In the past mankind believed in God; this was his mythology. Today man has transferred his belief from God to Science, and Science-as-God continues as man's latest mythology…. Kilgore Trout, in [Philip José Farmer's] Venus on the Half-Shell, debunks even this deity; he denies that science is the product of man's reason by illustrating how reason is just another form of imagination…. Trout shows that science is no panacea; instead he reveals how science is the product of man's rational naivete, since he views science as reason instead of imagination. Recurrent motifs in the novel demonstrate a self-reflexive point of view—the novel itself is a maze of structures which reflect other structures like mirrors. By employing a structural perspective for critical interpretation, details and a point of view missed by other types of criticism are revealed, thereby revealing a unity in the seemingly episodic Venus.

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