Dick had an amazing imagination and no qualms about using it. Though he didn’t devote much effort to creating consistent alternate universes, unlike some of my other favorite sci-fi authors, his stories always use the liberties taken with reality to excellent effect. The Game Players of Titan touches on many of Dick’s favorite subjects: telepathy, drugs, California, and wild, deluded paranoia. Like a piece of improvisational jazz, it toys with its themes, at times harmonizing, other times punctuatingly dissonant. Unfortunately, it also bears another common feature of his books, rather than ending with a bang, it just sort of fades away.