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A review by isd
The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick
4.0
As it often happens, I had no idea what I was stepping into when I started reading the Simulacra. For a while I expected it to be more about settling Mars than the weird house-complex stuff and this very peculiar more-than-half-German system.
Then we got psychokinetics, nuclear war -produced unpeople, supreme state secrets splitting the United States of Europe and America (I guess that's what USEA stood for) into pretty much two castes of people: those who knew the secret(s) and those who didn't and were worse people for that. Somehow pleasing the president's wife was the goal for everyone and while the president, der Alte, served terms, Nicole, the wife was always there and clearly in charge.
I'm not going to pretend to analyze the story or even summarize it, enough people have done it already - and much better than I could. The very beginning of the book was a bit strange, didn't quite sink its hooks into my sci-fi -starved mind, but at some point the complicated storylines started flowing and kicked into gear.
One of the key strangenesses that bothered me heavily in the early part was the brothers Strikerock arguing about which of them gets to live with Julie - neither giving no thought to the fact that it's not up to them to decide. That bothered me even if I'm usually pretty good with accepting that this sort of shit worked a bit differently 57 years ago.
Most of the von Lessinger -related plots could've been explored further, I was expecting at least a minor disaster with the Germans from the Age of Barbarism. All that dwindled away without a puff, which was kind of disappointing because I would've really welcomed even more surreal events.
All in all, I highly enjoyed this, even or especially if it took my expectations and threw them into the bin.
Then we got psychokinetics, nuclear war -produced unpeople, supreme state secrets splitting the United States of Europe and America (I guess that's what USEA stood for) into pretty much two castes of people: those who knew the secret(s) and those who didn't and were worse people for that. Somehow pleasing the president's wife was the goal for everyone and while the president, der Alte, served terms, Nicole, the wife was always there and clearly in charge.
I'm not going to pretend to analyze the story or even summarize it, enough people have done it already - and much better than I could. The very beginning of the book was a bit strange, didn't quite sink its hooks into my sci-fi -starved mind, but at some point the complicated storylines started flowing and kicked into gear.
One of the key strangenesses that bothered me heavily in the early part was the brothers Strikerock arguing about which of them gets to live with Julie - neither giving no thought to the fact that it's not up to them to decide. That bothered me even if I'm usually pretty good with accepting that this sort of shit worked a bit differently 57 years ago.
Most of the von Lessinger -related plots could've been explored further, I was expecting at least a minor disaster with the Germans from the Age of Barbarism. All that dwindled away without a puff, which was kind of disappointing because I would've really welcomed even more surreal events.
All in all, I highly enjoyed this, even or especially if it took my expectations and threw them into the bin.