PatThe Penultimate Truth
January 13th 2008 12:45
David Lantano is the best thing about The Penultimate Truth by Phillip K. Dick. He's a mysterious god-like American Indian whose age and appearance vary for no apparent reason (I'm sure there's a reason but I don't feel like researching this review any further) and he's the most significant character in this book.
This novel is based around the idea of World War III taking place between the robotic forces of Wes-Dem and Pac-Peop (you filthy Wes-Dem mongrels can go to hell, Pac-Peop forever!) which causes so much damage to the planet that the majority of the population are forced into hiding in deep underground communities to survive.
After the war is over, the planet slowly recovers; however, the remaining people on the surface of the planet take the opportunity to fashion a ridiculously immense and complicated global conspiracy to trick millions of people to stay underground and work for the benefit of the lucky land-owners enjoying the good times which are to be had in the post-apocalyptic Planet Earth.
This seems like a simple idea (well, it seemed simple when I thought about it before, but now that I've written all that, not quite so much). In typical Dick style though, things become very complicated, very quickly.
The story focuses on the journey of a leader of one of the underground communities as he braves the unknown dangers of the surface in an effort to acquire an artificial pancreas, which is to be transplanted into his good friend, homosexual lover, and mechanic.
The story quickly moves on to cover Yance-men, demenses, leadies, forged alien artifacts, time-travel, computer generated politicians, and much more.
Obviously, you won't understand the significance of my previous sentence without having read the book and I was thinking about lying to you and pretending that I had a reason for not properly explaining those terms, but to be honest, I'm lazy and being annoying to anonymous internet users brings a smile to my face. Deal with it.
This book is complicated and often confusing (in a good way) and that's why I'm leaving my plot discussion there. I'm certain to make a meal of it (if I haven't already) and if I try and analyse it further and some Phillip K. Dick nerd will send me a long email about a lot of things which I don't care about and I'll send a smarmy reply and we'll both regret our time surfing the information superhighway, so instead I'll just concede defeat now.
It's a good book. It's perhaps not quite my favourite Phillip K. Dick book (which I will be reviewing in the near future), but it's certainly one of his better efforts.
The quality of the book is in direct contrast to the quality of this review which is perhaps my worst ever.
This novel is based around the idea of World War III taking place between the robotic forces of Wes-Dem and Pac-Peop (you filthy Wes-Dem mongrels can go to hell, Pac-Peop forever!) which causes so much damage to the planet that the majority of the population are forced into hiding in deep underground communities to survive.
After the war is over, the planet slowly recovers; however, the remaining people on the surface of the planet take the opportunity to fashion a ridiculously immense and complicated global conspiracy to trick millions of people to stay underground and work for the benefit of the lucky land-owners enjoying the good times which are to be had in the post-apocalyptic Planet Earth.
This seems like a simple idea (well, it seemed simple when I thought about it before, but now that I've written all that, not quite so much). In typical Dick style though, things become very complicated, very quickly.
The story focuses on the journey of a leader of one of the underground communities as he braves the unknown dangers of the surface in an effort to acquire an artificial pancreas, which is to be transplanted into his good friend, homosexual lover, and mechanic.
The story quickly moves on to cover Yance-men, demenses, leadies, forged alien artifacts, time-travel, computer generated politicians, and much more.
Obviously, you won't understand the significance of my previous sentence without having read the book and I was thinking about lying to you and pretending that I had a reason for not properly explaining those terms, but to be honest, I'm lazy and being annoying to anonymous internet users brings a smile to my face. Deal with it.
This book is complicated and often confusing (in a good way) and that's why I'm leaving my plot discussion there. I'm certain to make a meal of it (if I haven't already) and if I try and analyse it further and some Phillip K. Dick nerd will send me a long email about a lot of things which I don't care about and I'll send a smarmy reply and we'll both regret our time surfing the information superhighway, so instead I'll just concede defeat now.
It's a good book. It's perhaps not quite my favourite Phillip K. Dick book (which I will be reviewing in the near future), but it's certainly one of his better efforts.
The quality of the book is in direct contrast to the quality of this review which is perhaps my worst ever.
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I've read a bunch of his books but not all of them. Without consulting a list of things he's published, I'm fairly certain that I'm nowhere near reading all of them actually.
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Here's my complaint - "typical dick style" is not a phrase I'm fond of.
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