First published in 1964, during his frenetic creative period that saw him write and publish scores of stories, The Penultimate Truth, Dick’s eleventh published novel, takes off from his short story The Defenders (first published in 1953) and describes a world where there has been a devastating nuclear war and most of society lives in underground tanks because the surface is radioactive.
Or is it?
We are traveling through the Twilight Zone of Phil Dick’s imagination and things are not always as they seem. When a resident of a tank travels to the surface for medical needs, he uncovers a world that is unlike the story he’s been provided by powers that be.
Fast paced and fun with Dick’s inimitable style, this has like much of his canon, been a source of inspiration and outright plagiarism for many writers and producers since. A fan of science fiction will pick up on many later stories that were at least in part inspired by PKD here.
His cautionary vision about authoritarian media, written only a few years after Orwell’s 1984, is still relevant today.
For whatever reason this seems to be on the B list of his novels, this is actually pivotal to much of his writing and an important novel in his collection.
A MUST read for a PKD fan and a SHOULD read for SF readers.
