap was one of the books that inspired him to write sf. Dimension was the one that inspired me. If you like James Branch Cabell, Vonnegut, Bradbury at his tightest, Ambrose Bierce at his loopiest, and Chesterton at his craziest and most profound, if any of this means anything to you, you will LOVE this brilliant satire about the creation of earth, the alternative world of dinosaurs, the most hellish city ever built, why God's incompetence is his greatest quality, and why, ultimately, You Can't Go Home Again. This, my friends, is one of the great satirical fantasies of science fiction.

This is a wonderful book. I first read it in 1968, and it presaged brand labels on the outside of clothing, a media culture, and a number of other things. And it's really funny. My copy is falling apart, I've loaned it out so many times. Thus far, each person who has read it has loved it. I'm happy to be able to obtain another copy.

Carmody is an ordinary, unremarkable Earthman. One day he discovers that there is a galaxy wide civilisation, unknown to humans and he has won a prize in the galactic lottery. He is taken away from the Earth and given his prize which turns out to be a taking but opinionated source of advice. Armed only with his prize, he sets out on a hilarious journey across the galaxy. On the way, he meets many strange people including the man responsible for building the planet Earth in the first place.The prize's advice is not always much use. When Carmody is confronted by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the prize can only suggest turning into a plant or singing hymns!The book races along at a frantic pace. Every couple of pages brings a new situation and a lot of humour. Sheckley certainly knows how to keep his readers interested.If you think that this sounds a lot like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, you are right but this book was written a decade earlier and it is funnier.Sheckley has written many other novels and short stories and they are all very funny indeed so, if you enjoy this book, you will find a lot more to enjoy there.

Mr. Carmody is just your average working American who finds one afernoon that he's won the Galactic Sweepstakes by an Alien who escorts him to Galactic Central to collect his prize. Once there he is faced with the task of finding his own way back to Earth. Where earth is, isn't the only problem there is also "when" and "which" in a universe that contains an infinite variety. Enroute, Carmody must deal with beings ranging from the omnipotent to the incompetent with hilarious yet thought provoking results. Sheckley's subject matter is somewhere between "Alice in Wonderland" and "The HitchHicker's Guide to the Galaxy". His writing is not quite as good as Carol but better than Adams. Both Lewis Carol and Robert Sheckly try to say something important (even if it is obscure) while Douglas Adams is mostly irreverent comments on the absurdities of life. Both light and deep, and certainly funny, "Dimension of Miracles" is a very good read.