Dimension of Miracles

In my teenage years in the 1970s, I read science fiction voraciously. I loved the ideas and imaginativeness, but it was all rather serious stuff. So, I was delighted when I discovered Robert Sheckley, a rare humorist and absurdist in a largely serious genre. 

I reckon his best novel is this one. It tells the story of a rather dull civil servant who wins the grand prize in a galactic lottery. He is whisked across space and time to Galactic Central to receive his prize: a shape-shifting, talking device/creature. Unfortunately, there is no provision for returning home, so an absurd… show more.

This book is one of the best sci-fi satires I have read. It was written ten years before The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and is known to have inspired Douglas Adams. 

I love escaping into worlds where the line between reality and illusion is unclear. I also enjoy clever writing. So, this book was perfect for me. The novel is all about random lotteries, mistaken identities, mistakes made in a dimension where there are no mistakes, intergalactic bureaucracy, gods and their articulate failings, companies engineering the universe, world-hopping, ‘eat-or-be-eaten’ situations, racism among dinosaurs, cities that are nagging wives, corporate… show more.