Dimension of Miracles

By: Robert Sheckley

Narrated by: John Hodgman

Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Audie Award Finalist, Solo Narration - Male, 2014

Award-winning author, narrator, and screenwriter Neil Gaiman personally selected this book, and, using the tools of the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), produced this work for his audiobook label, Neil Gaiman Presents.

A few words from Neil on Dimension of Miracles: "Dimension of Miracles is probably not [Sheckley's] most famous book…. but I think it's probably his best-loved book. It's about the joys and tribulations (mostly the tribulations) of winning the lottery—the galactic lottery—accidentally. And wrongly. Tom Carmody is awarded a remarkable prize, is taken half way across the universe to collect it, finds himself hopelessly lost, and needs to find his way home again to Earth…to this Earth, not an alternate, weirdo Earth. He's got to get back. And the price is high.

In its style of humor—and even in some of the jokes—Dimension of Miracles is very obviously a precursor of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas actually hadn't read Dimension of Miracles until very shortly after Hitchhiker came out, when people pointed him to it, and he told me that he found the experience almost shocking—it was like reading himself. He was a huge admirer of Bob Sheckley and a huge admirer of this book, and in later life, I had the privilege of introducing both of them.

Now the challenge for me with a book this funny, this strange, this perceptive was to try and find a narrator who was as iconic, somebody who could deliver the goods, somebody who could give you a book like this as it deserved to be given. And the first, and the last, and actually the only person to come to mind was John Hodgman. So I asked John, and he said yes! And he did it; he pulled it off. Listening to John—not just the suave, sensible, sane narrator of this book, but all the peculiar accents and incarnations that he is forced to adopt through here—he does it delightfully, he does it brilliantly, he's really, really funny. And so is this book. Enjoy your journey through a Dimension of Miracles."

Dimension of Miracles is a satirical science fiction novel first published by Dell in 1968. It's about Tom Carmody, a New Yorker who, thanks to a computer error, wins the main prize in the Intergalactic Sweepstakes. Tom claims his prize before the error is discovered and is allowed to keep it. However, since Tom is a human from Earth without galactic status and no space traveling experience, he has no homing instinct that can guide him back to Earth once his odyssey begins - and the galactic lottery organizers cannot transport him home. Meanwhile, his removal from Earth has caused a predatory entity to spring into existence - one that aims to destroy him. Carmody is on the run, and he ends up transporting from Earth to Earth - different phases and realities of the planet.

Learn more about Neil Gaiman Presents and Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX).

©1968 Robert Sheckley (P)2013 Robert Sheckley

Critic reviews

"Hodgman, probably best known to geeks for his appearances on The Daily Show and his role as the PC in those Apple commercials a few years back, has a dryly intelligent deadpan that wonderfully counterpoints the absurd adventures of Thomas Carmody, a mid 20th-century New York everyman who’s invited to a galactic center to collect a sweepstakes prize." ( Locus)

Different from Douglas Adams

Most modern-day critical commentary seems to concentrate on the notion that this work by Sheckley in some ways presages Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Trilogy -- though Adams, of course, was not aware of this work by Sheckley prior to the Trilogy's composition.

It is a verity of modern science-fiction that this genre in its recent form deals in its essence not with "outer space" or the future, but rather with the present -- an insight we've had at least since Orwell found a title by flipping the terminal numerals of the year he spent producing 1984, and asseverated by multiple science fiction writers since, including, most recently, William Gibson.

It is clear in reading Sheckley that he is writing largely about the his own times, the 1960s (the work was published in 1968). Somewhat oddly (perhaps) I found myself flashing to Saul Bellow's early novella, The Victim, which was written in 1947. Like the hero of DoM, the hero of The Victim seems to slip through some kind of cosmic crack while his wife is away. The break with routine leads him on a curious journey that causes him to question not only his identity, but what identity itself really is.

Sheckley belongs, I believe, to a stratum of US novelists that found it very difficult to "write against". Updike, Roth and Bellow (to name a few) were placed in a position where they found it almost impossible to protest against a society that had become so amazingly prosperous. Which contrasted sharply with the experience of, say Steinbeck, and even Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Yet these writers still felt this their duty as writers, and each found some way to say something meaningful about the problem of US society, expressing it, however, in the individual and personal lives of their created protagonists.

Sheckley's work has echoes of Voltaire to it, but it is a Voltaire in which belief, or the issue of belief, seems to be absent -- not destroyed, lost, but for the nonce gone, leaving the kitchen door open and a vague promise to be back before dinner with the needed bottle of milk. There is something a little wearisome about the succession of not-quite-Earths that are visited -- the too-benevolent city, the ultra-commercial city, the crazed small town of movie-stars. It seems neither satire nor parody, but something parodic and satirical in search of a set of "real" objects that would be worthy of these comically distorted representations. Like the prize that eats itself (yes, yes, perhaps a parodic description of modern market-economy capitalism) the work subsists on something of its own substance, and while every novel must borrow a bit of its present from the ascribed future to come, in this instance the giving back one expects never arrives.

Adams, by contrast, was writing a decade later (though he was several decades younger than Sheckley) in what was soon to become Thatcher's Britain. One can think of the "book" -- the Guide itself -- as something like a kind of Britannica gone slightly mad. It combines a simple acceptance of things as they are with a kind of streetwise smarts. It produces a response that the hero, Arthur Dent, is incapable of producing himself.

Arthur Dent was neither some grind in the government or business bureaucracy, nor was he a "flower child" of the sixties. He was really a young man raised in the decencies of 1950s Britain, utterly lost in a world where the cultural basis of Britain was changing. (It's worth noting in passing that, born in 1952, Adams would have been two when postwar food rationing in Britain finally ended.) The destruction of the Earth, which sent Dent wandering forlornly for years without so much as a decent cup of tea, accompanied by no less than a man named for the popular 1950s motor the Ford Prefect, paralleled the destruction of the established world the public school/Oxbridge educated Adams had expected to enter. In that modern world, writers either made a lot of money or had to move back in with their mothers (as Adams did). In the previous British cultural tradition, most writers were slowly starved to death over a series of decades, but they worked and were published.

What Adams really captured beautifully was the sense of double-parody that makes up the modern world. Dent is an object of fun, but he also makes fun successfully of absurdities that surround him. He doesn't "buy in", which is both his triumph and his ruin.

Not that Shekley's work is poor -- it isn't. It's polished and poised. But Shekley wrote better things than this, and the chance associations between this work and a later, better effort in the same area, should not elevate what is worthy, but not so well-developed.

As for Mr Hodgman's reading of the work, I feel quite divided. His skill is, indeed, extraordinary. There is a great deal of work that has gone into this production. But it does seem to me that there is something to the reading of a book that should go beyond performance. I'm not sure that that is present in this production. It might have been better had it been a little less extraordinary, and paid more attention to the insolvable difficulties than the areas where it was possible to excel.

The best of all possible worlds

What made the experience of listening to Dimension of Miracles the most enjoyable?

I really loved the story and the narration was great. Additionally, there was preface by Neil Gaiman and a post interview between Gaiman and Hodgman. That was a real bonus. I really love Neil Gaiman presents I get to enjoy things I normally would not have tried. I bought the book because John Hodgman was narrating. The story was universal and timeless. Pun intended.

What other book might you compare Dimension of Miracles to and why?

A lot of people are comparing it to Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy, which it is on the same vain as far as tone and comedy. I see more the comparisons to Voltaire. I feel like Carmody and Candide had similar journeys. Everywhere they went was "the best of all possible worlds" or was it.

What does John Hodgman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I got this book because of John Hodgman. What is so great about listening to him is when he narrates it is performance. His characterization are both ironic and funny it made the story very entertaining.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Where the prize is not always the prize.

Any additional comments?

I really loved this adventure. Neil Gaiman really knows how to put together a story with a narrator to get the best of all possible experiences. I definitely recommend this and if you like it then I would suggest Year Zero for narration and Candide for story.

Meh

Would you try another book from Robert Sheckley and/or John Hodgman?

I don't think I'd try Sheckley again. Hodgeman was great in Year Zero.

What was most disappointing about Robert Sheckley’s story?

I kept waiting for it to get funny but it just kept dragging on. It just wasn't my brand of funny.

Perfect choice of reader for this book

I had a hard time believing that John Hodgman did not ghost-write this book. A silly story and Hodgman's voice makes this a perfect bed time story.

Light & Amusing

I picked this up when I had some cash on my account that was about to expire. It caught my attention, because it was one of the Neil Gaiman Presents selections. I really like Gaiman’s work and I figured I would probably also like a book that he recommends. I was right.

Dimension of Miracles was amusing, witty, and well-written. In many ways, it was like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, only it came first. It begins when Tom Carmody is whisked away from his New York apartment upon accidentally winning the galactic lottery. In his exploits thereafter, he meets a number of strange characters on several interesting worlds as he attempts to return to Earth.

My favorite part was probably when Tom was transported to Earth during the dinosaur age and proceeds to have a very charming conversation with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

John Hodgman was an excellent choice to narrate this novel. I thought his tone perfectly embodied the author’s dry wit.

Overall, the novel was quite enjoyable. The story was light and amusing, but still had some deeper points as well. It won’t go down as my all-time favorite, but it was still a fun read that I would recommend to anyone looking for a comedic sci-fi story.

Douglas Adams' predecessor

It's hard to believe that this was written before Hitchhiker's Guide. All of the tropes that we ascribe to Adams are here. The weary time traveler, the morose robot, the finicky planet builder (Oh Slartybartfast!), and the cynical humor that leaves you chuckling after the book is over. It's a gem and I'm glad that Gaiman added it to his collection. Hodgman's narration is the icing on the cake.

precursor to Hitchhiker?

this is very much a pre-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel. it has much in the way of the odd ball events and satiric jabs at society etc. that pop up in Adam's work. while i found it very much like HGG and enjoyed it, i did find myself wishing for a little more of the manic Adams movement and wordplay etc. Hodgman is passable as a narrator but could have read with a little more gusto. still all in all good and i do like the ending but a couple scenarios perhaps go on a bit too long. can't give it more stars simply because it is done better by Adams.

amazing

mind bending and so funny. I loved it and would recommend it to anyone how appreciates the exploration of the absurd in the most serious manner.

Witty, Smart and Well Read

Neil Gaiman has found another pearl. I laughed my way through this book. I'm making my way through NGP's selections.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book.

totally loved the book, the author, and the performance.
exceeded my expectations in every way