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From the Bookshelf of Philip K Dick…

Now Wait for Last Year

Philip K. Dick

Start date: March 1, 2013

Finish date: March 25, 2013

Discussion: Group Reads

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Now Wait For Last Year - final thoughts (spoilers)
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last updated Jan 08, 2024 10:11PM

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Jul 17, 2012 Chloe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: time_is_a_flat_circle, scifi-fantasy, dystopian-fiction, drugs

It's a strange feeling when you think you have an author pegged and then they go ahead and publish something straight out of left field. It's like Michael Jordan playing baseball, Lou Reed making a record with Metallica, or Michael Bay directing a Victorian drama. It just seems odd, like you've awakened in a world that is not entirely yours any more. This was entirely my feeling for the first hundred pages or so of Dick's Now Wait for Last Year, the third entry in his Library of America collecti It's a strange feeling when you think you have an author pegged and then they go ahead and publish something straight out of left field. It's like Michael Jordan playing baseball, Lou Reed making a record with Metallica, or Michael Bay directing a Victorian drama. It just seems odd, like you've awakened in a world that is not entirely yours any more. This was entirely my feeling for the first hundred pages or so of Dick's Now Wait for Last Year, the third entry in his Library of America collection Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s.

Now Wait for Last Year is set in a future in which humankind has somehow embroiled itself in a galactic war the likes of which would make the Kree-Skrull War seem like a minor dust-up. The people of Lilistar are genetic forebears of humanity, having seeded Earth with life millennia ago (think of the opening of Prometheus), so humanity has naturally sided with them in their ongoing conflict again the Reeg, a race of aliens who are only able to communicate to humans via small boxes. You would think that humans would know from our own history not to trust ourselves, but then logic has rarely been our strong suit. The war has not been going well for humanity, the Reegs are strong and the Lilistarmen have continually pushed us to increase our production for the war effort and make vague hints that they're more than willing to step in and "manage" their descendant's resources for them. All that is holding a complete takeover at bay is the Mole, UN Secretary General Gino Molinari, a hypochondriac with a 17 year-old mistress who uses his ailments as excuses to hold back the Lilistarmen from completing the "negotiations" that would cede control to these aliens.

Based on that premise alone, I would not think this is a Philip K. Dick book. It sounds more like something that Heinlein would have cranked out in one of his not-really-trying moments. In fact, the first half of the book embraces more of the elements of a political thriller than I've ever seen in a Dick work before. Fortunately, that's not all there is in these pages. Enter Dr. Eric Sweetscent, an organ replacement specialist called on by the Mole to assist him in keeping him just-this-side of death, and Kathy Sweetscent, his estranged wife who has just been hooked on JJ-180, a deadly addictive drug that shorts out its users neurological pathways but also allows the user to travel back and forth through time.

This is where things begin to return to the Dick we all know and love. Within no time Eric is slipped some JJ-180 and is in a race against time to find a cure to the addiction before he succumbs to the necrotizing effects of the drug. At the same time he is flung forward through time to several different alternate timelines, all of which offer various bleak scenarios for humanity's future enslavement and the future of his marriage. Can Sweetscent (such a good name) find the cure, save his marriage, and stop the Lilistar-men from taking over his planet?

This was a really captivating read. Once Sweetscent begins yo-yoing through the 4th dimension and we are treated to multiple alternate realities (including a great meeting with a future version of himself that is just filled with toxic self-loathing) and the sheer scope of the conspiracy begins to be illuminated, I really could not put the book down. Dick is truly a master of the time travel scenario, painting his scenes clearly, even when the reader is unaware just what may be going on. Most interestingly, though, are the latter pages of the book when the conflict with the aliens recedes into the background and Sweetscent focuses on saving his wife from the effects of her drug abuse and his marriage from the effects of his wife.

This book was written during an amphetamine-fueled streak of writing that saw Dick finish writing three other books at a time when his marriage to his second wife, Anne, was teetering on the brink of failure. Knowing this, it was especially heart-rending to read Sweetscent's musings as to whether it was even worth trying to save his wife, or whether both parties would be better off apart. It's a human touch that added a lot to my enjoyment of the story and further solidified my view of Dick as a tragic hero in his own works, a man struggling to understand his own world through creating fantastic escapist scenarios. ...more

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Jun 21, 2010 Sam rated it really liked it

Several misdirections (or dead ends/unexplored ideas). I realize more & more that PKD was just writing and rewriting the same story throughout much of the sixties. Again, the lead female is a total shrew.

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