Philip K. Dick comes on without fanfare. His novels are published as science fiction, which limits their “packaging” to purple-monster jackets, ensures but restricts their sales, and, above all, prevents their being noticed by most serious critics or reviewers. His prose is austere, sometimes hasty, always straightforward, with no Nabokovian fiddle-faddle. His characters are ordinary — extraordinarily ordinary — the inept small businessman, the ambitious organization girl, the minor craftsman or repairman, etc. That some of them have odd talents such as precognition is common; they’re just ordinary neurotic precognitive slobs. His humor is dry and zany. You can’t quote funny bits from Dick, because you have to have read the whole book up to that point to know why it’s so funny when the taxicab gravely assures Barney, “I think you’re doing the right thing.” Taxicabs often talk in Dick’s novels; they are usually earnest, but mistaken. Finally, his inventive, intricate plots move on so easily and entertainingly that the reader, guided without effort through the maze, may put the book down believing it to be a clever SF-thriller and nothing more. The fact that what Dick is entertaining us about is reality and madness, time and death, sin and salvation — this has escaped most readers and critics. Nobody notices; nobody notices that we have our own homegrown Borges, and have had him for thirty years.

Ever take one of those psychological pre-employment tests?