The Penultimate Truth - Philip K Dick

The Penultimate Truth by Philip K Dick starts with an intriguing idea, that many stories would have held for a big reveal, and then it casually informs the reader of the secret. That secret being the fact that the third World War has ended, and yet millions of citizens still live beneath the ground in tanks, duped into believing that they are still fighting by an elite who live on the surface.

The story initially follows a president of one of these tanks as he returns to the surface to try and find an artificial pancreas for their senior engineer. However the plot soon spins out into a complicated mess of intrigue and personal political wranglings. Not so much for the better either, I would have preferred the plot to concentrate on the single journey to discover the truth, instead it feels like a bit of a mess. And yet still interesting, in a this is a bit bonkers kind of way. Typical PKD in that respect, but less focussed than some of his best works.

It's almost like PKD was trying to write about something and the original idea was getting in the way. For example, time-travel is casually mentioned to be possible, and in fact used as a major plot device, yet no one bats an eyelid. It's not elucidated, it's just an advanced weapon that someone got hold of.

What does remain as good as any other PKD book is the cool retro-future ideas and language. Somehow PKD manages to invent words and technology that still seem cool despite being extrapolated from the year they were written in. Ideas such as a handful of giant computers and the elite having robots for soldiers, are clearly incorrect speculation, yet the core idea that the population is being deceived by expert film makers seems pretty relevant to today. The total future envisioned in the book (published in 1964) does not seem a plausible current future, but it does feel like a plausible future of the past. An alternative today.

Not one of the best PKD book  I have read, but interesting for a fan of his work.