A Maze of Death

A few weeks ago I picked up a collection of Philip K. Dick novels and recently finished the first in the book, A Maze of Death.  I have read a bunch of Dick's work over the years and have even taught Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and have always enjoyed it.  I don't have a lot to say about this novel aside from the fact that I enjoyed reading it and Dick does something in it that I have thought about a lot in the past.
In the novel, Dick dumps a bunch of characters into an unfamiliar situation and lets them figure out what is going on.  The narrative builds along with the characters' knowledge, so the reader learns about what is happening as the characters do.  This helps to create in the reader similar senses of alienation and familiarity that the characters experience.  As in many of his novels, the characters begin to doubt the reality of their world and, then, to question their experience of their reality.
I like the idea that there is something to gain from questioning the world we inhabit and that those who do so are not automatically incorrect.  The characters in this novel (largely flat and interchangeable) eventually come out the the VR simulation that has been the entirety of the narrative up to that point, and are instantly aware of the fact that they had placed themselves in the simulation and that they had actually made up the entire world themselves along with the AI running the simulation.
Dick's characters do not always come to a grander revelation, but they usually do gain something from their skepticism, even if that gain is only coming a bit closer to a truth about themselves or their world.
There is a strong similarity between the simulation the characters eventually escape (and subsequently voluntarily re-enter) and Area X in Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation.  The characters in both novels face a surreality that similarly leaves the reader questioning what is real within the confines of the fiction.  I don't know that both have the same effect in the end, but it interesting to note the possible inspiration for the later novel.  As a part of the "new weird," it would seem natural for VanderMeer to take after Dick.  I just haven't done any research to know for sure.