The Cosmic Puppets starts with a promising idea, that of a man returning to his town of birth to find that in this world he died in infancy. All right. The novel (if it indeed qualifies length-wise) is a mystery/thriller  in the first half. The 'Wanderers' turn out to be the real people, and this  is a good interpretation of the common plot device, ie. ghosts. When the  protag. and his friend (I forget their names) try to turn things back to  normal, Cosmic Puppets seems a little like a precursor to Ubik, what with  the layers of reality visible in a physical sense. At this stage, Cosmic  Puppets is quite tolerable.
But then the ending! It's awful. Terrible.  Enought to stop you from reading. It all falls apart. Cosmic Puppets is an  early PKD novel, and it shows. But it also shows in simple form the themes  that PKD would pursue later.
Only a PKD fan would find anything of  interest, however.
The Cosmic Puppets starts with a promising idea, that of a man returning to his town of birth to find that in this world he died in infancy. All right. The novel (if it indeed qualifies length-wise) is a mystery/thriller  in the first half. The 'Wanderers' turn out to be the real people, and this  is a good interpretation of the common plot device, ie. ghosts. When the  protag. and his friend (I forget their names) try to turn things back to  normal, Cosmic Puppets seems a little like a precursor to Ubik, what with  the layers of reality visible in a physical sense. At this stage, Cosmic  Puppets is quite tolerable. But then the ending! It's awful. Terrible. Enought to stop you from reading. It all falls apart. Cosmic Puppets is an  early PKD novel, and it shows. But it also shows in simple form the themes  that PKD would pursue later. Only a PKD fan would find anything of  interest, however.