Maybe things are crazier now than they were last year, or maybe not. The truth is, things are always crazy somehow or other and no matter what side you're on, or if you believe it shouldn't be quite so much about taking sides, normal people just have to muddle through. We can be thankful for the things that help us do that. Sometimes they help us escape, sure, but sometimes instead they comfort us by telling us we don't need to escape. Philip K. Dick wrote about normal people: shopkeepers, farmers, salesmen, teachers. A lot of his stories were about what happens when these people have a false world swept right out from under them, but some weren't about that. Maybe the best one that wasn't about it is Dr. Bloodmoney. The apocalypse has come and gone, but society is putting itself back together, as it does after its catastrophes. This is about the normal men and women who have to get it done in small and sometimes impossibly big ways. The villain of the piece may ring uncomfortably -- but also comfortably -- familiar in his obsession. It's Philip K. Dick, so it gets very, very weird. And what do the normal people have to do? Of course, they have to let the weirdness happen, navigate between this side and that side, and muddle through.
It always helps to have a joke on hand, too. Here's one.
