The Penultimate Truth: A Novel (Paperback)

by Philip K. Dick (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
“At a time when most 20th-century science fiction writers seem hopelessly dated, Dick gives us a vision of the future that captures the feel of our time.” --Wired

“The finest American novelist of our time.” –Hartford Advocate

“Dick was…one of the genuine visionaries that North American fiction has produced in this century.”–Steve Erickson, L.A. Weekly

“If there’s such a thing as a ‘black science fiction,’ Philip K. Dick is its Pirandello, its Beckett and its Pinter.” –Harlan Ellison


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Review
“At a time when most 20th-century science fiction writers seem hopelessly dated, Dick gives us a vision of the future that captures the feel of our time.” --Wired

“The finest American novelist of our time.” –Hartford Advocate

“Dick was…one of the genuine visionaries that North American fiction has produced in this century.”–Steve Erickson, L.A. Weekly

“If there’s such a thing as a ‘black science fiction,’ Philip K. Dick is its Pirandello, its Beckett and its Pinter.” –Harlan Ellison

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (August 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400030110
• ISBN-13: 978-1400030118
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #157,198 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening liberation, December 16, 2003

By	Billy Bardo (Omphalos, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH (Paperback)

I am frankly surprised that this book is so little understood. I will grant at the outset that the writing itself is not very distinguished for sophisticated literary palettes--but its greatness lies in the ideas that it casts into the tireless tropes of speculative fiction.

To begin with, he spins a cognitive framework of a world in perpetual war, waged by robots above the surface of the earth which has become too ravaged by radioactivity to support human life. Humans are reduced to living underground in "tanks", subterranean factories whose economy depends upon the constant repair of damaged robot warriors from the surface. The only source of information about this grim cognitive framework pipes in through the Television tube, where a Dear Great Leader sits behind the imposing desk of authority, surrounded by the symbols of state. He prattles about the sacrificies made by the millions surviving in the tanks, he talks about the struggles to build a free society on the surface, the despicable nature of the enemy, the threat to liberty, and so on and so forth. You get the picture. You have heard it yourself on the nightly news for years and years.

So the crisis comes when the chief mechanic for the tank grows desperately ill. Death is certain unless they can obtain an artificial organ transplant. How can they do that? They have no power, no initiatives available in this regard. If he dies, they will fall behind in their quota, their food rations will be cut, the lives of the entire tank are at stake. So in a desperate state they decide to send one of their own to the surface on a quest for an artificial organ. When he makes his way to the surface, he fears instant incineration from the death dealing warrior robots--instead, imagine his surprise as he discovers that the entire planet is a beautiful sunlit garden, inhabited not by fierce warrior robots and smoking ruins, but instead a privileged leisure class served by the robots in luxury, devoting their time to spinning little fearful fictions for the slaves laboring down below...

Recognise this world? You're living in it. For you are either a Yance man--one who writes speeches for the Dear Great Leader--that is to say a wise guy--an Illuminatus--or you are a subterranean slave--a know nothing. Which one are you?

Actually, Dick shows a third way in the form of a mysterious native American, a member of the new Aristocracy, who plays the role of Scarlet Pimpernel with a time machine, systematically and methodically working against the Status Quo--and working for the liberation of the armies of slaves living and working in the underground. For, after all, none of us are supposed to awake, but then again, sometimes some of us do. And What Then? Do we join these forces of authority, intent on the domination of the great unwashed masses--Or ,do we work for the improvement of their lot, freeing them with useful knowledge and the simple facts of existence? How do you successfully inform someone that they are living in chains if they have never had them off? How do you force someone to actually realize that yes, everything IS connected to everything--and no, there really IS no such thing as a free lunch?

Dick's story takes Plato's parable of the Cave and cloaks it in a futuristic scenario. He brings the mystical ideas of the neo-platonists to life. He creates a metaphor for the secret teachings of the Gnostic Christians. He hints that the great liberating figures of the story, the time traveller, may be the second coming of Christ, and implys that Christ may have been a time traveller himself.

These are the grandest notions of bondage by ignorance vs liberation through knowledge, the salvation and healing available through simple practical truths. The story demonstrates clearly the workings of the "Authoritarian Mind", using fear, mystification, mythification,and reification to control the common man in his inherent ignorance-- and contrasts them with historical figures of liberation, who combated ignorance with knowledge and enlightenment. The title, and the story, begs the question, never answered...since it purports to reveal the Penultimate Truth, what is the revelation of the Ultimate Truth?

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do you recognize this novels world?, September 9, 2004

By	G Smith "stupid middle age white guy" (the library) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a world were the majority of people spend their time unknowingly serving the rich who lead lives of affluent decadence. The commoners leader is a vision that doesn't actually exist and represents a minority that cares nothing for them.

This is our world right now, and I must give P K Dick the credit he deserves for predicting this future. I love PK Dick and this is one of his most relevant works for today's society.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The war as media event, August 23, 2004

By	Doug Mackey (Fairfield, IA USA) - See all my reviews

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.