The Broken Bubble

“The Broken Bubble is at once terrifying, hilarious, and compassionate. Patricia Gray’s breakdown reads like fingernails on a chalkboard, and the convention of wild optometrists is about as nervously funny a scene as has ever been written. As for the adventure if the remote-controlled Horch— I can’t begin to explain; no writer but Phil Dick could have written it. It’s a novel of evident (astonishing, wild) talent and originality by a writer who has both of these articles to spare.”

—James P. Baylock

“His stories take place not in the depth, where monsters dwell, but on the surface, where they feed.”

—Terry Bisson

And in that universe “As far as I can tell, The Broken Bubble fell across the invisible membrane that separates our universe from one that is similar but not identical to ours. In that other universe, Jack Kerouac is still alive. And in that universe there was never a TV series called WKRP in Cincinnati, but there was a similar program called KOIF in San Francisco. That letter show was based on a novel by Jack Kerouac, called The Broken Bubble. And Jack Kerouac was not Jack Kerouac at all, but a brilliant novelist named Philip K. Dick, who started his career as a science fiction writer but switched to mainstream in the early 1960’s and went on to become world famous and appallingly wealthy.

“If all of this seems the figment of a surrealist’s dream— well, that is entirely appropriate, isn’t it? Remember whom we’re talking about!

“Any fan of Phil Dick’s work will place The Broken Bubble on the highest Shelf!”

—Richard A. Lupoff