Yes! And what happens to Gren is so weird and unexpected, which does actually give him more depth. Agreed. I will have to check out more Aldiss, also.

Will do! I had heard the name before and I think it just fell out of my consciousness for a bit.

Yes, there is such an economy of language, yet he says so much and gives me so much to consider. Ubik really blew my mind (just one wtf moment right after another). Then I followed it with A Scanner Darkly. It really hit me hard in several ways. I had to take a short reading break. The YouTuber Media Death Cult has a lot of great videos on PKD and his work (he also has a project going of reading all his novels).

It was bonkers. I had no idea where it was going the entire book. All of the weird carnivorous flora are wild and incredibly varied, and so imaginative. The humans and any other animals that have survived to this point in our future (our sun is dying) have evolved in interesting ways. So many crazy things happen and I don’t want to give anything away. Best to go in a bit blind and enjoy how it unfolds.

I was actually considering that one next, or Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.

I will eventually get to Valis. :)

I have read several Philip K. Dick books lately. They are all crazy in their own way, but Ubik might have been the craziest so far of what I read. I look forward to more of his books. Oh, and I also read a really weird classic sci fi recently—Hothouse, by Brian Aldiss. I am discovering I really like crazy and weird books.

I have a degree in English Lit. I had an entire class on Milton, most of which was Paradise Lost. It was hard, and after I was done I still did not fully understand it. My professor had clearly spent years studying Milton. Like others said, it takes a lot of work and practice. A group of people just finished reading and analyzing Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. They spent 28 years doing this. Heh heh. Crazy dedication.