Reviews

An American precursor to Douglas Adams that is totally worth your time. Get the audiobook version, Neil Gaiman Presents, narrated by John Hodgman and you won’t be disappointed.

Carmody suddenly wins an intergalactic prize and then must find his way home through a series of almost-Earths while being chased by a predator that exists solely for him! Hijinks ensue and social commentary abounds! So good!

gavgaddis's review against another edition

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5.0

Absolutely loved this book! If you're looking for a Douglas Adams-esque galaxy-hopping absurd fantasy, this is your ticket.

It's so similar to his style, Adams said it felt strange reading something published before Hitchhiker's Guide that felt like he had written himself and simply forgotten about.

I also highly recommend listening to the Neil Gaiman Collection version of the audiobook, narrated by the wonderful John Hodgman.

milos_booknook's review against another edition

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adventurous funny inspiring lighthearted mysterious relaxing fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Dimension of Miracles is the story about a man trying to find his way home after winning an Intergalactic Sweepstake. He found himself having to navigate among the incompetent bureaucrats to find his way home to Earth. The novel is filled with extremely funny scenarios and dialogues, it reminds me of the TV show ‘The Good Place’ with similar slapstick humour.

tiedyedude's review against another edition

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5.0

A wonderful sci-fi novel, reintroduced to the world by Neil Gaiman, and superbly brought to life by John Hodgman. I share in Hodgman and Gaiman's surprise that Sheckley and Douglas Adams never crossed paths, because the similarities are uncanny. A human is unexpectedly transported from Earth to a quirky journey through the universe. I am certainly interested in exploring Sheckley's work further, as well as other Gaiman Presents titles!

gazzav's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced

5.0

eccles's review against another edition

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3.75

A funny little 1960’s intellectual satire in a sort of Swifitan mode, in which our bemused but largely unflappable ordinary-man hero jolts through outlandish interglactic, intertemporal, inter-timeline-ian scenarios, each teaching him some new way of looking at things. It’s less a social satire, although it goes that way in a couple of episodes towards the end, more an amused inspection of Ideas, in which Ethics and Science and Religion and History are all turned upside down or inside out, and we soon find ourselves in cosmologically absurdist narrative with nowhere else to go. A little like all those Monty Python sketches that they couldn’t end, this madcap intellectual romp rather peters out 120 pages in. It’s clear that many ideas in here were fodder for Douglas Adams, who managed to meld this zany content with some more workmanlike narrative structure, turning Carmody into Dent Arthur Dent, but there’s still much to enjoy in this original, energetic, mind-bending novella.

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