Dimension of Miracles
By: Robert Sheckley / Narrated By: John Hodgman
Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
Sometimes it drags, but there’s plenty of humor and even deep philosophical musings to be had throughout
Let’s first just get it out of the way: This, Dimension of Miracles, was published in 1968 and was a precursor to Douglas Adams and his The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (tho’ Adams was entirely unaware of it before writing his ode to irksome and whacked out space travel). Mostly, it doesn’t seem dated, but by the end it’d be good if you knew or remembered some of what was going on during that tumultuous time in history.
But let us begin at the beginning, shall we? Tom Carmody is a bored, office-working New Yorker. After one pointless day which greatly resembles all of his other pointless days, he comes home to discover he’s won an Intergalactic Sweepstakes. Feeling he miiiiiight be going crazy, he figures he’s got nothing to lose by accepting jaunting off to the edges of space to receive his prize. After all, if he’s wrong, he’ll simply come to in a nuthouse. But if it’s for real? Why, it might just be an AWEsome adventure!
Once there, a gazillion and six miles away from Earth, it’s discovered that he’s won only after a glitch/error, but he’s allowed to keep his Prize (Which becomes a whimsical and chaotic agent of change for him through the rest of the book), but the problem is that, having no homing instinct, it’ll take heaven only knows what to get him back to Earth, his Earth, the Earth at the proper place, the proper time, the proper dimension. Thus, he sets out with his Prize to tryyyyy to find his way home.
And by the way? A predator just happened to be created when the glitch occurred, so Carmody is kinda sorta running for his life too.
He and his Prize are now tripping through space, tripping through time, tripping through parallel Earths, all in an effort to get back to Life as he knew it. Along the way he is assisted by a godhead who is completely and unutterably bored by his status as all-knowing and all-powerful; is assisted by a world builder who kinda sorta created a planet by cutting corners in a rush job (He created it in Six Days!); is assisted by an Earth that has only Carmody’s best interests in mind (Yes, that’s the fourth cigarette Carmody’s smoked in five minutes!).
The story is really quite funny, and tho’ I wouldn’t call it hilarious, I must admit to smiling and chortling from time to time and it did indeed earn a couple of sound guffaws that had people staring at me whilst I was hunkered down in my bus seat. Sometimes author Sheckley takes things, humorous situations, and drags them on for quite a bit with all sorts of clever musings and clever banter to the point where my mind wandered, but usually he’d follow this up with a swift sucker punch sentence that highlighted one of (Our) Earth’s problems, say a dinosaur thinking the other sentient creature is intelligent, yes, but really, it’d be better if it Knew Its Place and Served Without Question (Racism).
Now I love John Hodgman, and have greatly appreciated his narration of his own work (Like Vacationland which, yeah yeah yeah, I’ll get around to reviewing SOMEday), and I simply adored his delivery when he was a Correspondent on The Daily Show, but I must admit that I found his performance here to be a bit subdued. Yes, he did well, but as some of the riffing goes on for extended lengths, it would’ve been nice if he jazzed up intonations a bit. But I s’pose that’s just me quibbling, and I’ll get over it, shall I?
For the most part, however, he does well, and by the time we get to the end, where Carmody comes back to his Earth (And here is where it’s good if you keep in mind 1968—Vietnam, Cambodia, ecology movements and an awareness of garbage, art movements of the time, etc. etc.), the hammer blow is delivered, and we see Earth and Life with new eyes.
It ends abruptly, as tho’ Sheckley was going to be doing a series, but I guess it’s good enough to stand on its own. It’s not a mind-blowing conclusion and, all things considered, it’s a trifle sad, but it’s uplifting at the same time as Carmody makes a life altering decision.
A little dated, but the audiobook as a whole is a jaunty and snark-filled way to spend 5 hours and 20 minutes.
And seriously: Douglas Adams got reeeeeally tired of people drawing comparisons between this book and his own. Well, that’s what ya get when ya don’t read around…!
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