I often get frustrated with Iain Banks' use of metaphor. He frequently describes things in that kind of ambiguous way, where you're not sure whether he means it literally or figuratively. And he usually says something in the next paragraph that assumes you know which way he meant it.

A lot of academics are doing things with Phil Dick's stuff, though, and a lot of the time, he was very, very literal. Even when the metaphor is literal, the meaning may not be.