The Cosmic Puppets

The Cosmic Puppets is a strange type of novel. It's not one I'd have associated with P.K. Dick. It is more of a fantasy tale than science fiction.

Ted Barton, while on vacation with his wife gets the urge to revisit the town where he was born and raised until the age of eight. He'd not been back since and that was eighteen years ago. The wife is not happy bit that does not deter Ted, it is a strong urge. He drives through the Virginia hills, and when he gets to Millgate, he was expecting to see the old homestead and town, but nothing is as he remembers. The street names are all wrong, his old house is not there, nothing is as he remembers. He decides to take the wife to a nearby town and gets her a room. He needs to find out the solution to this mystery.

Once he comes back, alone, he starts asking around and everyone thinks he's crazy. He goes to the local newspaper office and looks through their morgue and discovers that a child with his name died eighteen years ago, at the age of eight.

Apparently, as the story develops, two immortal beings have settled in and have changed everything. This is where it differs from any other book of his I've read, if he explains the whys and the wherefores of this, it didn't register with me. Apparently these immortals just stopped their ages long war and took a break for eighteen years. Ted's return somehow gets it going again. This one I'd leave to only a die hard P. K. Dick fan.