Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Maze of Death
    A Maze of Death
    A Maze of Death
    Audiobook6 hours

    A Maze of Death

    Written by Philip K. Dick

    Narrated by Benjamin L. Darcie

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    From Hugo Award-winning author Philip K. Dick, A Maze of Death is a sci-fi murder mystery set on a mysterious planet where colonists experience unexplained shifts in reality and perception.

    Delmak-O is a dangerous planet. Though there are only fourteen citizens, no one can trust anyone else and death can strike at any moment. The planet is vast and largely unexplored, populated mostly by gelatinous cube-shaped beings that give cryptic advice in the form of anagrams. Deities can be spoken to directly via a series of prayer amplifiers and transmitters, but they may not be happy about it.

    And the mysterious building in the distance draws all the colonists to it, but when they get there each sees a different motto on the front. The mystery of this structure and the secrets contained within drive this mind-bending novel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 16, 2013
    ISBN9781469251998
    Author

    Philip K. Dick

    Over a writing career that spanned three decades, PHILIP K. DICK (1928–1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, as well as television's The Man in the High Castle. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, including the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and between 2007 and 2009, the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

    More audiobooks from Philip K. Dick

    Related to A Maze of Death

    Related audiobooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Ben Marcus

      Jun 15, 2018

      My wife, Gin, once knocked gently on my head, as if it were a door. “Hello,” she kept saying. “Hello. Who’s in there?” She and our therapist, Dr. Sherby, laughed a little about this, so I did, too. What fun. Keep knocking on my head like that, like i

      23 min read

    • Article

      Fantasy and Reality

      Aug 3, 2017

      Fantasy and Reality
      4 min read

    • Article

      Everywhere Around Us

      Sep 23, 2023

      Everywhere Around Us
      5 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      Robert C. Koehler: A Looming Book Of Soul Fragments

      Feb 23, 2023

      Confession: I have a few books out there that no one knows about because I haven’t written them . . . well, finished them. I’ve talked in previous columns about “wrestling with infinity” — the match I always lose — by which I mean, picking a subject

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Ella Baxter

      Dec 6, 2021

      The lowest standard I hold for a book is that I want it to be so psychedelic, so completely discombobulating, that I am torn asunder. I want to read words that turn my bones to dust. The post A Year in Reading: Ella Baxter appeared first on The Milli

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Write Stuff

      Oct 1, 2019

      The Write Stuff
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Tim Lane

      Dec 8, 2021

      We stopped at the Topaz Internment Camp, where my wife’s family was held during World War II, near the tiny town of Delta, Utah. We found the apocalyptic remnants of one of our country’s great shames. The post A Year in Reading: Tim Lane appeared fi

      7 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      What Makes a Modern Mystic?

      Mar 24, 2020

      What Makes a Modern Mystic?
      3 min read

    • Article

      Prey

      May 10, 2021

      As I drove slowly towards the mob of angry protestors and my meeting with 200, I thought of 199. The ashes of a once hard man, staring at me with wide eyes that pleaded for hope like a dog begging for treats. I’d somehow found a way to give him that

      41 min read

    • Article

      Chelsea Wolfe

      Feb 4, 2020

      Chelsea Wolfe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Unconventional Revision: MFA vs. Therapy

      Jun 3, 2019

      While I value my MFA, it was a lesson in craft and the practice of art; therapy was a lesson in understanding why I wanted to write in the first place. The post Unconventional Revision: MFA vs. Therapy appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Maze of Death

    3.5/5

    408 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Philip Dick's version of "Lost," only in Dick's world, there are no heroes (even tragic ones), just imperfectly-drawn, bumbling, confused, hurting people who are trying to make some sense out of what is going on (namely: life, virtual or otherwise). Dick is not the greatest writer, but captivating (to me) in that he was so far ahead of his time in exploring ramifications of virtual reality and the trouble in distinguishing virtual from "real." In Dick's world, virtual reality is not shiny, stunning, Matrix-cool; it is frayed at the edges, always on the verge of unraveling altogether and exposing more frayed edges of another reality (or virtuality) underneath. Which one are you living in?
    • 4/5
      One of PKD's better works and a good starter for anyone looking to get into his works. The science fiction elements are clever,without dominating what is really a very well thought out look at our relationship with God and as always with PKD's books, it delves into the idea that the reality we exist in is perhaps not the truth. A great ending, which unlike some of his novels, doesn't wrap up to quickly and fail to deliver a suitable level of closure.
    • 4/5
      One of PKD's better works and a good starter for anyone looking to get into his works. The science fiction elements are clever,without dominating what is really a very well thought out look at our relationship with God and as always with PKD's books, it delves into the idea that the reality we exist in is perhaps not the truth. A great ending, which unlike some of his novels, doesn't wrap up to quickly and fail to deliver a suitable level of closure.
    • 1/5
      THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE PRODUCT, NOT THE NOVEL.
      An entire section of the book is missing. Thankfully, it’s not my first time reading this, so I knew. It’s an important section, too.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Which Do You Prefer: Real or Virtual?

      Virtuality as a concept has a long and somewhat murky history. By the 1950s, film producer, writer, and cinematographer Morton Heilig gave it a form we would recognize with the invention of the Sensorama (1962). Primitive and bulky, it did do much of what modern VR headsets do now. Even in its early conceptual stages, VR fascinated and began to appear in science fiction, witness Ray Bradbury’s short story “Veldt,” (1951), with its smart house and VR nursery (inspiration for Disney’s Smart House (1999). For Philip K. Dick, it proved the perfect literary device for his constant questioning of and speculation about what is and isn’t real. He employed it often in his short stories and novels. In A Maze of Death (1970), it is the prominent literary trope as Dick ponders the meaning of reality and which might make for a better existence, the real or the virtual. For a man who regularly dropped out of reality, exploring its nature is perfectly logical.

      In A Maze of Death, fourteen colonists separately take one-way rockets to the planet Delmak-O. Each has a specialty, such as economist, geologist, physician, and theologian. They prove a disparate group which readers might view as either independent types or decidedly uncooperative, though the bunch seems to understand that to survive they must pull together. At the start, they share a hope they can muster the unity they need as they await instructions and guidance as to their mission on Delmak-O. Unfortunately, just as they gather to hear the message, the transmission dissolves into static. They are on their own. They attempt to organize a couple of times but each time their efforts fail. What’s more, they start killing each other off.

      While they appear a disparate bunch, they find they all share one thing; that is a tattoo reading Persus 9. (Readers, what follows reveals the major plot twist of the novel, without which the novel makes little sense.)

      Turns out, they are the crew of a spaceship, Persus 9. During their mission, they experienced a major malfunction that has left them abandoned in space. In order to preserve their resources and, presumably, their sanity, they enter into a suspended state for extended periods and exist in a virtual world created by agreement. Delmak-O is just one in a long line of virtual worlds they have generated and by consensus the worst of all the worlds, so far.

      Even more interesting, the VR device appears to have developed something of a memory, being the repository of a religion that has evolved over the span of VR worlds, canonized in a book familiar to all, How I Rose From the Dead in My Spare Time and So Can You. This religion mimics the belief systems of the major faiths and Nordic mythology, particularly incorporating counterparts to the Trinity. In the end, the real and the virtual conflate when one character, while contemplating mass murder of the crew because of his personal despair over their situation, receives a message from the Intercessor. It’s a message that appears in different forms in The Divine Invasion, that each must choose his own path.

      You’ll find the novel surprisingly engaging and, for Dick, a bit superficial from the plotting viewpoint. But the questions of what’s real and illusory; what’s better, real or virtual; is our paranoia justified? These are bedrock Dick themes, and maybe questions you yourself ask.
    • 3/5
      This is a quick Sci Fi read, just 200 pages, and it moves fast. It tells a bizarre story of a group of 14 people sent mysteriously to a new planet to form a colony. The book parenthetically alludes to the religion of the distant future, with various parts of the deity appearing to people in person for some reason. The explanation is annoyingly thin.As soon as the protagonist, Seth Morley, arrives on the planet, colonists start being murdered mysteriously. The book moves quickly after that.I found the book written in sort of a slapdash manner, without adequate explanation. It's written in 1970, so the technology descriptions are kind of silly as read today (computer components described as having magnetic tape!), but that's kind of fun. The good news is that the ending does wrap things up reasonably well, with a pretty cool twist, which rescues it from a lower rating in my book.
    • 2/5
      This was another one of Philip K. Dick's novels that, for me, fell a little flat. The plot was loosely constructed and seemed to be based more on ramblings and theological reasoning, which were not overtly developed or conceptualized. The characters felt like cardboard characters and the dialogue was neither appealing nor revealing. Overall, it was a disappointing read.

      2 stars.
    • 4/5
      They continued on and came, at last, to a river. It seemed too wide to cross; there they halted.‘We'll have to follow the river,’ Thugg said. He scowled. ‘I've been in this area, but I didn't see any river before.’Frazer giggled and said, ‘It's for you, Morley. Because you're a marine biologist.’Maggie Walsh said, ‘That's a strange remark. Do you mean the landscape alters according to our expectation?’‘I was making a joke,’ Frazer said insultingly.Another twist on reality from Philip K. Dick. I more or less realised what was going on when I came across the conversation quoted above, but the oddness of the planet and events around the arrival of its inhabitants already had me thinking.
    • 4/5
      14 people are sent to a far off colony world on one-way rockets. None of them seem to have anything in common. The communication systems fail, just as their are learning the purpose of the colony. One by one, they begin to mysteriously kill themselves or are killed. It is a very weird story and one right in PKD's wheelhouse. The ending took a couple left, right and U-turns to ultimately land in a place that I could never have expected.
    • 4/5
      As usual, PKD plays with his characters', and his readers', perceptions of reality. Written from the points-of-view from several characters, neither they nor we are really sure which, if any of them, is experiencing what is actually happening.

      A group of strangers dissatisfied with their former lives are transported to a colony world in one-way spaceships with a promise of finding fulfillment. Depending on what information can be believed, the colony has been set up by God, ultra-intelligent aliens, Earth's military forces or as a psychological experiment.

      All of the characters distrust each other and, one-by-one, they are dying, being murdered or taking their own lives. Is this the work of an outside agency, or is one or more members of the group responsible?

      Some answers are given at the end, but more questions posed. Well, you wouldn't want it given to you on a plate, would you?
    • 5/5
      My reactions upon reading this novel n 1990 -- spoilers follow.I wasn’t particularly looking forward to reading this Dick novel since I’ve never heard it referred to as one of his major works and even Dick himself somewhat disparaged it. Nevertheless, Dick seldom disappoints, and I consider this one of his better novels. The tale of typically Dickian messed up protagonists -- obsessed, self-absorbed, basically failures -- banded together and being killed one by one was compelling. As usual, Dick introduced the usual plot twists: first the characters believe they subjects of a military experiment, then releasees of a mental asylum who have been murdering each other (only proving they are unfit for life outside the asylum), and then the awful, depressing truth is revealed. The characters have been existing in a fantasy world created by the consensual projection -- via computer -- of their minds. They are trapped aboard a spaceship -- and have been for 15 years, and the world of Delmak One is only one of many they have created to escape boredom and vent interpersonal hostilities. There is no escape. And, though they decry the new violence that has crept into their simulations with Delmak One -- they ultimately return to the world that is a physical manifestaion of their sickness as individuals and a group. Only Seth Morley, the novel’s damaged and weary protagonist, is spared when the simulated religion (an obvious synthesis of world religions with a heavy doses of Gnosticism) of Delmak One is validated and the Intercessor saves him. Even then, however, his only wish is to be an unthinking desert plant. When Dick introduced, in the novel’s second to last chapter, the reality of Delmak One being a computer directed simulation I thought he had undercut the emotional tone of the novel, especially the final, apocalyptic scenes on Delmak One. But when he reintroduced that tone with revelations as to the characters’ true situation, that tone was reestablished with an even blacker gloss.
    • 2/5

      6/10.

      A disparate group of misfits are sent to colonise a new planet but soon deaths in the group breed suspicion and all is not as it seems.

    • 4/5
      This is one of the hackier works, which always raise the question: Why do I keep reading Dick? Maybe I should stick to the famous novels which have excitingly flashy TV and drug plot elements. It's hard to predict, though, which will be stupid. Here, for example, I know it's exactly the sort of ending plot re-twist you'd expect from the man, but still. It was almost parodic.I suspect I expect a low-brow Borges, and of course that's never quite what I get. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the existential frisson (resonates with the Black Waters anthology I also recently read), and unlike in the Nadolny I also read recently, here the ambiguity and potential different explanations for "reality" *are* the point. In that sense, this was a successful novel.