One of my all time favorite movies is The Truman Show. In fact, when I get around to it, it is the next movie due up in my series of The 15 Best Movies Ever. (Yes, I am LONG overdue...)
This past week, I was in Borders Books and I wandered into the sci-fi aisle. I've been doing a lot of non-fiction reading lately, so I thought it would be a good time to find a novel to disappear into. My eyes caught a large selected dedicated to the works of ,a target="_blank" href="http://www.philipkdick.com/">Philip K. Dick. I'd never read any of his works, but I recalled that Blade Runner and Minority Report were both based on stories written by this author. Since I enjoy "alternate reality" type of stories, I thought I'd pick up a book and give it a whirl. The title I selected was called Time Out of Joint.
Written in 1959, the story drew me in very quickly. Ragle Gumm is something of a celebrity in a 1959 small town. As running champion of a newspaper contest, he earns a full-time income by winning the contest day after day. But some very strange things are happening in Ragle's world. Strange hallucinations, lapses in memory and odd clues on pieces of paper lead him to believe that perhaps things are not as they appear. In his search to discover the truth, he finds that his life is part of a much bigger plan and that he has been living a lie.
As the story unfolded, it dawned on me that this book, or perhaps another Philip K. Dick book, must have been the inspiration for The Truman Show. I now see why he has such a cult-like following, and I have picked up two more of his books that I shall be reading shortly.
Likewise, I also loved the Truman Show. Which is why I made it a permanent selection in my DVD collection -- it's a classic film.
I've been interested in Philip K. Dick ever since Bladerunner, the perfect cult sci-fi movie. I might have to pick up a copy of Time Out of Joint, it sounds interesting.
Thanks for sharing.