The Penultimate Truth

Rating:
Summary: The war as media event
Review: This mid-1960s novel focuses on the theme of fakery and its uses in structuring political realities. Dick delights in devising paradoxes to illustrate the idea that getting to the ultimate truth is impossible: there is always another layer to be penetrated. A major hoax is perpetrated against most of Earth's population, which retreats underground in huge "ant tanks" to avoid being killed in a nuclear war. The war ends, but the leaders choose not to tell these "tankers," who are kept busy manufacturing robots called "leadies" while being fed television images of the war that is supposedly raging above, fought by the leadies. Needless to say, to see war as turning into a media event was prophetic. The plot of the novel was cobbled together from several of Dick's short stories. Still, in its somewhat ill-structured way, The Penultimate Truth, with all its improbabilities and looseness, is honest in its headlong plunge through its willful convolutions of plot. Since it is not offering any ultimate truth, after all, it hardly need disguise itself in perfect form.


Rating:
Summary: Do You Really Want The Truth?
Review: When I decide to visit Planet Phil, I read several of PKD novels in succession. At first, it just happened that way. Now I do it on purpose. I am not so anal retentive to read them in chronological order. This may have something to do with the fact that I tend to like his later works more. That said I have a sneaking suspcion I will eventually read them all.

The years, not to mention a majority of his fans, have not been kind to this book. The Penultimate Truth, though written during Dick's most prolific period, in comparison to his other early sixties novels(Palmer Eldritch or Now Wait For Last Year)just doesn't compare.The writing is blocky and slightly inelegant.The characters are a tad weak. And you can definitely tell that it was serialized somewhere.Hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement, right? Well, I am glad I read it

Despite its failings The Penultimate Truth is evocative and provocative. The story morphs through a variety of scenarios which touch on numerous SF tropes and does so almost seamlessly. From the post-apocalyptic "Ant Tanks" to the Orwellian "Yancemen", you can see Phil the world builder at work. The novel even incorprates a time travel conspiracy and a stab at futuristic mystery. While reading it I could almost imagine a version of this as a movie ala Terry Gilliam's " Brazil". These elements really helped me through the rough spots

It is obvious that the drive of the novel is thematic. The enjoyment of the novel comes more from weighing the implications of actions than from understanding why they are taken. As I stated earlier, the characters are abit weak since they are clearly in service of the story and not the other way around. With a cast this large in a book this small, it seems inevitable. Still the characters of Nick St. James and Joseph Adams are sharply drawn in a concise manner.

The truth is read this book to have your mind melted and not to have your senses stirred.