Philip K. Dick cranked out dozens of science fiction novels from the 1950s until his death in 1982, never gaining much notoriety outside of that genre ghetto until after his demise. Now he has one of the genre's largest cult followings and generally ranks comfortably in any serious SF fan's Top Ten of greats; the success of Blade Runner (an adaptation of his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) obviously has a lot to do with it, but more importantly, it's Dick's chillingly prescient outlook on modern society that makes his books worth reading as more than high-tech fantasy adventures. He mastered the paranoid style of a conspiracy behind every bush long before such attitudes became commonplace; his vision rests on the alienation of the common man, caused by the insanity of modern life, which brings him closer to Franz Kafka than Ray Bradbury. This novel, one of his better ones, exemplifies his extreme paranoia and alienation by posing the question: what if the world that surrounds us is a lie, no more solid than movie props, and we're the unwitting center of a vast conspiracy directed at keeping us ignorant of reality itself?

The protagonist, Ragle Gumm, lives an uncluttered, easy life in a stereotypical 1950s small American town. Gumm's profession seems a bit odd, as he makes his living entering a weekly crossword puzzle contest that he consistently wins (which doesn't amount to mere luck, as he works nearly as much at the puzzle as at a regular 40-hour job). Little by little, bit by bit, he notices his world starting to unravel -- he goes to a hot dog stand only to have it disappear before his eyes, replaced with a piece of paper that says "hot dog stand". He retrieves telephone books that contain local numbers that don't exist, and a magazine splashed with a cover of some famous actress he's never heard of, Marilyn Monroe. Slowly he senses that the small town he lives in is a sham, a Hollywood set piece created by unknown forces to deceive him -- but why? Why is he, an ordinary man, so important?

I can't give away any more of the plot, other than to say the ending I found rather unsatisfactory, as Dick devolved from a chilling parable of conspiracy fantasy to tack on a hackneyed SF explanation (it involves outer space warfare). The theme Dick hits upon is suspicion of one's surroundings -- how can you truly trust what one sees as real? It's a theme he constantly returned to in his books; I've only read a few of his, but I can see how such a theme might grow rather repetitive. As with most SF novels, the plot's the thing -- don't look for well-developed characters or shining prose, for there are none. And the fact that Dick wrote so prolifically hurts; one doesn't get the feeling that he dawdled too much over this book, but cranked it out quickly to get to the next one: as I pointed out, the ending's weak, and certain avenues he could've explored in more depth get passed by. Which is to say that the book is rather one-note in theme -- but it's an interesting theme.

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