Customer Reviews

The simulacra

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a grab bag of almost all the themes and character types found in Dick's other novels written in the early 60s. Everything is here: a repressive police state, a ruling elite in conflict with huge cartels, a charismatic cult leader, a fascinating and ruthless woman, time travel, psychic powers, Nazis, androids, emigration to Mars, and mind-manipulating media and simulacra. It shows that the way society appears to be structured is a complete fake, and that media manipulation conceals the real centers of power. Dick crowds more characters and different points of view into the anarchic pages of pages of this novel than in any of his other books. But it does not seem to go anywhere: it is a plunge into the deeper waters of Dick's universe, but without any clear re-emergence into the air. The energy is more frenetic than transformative. Such a tour de force lacks the impact of Dick's major works, though it is a dazzling ride. It's pure PKD.

"The Simulacra" is probably the most convoluted, mystifying--and potentially dangerous--political thriller ever penned. With his trademark ear for dialogue and sensitivity to human foibles, Dick eviscerates authority in all of its guises, revealing levels of curruption and secrecy so vast and complex they transcend the comical. Along with such masterpieces as "Radio Free Albemuth" and "Time Out of Joint," "The Simulacra" is one of Dick's most effective conspiracy yarns, written with irony, insight and humor. As usual, Dick excels at evoking a world where nothing is as it seems and truth is the rarest of commodities. Vintage's reissue of this scathing novel couldn't have come at a better time.

The first half of this book introduces a slew of bizarre story situations and ideas, but unfortunately none of them really gets fleshed out to my satisfaction.

The most interesting to me was the composer who feels he's steadily disappearing and converting into a foul smell. I was never completely sure if he was making this all up in his mind or if it was really happening to him. He spends most of his time in the book trying to contact the one remaining psychologist on earth; and the dwindling psychologist problem is another intriguing idea that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Ditto for the Nazi official who's brought forward in time, I forget to what purpose. The same for the Mars-colonization supplier that specializes in lifelike robots that function as your friendly neighbors for those lonely, desolate Martian locations (just a little reminiscent of the "Perky Pat" episode from PALMER ELDTRITCH, although this story never really gets off the Earth). And the papoolas, what was the point there?

Although most of Dick's novels have a lot of humor in them, this one seems to take nothing seriously. It's difficult to get involved with the characters. Everything that happens seems like a joke. The novel has several interesting scenes, but the work as a whole is not one of Dick's better efforts.

OK, I love Phillip K. Dick, even when I don't understand him
Simulacra is one of those books you can read many times and every time explore a new avenue. Dick is one of the rare authors whose works are so complicated, so many tangents, yet always a good story. Science Fiction for the thinking person.

Nichole Thibodeaux is the First Lady who through her Martha Stewert type personality has remained in control of the government for over 70 years with daily White House television shows that have transfixed a nation conditioned by automatic advertisements that have the ability of thought control, meaning that the last line of defense, Dr. Superb, a psychotherapist, must try to maintain his capicity in society, even though his business has been outlawed by drug companies like A.G Chemie, who sponsor the mind control adverts and influence the government who have a time machine and are able to control the future somewhat except for the precogs in society who can tilt the balance.

There is no hope left for humanity in a world that is becoming ever maladjusted to the electronic conditioning, their love for Nichole and conforming to what she likes, except to grab a Loony Luke Jalopy and head off for mars for an alternative life. Luke has a sales papoola, a synthetic man made alien lifeform from mars that can influence people to like whatever the owners wants. One of Lukes workers steals the papoola to impress Nichole at the White House only to uncover a sinister plot where all is not as it seems and the Presidential executive all might be actors and Simulacra robots.

A secret policeman ND, Pembroke, has allowed Dr. Superb to work as a psychotherapist, so that he will meet someone who the doctor will fail to treat, as the time machine Lessinger apparatus predicted, unless the person seeks chemical treatment from A.G Chemie, become cured, and put the whole fabric of society in jeopardy. While all this is happening special mutant musician, Richard Kongrosian, who can play the keyboard with his mind, is having an emotional breakdown and believes he is becoming both invisible and smelly, only to start finding out things about himself that makes the government afraid of him.

Philip K. Dick conjures a frightening realistic world where people adore leaders based on image, are afraid to think outside of the norm or else are reduced in status... while living in a time where entertainment, coporate drugs companies and shadow governments control the world... all written back in 1964... over thirty years ago... and more is relevant than ever today.

The Simulacra is strong on dialogue given that this is one of his Philip K. Dicks early works. There are references to characters in his award winning book The Man in the High Castle with the same sort of everything comes home type of surreal adventure... the endings are both somewhat similar, although The Simulacra has a much more black humerious one.

Like we have said, given the current times, this book stands out as more important than ever. Sci Fi comes true yet again. This book is listed as number 57 in science fiction masteroworks released by Orion publishers. I recommend if new to Dick that you start with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Man in the High Castle, Ubik and then this one. I will be moving onto Clans of Alphane Moon next. See you for a review there.

Fueled by prescription amphetamines, and in a burst of creative effort rarely seen before or since in the sci-fi field, cult author Philip K. Dick, in the period 1963-64, wrote no less than six full-length novels. His 13th since 1955, "The Simulacra," was originally released as an Ace paperback in 1964 with a cover price of 40 cents. The book, written in Dick's best middle-period style, gives us a pretty whacky look at life in the mid-21st century. David Pringle, in his "Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction," aptly describes the work as "an overpopulated novel which flies off wildly in too many directions," and indeed, readers may need a flowchart to keep track with this one. According to my careful count, the book features no less than 56 named characters (not to mention several unnamed), and the manner in which Dick interweaves their stories in an ingenious manner is one of the book's main strengths.

In the crazy world that Dick depicts, the U.S. and Germany have merged to become the U.S.E.A.; the country is in awestruck love of First Lady Nicole Thibodeaux, who has somehow remained ageless for her 73 years in office (a character most likely based on then-First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy); giant drug and simulacra (think: robots identical to humans) cartels hold almost limitless power; northern California has turned into a "chupper"- (think: radiation mutant) filled rain forest as a result of atomic war; and the government is able to make use of the von Lessinger principle to travel backward and forward in time. Against this backdrop, Dick introduces us to some of his sympathetic "little people" with big problems. Dr. Egon Superb, the world's last practicing therapist, wonders why he alone has been allowed to continue, when all other practitioners have been outlawed. Brothers Vince and Chic Strikerock, employed at rival simulacrum companies, become caught up in a love triangle and government plots. Richard Kongrosian, a psychokinetic pianist on the verge of psychotic collapse, worries about his turning invisible, as well as his "phobic body odor." Nat Flieger, a record company exec, travels to northern California to record Kongrosian and observes the chupper community there. Bertold Goltz, street agitator and time-traveling radical, attempts to bring the government down. Ian Duncan and Al Miller, with their classical-music jug-band act, finagle a way to perform before the First Lady in the White House. And, in a sadly underdeveloped subplot, Nazi bigwig Hermann Goering is brought forward 100 years in an attempt to alter history. Somehow, Dick manages to keep all these story lines percolating and interweaving, throwing out interesting bits of speculation and background color along the way, such as insectlike advertisements that burrow into cars and homes to spread their annoying messages, and a machine to which penitant folks offers confessions (the "confessionator") that is more like a lie detector than anything else. The author's pet themes of deceitful governments, the real truth behind the apparent truth ("What's unreal and what's real?" Ian asks succinctly at one point, neatly summarizing just about the entire Dick oeuvre!), and the dubious merits of drugs are given major play here, and some of the author's pet passions, such as classical music (Dick, it should be remembered, managed a record store and programmed a classical music program for the radio in the early '50s) and cigars (a good dozen or so cigars are referred to by name throughout the novel), are strongly represented. Good as it is, "The Simulacra" is not a perfect work. Ultimately, the plottings of Goltz and of National Police head Wilder Pembroke are convoluted to the point of being impossible to fathom, several characters just kind of peter out (such as Israeli P.M. Emil Stark and "conapt" resident Edgar Stone), and the novel doesn't so much wrap up neatly as abruptly come to an end. Dick could easily have kept the multiple plot threads weaving for another few hundred pages here, had he so chosen, or written a nice sequel (a common temptation for most sci-fi authors, and one to which Dick never succumbed). Still, the book is compulsively readable, often very funny, endlessly imaginative and, in all, a real hoot. It has also managed to provide me with a line that may become my new catchphrase: "How are you going to work...that into your Weltanschauung?"

Philip K. Dick is my favorite science fiction author, a writer who transceneds that label. I have read all of his short stories and 15 of his novels. As an author, he was unafraid to go where others wouldn't, to use his own illnesses and foibles as the basis for many of his works. I even introduced my schizophrenic nephews to his work as a form of therapy, which they greatly enjoyed. That was before I read The Simulacra. Although I enjoyed some of this book, it has so many loose threads I could weave a blanket. Characters are introduced and we follow them to a certain point and then they simply disappear. Much is made of the time travel device but it is merely used as a simplistic plot gimmick. And why all the fuss over bringing back Herman Goerring just to shoot him because he wasn't Hitler? My biggest objection is that Nicole is portrayed as the leader of the USEA but it turns out that she is just a puppet of a ruling board of governors - so how does she have any real power to do some of the things she does before this piece of trivia is revealed to us? The "plot" is all over the place, and the final chapter in Jenner, introducing yet another blind alley with the Chuppers, just doesn't fit in with anything before it. I honestly feel that there are at least three different novels going on here and if any of them had been fully developed they would be much better than this hybrid. Even the title is misleading because this work has little to do with the simulacra that is the actual President or the simulacara that are manufactured for Mars. Although it is a weak entry in my Philip K. Dick collection, it still has his great dialog, offbeat characters, and humorous asides. It's not a bad book, it just isn't up to his usual standard. When it comes down to it, however, the money would be better spent on Flow My Tears The Policman Said or The Man In The High Castle for works that handle similar themes with greater artistry.

Published originally in 1964, Philip K. Dick's "The Simulacra" is a giddy dark satire on the evils of American commercialism and politics, as seen through his singularly peculiar take on androids and time travel. It's a hysterical exploration on the excesses of market capitalism and conservative politics cloaked in a near future novel set in a United States of Europe and America. Here Dick also makes some sly commentary on political cults of personality; witty lessons which current American voters eager to elect a Messiah should ponder. Dick's mid 21st Century America is one that will resonate with readers awash in a commercially-oriented, media-driven culture, even with its casual references to alien life and psychotherapy. While "The Simulacra" is not as much a literary classic as "A Scanner Darkly", "The Man in the High Castle", "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", it is still an important early example of Dick's work, and one quite worthy of a wide readership.

In the first place, I can't for the life of me figure out why this book is called "The Simulacra". It has simulacra in it, all right. Two or three of them appear onstage for a few pages each, and that's it. Philip K. Dick didn't usually pick his own titles; whoever picked this one did a lousy job.

Poor title notwithstanding, there's a lot to like in this novel. For instance, it's got a lot of interesting material in it about German culture; PKD himself was of German ancestry, and sometimes dealt with both German and Nazi history in his work. "The Simulacra" delves into those notions more deeply than most of his other novels. Like some of his other novels, though, this one picks up the theme and then drops it for no discernable reason. Frustration.

Similarly, the rest of the good ideas here fizzle out in the last chapter or even before. The sheer volume of invention, though, impresses no end. Other authors could make entire novels out of flying commercials that force their way into your car and ask if you're worried about body odor. Or a telekinetic concert pianist, so neurotic he can barely speak on the phone. Or a system of government where the voters elect a new husband for the First Lady every few years while the First Lady herself remains in office. Or flying used-rocket lots that use a telepathic Martian life-form to entice you into buying. Or a group of Neanderthals waiting in the swampy remains of northern California for humanity to destroy itself. Or a national artistic life based on local talent shows, hosted by individual apartment blocks that send the winners to the White House to appear on television. And on and on and ON. PKD was a genuine phenomenon who could afford to toss off amazing notions like these. I wish he hadn't - they're too good to waste.

What's more, all this excess does some serious damage to the novel's plotline. There's so much happening it's almost impossible to determine what you're supposed to concentrate on. PKD often walked the fine line between stuffing his work full of characters and plot points and ideas on the one hand, and giving his readers one particular protagonist and his or her story to get involved with on the other. In "The Simulacra," he finally stumbled right over that line.

And here's an interesting little detail - unlike a lot of his best work, this novel begins and ends in the same place with the same characters. Most of the novel takes place in Chicago and in Washington DC, but the opening and closing take place some distance north of San Francisco, where a group of otherwise unimportant characters have traveled to record that neurotic pianist. It's almost as if, by bringing "The Simulacra" around to its starting point at the end, PKD was trying to impose some structure on this stew. It didn't work.

I'm going to try to summarize the plot, but I'm warning you, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

America and Germany seem to have merged, and although everyone in government is very concerned about repeating the mistakes of the Nazi era, it's still an oppressive dictatorship disguised as a democracy. The only escape is either emigration to Mars, by means of those jalopy rockets, or getting through one of those talent shows and appearing at the White House on a televised exhibition. One thereupon enters into the upper echelons of society by learning all of its secrets, which I won't go into so you can learn them for yourself. Suffice to say that there are quite a few.

Okay, the psychokinetic neurotic pianist is one such in-the-know type. Another is the sergeant-at arms of one of those talent-show-producing apartment houses, a guy named Vince Strikerock. His brother Chic is not in the know - he's a salesman for a small firm that produces simulacra to act as neighbors for emigrants to Mars. Vince's wife has just moved in with Chic. Another apartment dweller, Ian Duncan, longs to make it to the White House and convinces his former musical partner, Al Miller, to work up their act and try again. Al, who sells jalopy rockets, is reluctant, but the two of them get out their jugs and start practicing the classical repertoire (that's their act, honestly).

Let's see, meantime the First Lady, whose name is Nichole and has been in office for seventy-odd years but still looks young and beautiful, is considering using her time-machine equipment to retrieve Hermann Goering from the past and convincing him to break off the Holocaust in exchange for military help. There's a guy named Berthold Goltz, a Jew who leads an anti-government movement called the Sons of Job for some reason, who thinks negotiating with Goering is a lousy idea and uses time-travel equipment of his own, not to go back and intervene directly, but to pop up at the White House whenever he wants to complain.

And in the meanwhile...

Oh heck, we're less than a quarter of the way in and I'm already lost. Reading "The Simulacra" is a little like playing with a big bowl of pretty pebbles; it's fun, but kind of pointless. Considering how very pretty these pebbles are, this is more upsetting than it otherwise would be.

In the year he wrote "The Simulacra", PKD went on to write "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch". Now, that's a classic. I'm not sure what happened to him here, but thankfully it wasn't permanent. With all due respect, it seems like his brain was burned out at the time he wrote this. Maybe he had to use a simulacrum to write it for him. Maybe that explains the title. (Like how I came full circle on that one?)

Benshlomo says, Everyone gets a brain freeze occasionally.

I've read a host of Philip K Dick novels in my time, and have for the most part found them profoundly troubling, extremely original yet for the most part bitty and incomplete. The Simulacra, on the other hand, brings out all the classic Dickean themes -- paranoia, totalitarianism, alternative universes, etc. -- and wraps them beautifully in a coherent and finished work. The cartels and the Chuppers -- with the themes they bring up -- are particularly satisfying. Read it, and contemplate a reranking of Dick's novels.