The Dice Man is a cult novel written by Luke Rhinehart in 1971. The protagonist is also called Luke Rhinehart, but it is a fictional role and is by no means autobiographical.
In the story Luke Rhinehart is a psychiatrist bored by the routine and order of his life. He has a wife, two children and a decent home. He is writing a book on sadomasochism. All this changes when one night upon spotting what he believes to be a die under a playing card, he resolves that if the item is a die and the upfacing number is a one, he will go downstairs and rape his friend Arlene, who lives in the flat below. The die does indeed show a one and then Luke does indeed go downstairs to rape Arlene.
Slowly Luke gets more and more into the idea of letting the die decide what he does. It orders him to do all manner of strange things. Luke justifies these actions by saying he is experimenting in the human personality and what happens if it is removed. Eventually, Luke's entire life is ruled by the dice as they make him do ever more extreme things.
The novel raises a lot psychological questions about what would happen if everyone acted in a completely random way. It challenges the notions of order and predictability. To help stress this, the novel itself is written in quite a random way. It spontaniously jumps from first person to third person and has a variable writing style.
Over the years The Dice Man has gained a cult following. The Discovery Channel aired a program called The Diceman which was a travel show inspired by the novel. Many fan sites have appeared and there is the usenet forum alt.fan.dice-man (actually the hero-worship of comedian Andrew "Dice" Clay. (thanks Anark)