I ran out of love for Denver about 1.5 hours ago.

Unfortunately, because of the delayed flight, I am here for another hour.

I'm trying to think of something clever to write or something interesting to do, but I am groggy from the Whataburger I ate before we took off from San Antonio.

However!

I did read two of the four books that I brought with me on this trip. Clans of the Alphane Moon was interesting, but it felt . . . pulpy? Not in a way I particularly enjoyed, either. It felt a bit too disjointed and some characters, such as Bunny Hentmen, felt like they'd been sketched crudely and lazily with a fat broken-off pencil and that Dick didn't bother to go back and tighten them up.

Vulcan's Hammer was much more transparent, with a more easily followed linear narrative. I also enjoyed it a bit more. I'm not sure what that says about me. Is Vulcan's Hammer really a better book than Clans of the Alphane Moon or have I become a lazy lazy reader?

I have Radio Free Albemuth in my carry-on for possible reading on the last leg of this journey, and it's Dick's last novel, so clearly it's one I should be reading as part of this project, but. . .

. . . from the blurbage on the back, it just seems too . . . meta, you know?

"In the late 1960's a paranoid incompetent has schemed his way into the White House and convulsed America in a vicious war against imaginary internal enemies. A struggling science fiction write named Philip K. Dick is trying to keep from becoming one of that war's casualties. And Dick's best friend, a record executive named Nicholas Brady, is receiving transmissions from an extraterrestrial entity that may also happen to be God — an entity that apparently wants him to overthrow the President."

I mean, I'm all for overthrowing paranoid imcompetents that scheme their way into the presidency and everything, but still. Naming a character after yourself? Did Dick have too much editorial latitude?

Hey, who wants to bet that one of the minor characters is an admirable and beautiful but marginally insane dark-haired woman"?