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I really want to find this book again. I had it back in the seventies, the story was complex, surreal, competing realities type.

The cover showed one figure (I think), anyway, their neck was a platform, their head consisted of two small humanoid figures dancing on that platform.

There were I believe, 7 entities in this "station" which was outside of normal reality. And each one completely controlled reality with their section of the station and whatever part of the outside they could manage.

There was also the sense of hypothesis exploding sequences where each time you think you have what is happening figured out, everything changes. Like in The Magus, and/or The Illuminatus Trilogy.

Each one of these principal characters maintained their "bodies" in whatever manner they chose. The cover figure, whose head was the two small dancing figures on his platform like neck, was one of the principal characters.

The whole effect was so bizarre that I think if anybody else has this book or remembers it's name or author or anything, I will be able to trace it down.

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  • I've never seen such a cover for it, but as a wild guess, "Creatures of Light and Darkness" ?? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatures_of_Light_and_Darkness Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 15:15
  • @OrganicMarble a cursory search for images shows no cover matching the description.
    – SQB
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 20:33
  • As I commented. Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 20:40
  • Not the Zelazny 'C of A & D' that I have seen.
    – Ihor Sypko
    Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 18:06
  • It's not "C of L & D" - I know that story well.
    – Wudang
    Commented Sep 25, 2015 at 14:35

1 Answer 1

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Sounds a bit like Fourth Mansions by RA Lafferty - does the idea of a toad with a jewel in its head and a character who has to soak his head in a bucket ring any bells? It certainly sounds like it might be a Lafferty story, even if not Fourth Mansions itself.

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  • You could include a picture of cover or a link to a Wikipedia/something else page. Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 15:40
  • It's the content that's vaguely familiar, not the cover. But these books came out in multiple issues and multiple cover designs. Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 20:51
  • isfdb.org/cgi-bin/titlecovers.cgi?7649
    – user14111
    Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 22:28
  • @ClaireJordan - it's just that OP described a cover, I thought you might save him the trouble of verifying your answer if you put a cover in it. Commented Oct 9, 2016 at 8:20
  • I'll have to check the RA Lafferty stuff out. It sounds Promising, and it's the only real lead that I've gotten. Commented Feb 20, 2018 at 9:26

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