Although I have been in a state of sleep deprivation and distraction for the last 5 days, I finally completed Dick's Galactic Pot Healer. This is one of his stranger novels involving an overpopulated Earth where the majority of humanity lives under a totalitarian regime and pointless lives. Alien life forms are present, as well as a powerful entity on another planet. This being, Glimmung, brings Joe Fernwright, a pot healer whose family has repaired ceramics for generations, to help raise Heldscalla, an ancient cathedral, and restore balance to his planet. Dualism, religion, fatalism, free will, and Philip K. Dick's comic genius shine here, particularly in the sentient robots, religious references (Islam, Zen Buddhism, Protestantism) and literary references and phrases. In typical Dick fashion, agape and combating fate seem to be the larger themes here, although it is a Sisyphean task if Fernwright's struggle to become a potter indicates anything.
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