The simulacra

What can I say about The Simulacra?
It's about a dystopian future where society is divided into two layers, the Be's and the Ge's. The Ge's are the ones in control, the ones who know the secret. The Be's are the lower class, much as the worker bees in a hive with the queen on top.

In this case Nicole Thibodeaux is that queen. She's a woman who doesn't seem to age and whose always the First Lady. Every four years the president changes, but it seems that with the post of ruling the USEA (I'll come to that) comes a marriage to Nicole as well.
It's for her that the Be's do what they do.

What about the USEA? It's not an America we know, but an alternate reality where the US and Germany have fused together.
There's more than that alone that makes this story quite chaotic.
Equipment to travel in time is available to the Ge's. Neanderthals have resurfaced. And flying to Mars is possible with home made rockets.
Oh and psycho-analysis is forbidden by law. Mental illness needs to be cured by drugs only.

Actually the USEA is ruled by a number of kartels, (AG Chemie, Karp Sohn und Werken,..) and how they face their own extinction.

Still, pretty chaotic. But I did like it, just the part about the influence of Germany is a bit too WWII for me. It's understandable, since the effects of the war had to be still omnipresent when this novel was written and I noticed this morbid fascination in other novels of him too.
I think you can compare it with the tendency of James Bond movies to make Russia the big bad evil during the cold war.
Germany is an easy villiain, surely when Philip K Dick wrote this novel.

The Man in the High Castle

It took me a while to finish this novel.
The reason was a leisurely one. I went to Norway for two weeks and this novel went along.
I thought I might finish this one and a couple more, because that’s what I normally do when I’m on holiday.
But traveling across Norway isn’t like traveling anywhere I’ve been before. I didn’t spend as much time reading as I had intended to. Not that I minded. Usually I was very tired from hiking that I didn’t spend more than half an hour reading each night.
I couldn’t even read in the car because if you aren’t using your eyes to soak up the Norwegian way of life and its scenery, you’re just plain stupid. And I actually saw people engrossed with their smartphones, instead of taking in the much needed raw nature Norway still possesses.

Not that everyone was appreciating this wonderful place as much as me and my husband. Norway wouldn’t bother my 4y old. Although she loved the hiking, and she did way more than I ever dreamt off, she wasn’t too keen to absorb the scenery. I can’t count how many times she watched the Fellowship of the Ring when we were on a car trip (and yes, traveling by car takes up a lot of time there, so much so that when we were travelling through Germany on our way back home going 160 felt crazy fast).

So, not a literary holiday, but one to remember and hopefully do again.
A few times I told my husband I wouldn’t probably finish even one book while I was there, but I managed just in the nick of time on the trip back to Oslo where we had to catch a boat.

The Man in the High Castle is a strange little novel. Very airy and philosophical and not one I could fully concentrate on giving my fatigued state each night.
Its topic is an alternate reality where Germany and Japan won WWII. Crazy, right? Opening the book, we’re already 20 years into this warped version of history with the world already divided between the Axis-powers. It takes place on the Japanese side of what formerly was the west side of the US.

I got to know a lot of characters, each with their personal lives and their own views on how the world should go on.
Each of the characters relies of some form of future telling.
Most of them are using the I Ching – an oracle book still very relevant today (I tried it myself online and was positively astonished) to guide them with life altering choices or even day to day peculiar events.
Another book the story revolves around is ‘The Grasshopper lies heavy’. This novel in a novel of which we don’t read a single page, but get its content through the eyes of the different characters, tells of another outcome of WWII where the allies won. Pretty much what we’ve got going right now. Of course this ‘true’ book is a little warped since The Man in the High Castle was written in the 60’s, during the cold war and the fear of communism.

Still, it was a fantastic way of seeing how our world could’ve been entirely different.
It might be a little more dystopian than I would’ve liked but if the Endlösung is possible, I believe anything can happen.

It’s been a few days since I’ve finished this novel and I had a lot of washing and cleaning to do since I got home, but I do remember the fluent, philosophical and by times tender use of language. It’s theme was very brutal, but the minds of each character had a tendency to portray its meaning in a very stylish and beautiful way. It felt almost like the birth of a red rose amidst a garbage island. So serene and tender and able to touch certain notes, more crude language would’ve never established.

It makes this novel hard to read, but even more so, worthwhile to read. I’m taking a wild guess, but I’m probably going to read this novel again someday when I’m not side-tracked with being a the most awesome country I’ve been to.

Scary, right?

The Skull

It's a short story, so expect a short review.
I've read books by Philip K. Dick before and they've been pretty awesome. Of course I read his most famous work (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Minority Report), both classics which have found their way onto the big screen.

The Skull is a little different, but you find that edge that Dick delivers in his novels. I don't like to read short stories, I avoid the collections if I can and only make exceptions for a few authors I really like.
Why?
Because I like to be caught up in a novel, I like to feel around in their world and get a glimpse of how they live their short lives. Short stories never live up to that expectation. It's like getting to know someone hours before they leave forever. Mostly it is just time consuming and pointless and even if you hit a gold one (back to novels) once in a while it hurts the more because you have to leave it so soon.

But enough about my opinion on short stories. I'm setting myself up to be negative again and that's not how I want this review to be perceived, because actually The Skull wasn't bad at all.
I'm talking about a story of 25 pages (really!) and it delivered what you needed from it.

You get to know Conger, who's a mercenary and he's being hired for a job. We're in future day and age, where there's only one Church, The Church, the only religion known in this book and as far as I can tell, the only one in this novel's universe.
This religion sprouted in the early sixties and that's where our mercenary is sent.
And with what?
Not a description, nor a name. He's sent back to the past with the skull of the guy he needs to eliminate before he can cause the ripple that's responsible for their current situation, to happen.

The story feels a little jaunted, a little malfunctioning, but it only adds to this mercenary's means to blend in a past world.
And he's in for a surprise when he finds out whose skull he's looking for.

All in all, a very entertaining short story, with some strong views from Dick himself.

War acted to reduce their numbers; like storms and earthquakes and droughts, it was nature's way of eliminating the unfit.

And with these last words, I say goodnight.

Another swimming pool read: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

The inspiration for Blade Runner. The movie Philip K. Dick, the author, just missed the release of. A movie I haven't seen up to this day, but now I have read the novel and I'm quite sure the movie never can match it, no matter how much of an icon it is.

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? we follow Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter to eliminate or 'retire' androids that have escaped from their owners, usually with them killing a few humans.
In this future, earth has been devastated by another World War, named Terminus and when the radioactive dust came to claim most of life on earth, people began to emigrate to other planets. Androids were then made to be of assistance to the people who went 'abroad'.

The novel starts out with Rick Deckard starting a day at work, although you already get a good glimpse of what a barren wasteland earth has become. There are no life wild animals left and for families it's almost required to care for at least one live animal, which cost quite a lot of money. Rick used to have a real sheep, but then it died and since he didn't have the money to buy a new animal, he replaced it with an electrical copy.
Also, moods can be altered in this dystopian view of the future. Rick and his wife own a Penfield unit which can make them feel however they want to be able to cope with another day on earth.

When Rick finally gets to his work, he hears that a fellow bounty hunter has been shot by an android and he has to finish the assignment.
Eight androids have escaped from Mars and he still has to retire 6 of them.
Because the androids are of the latest version made by the Rosen association, with an advanced intelligence, he first needs to verify that the testing equipment still is up to date.

All this is the premise to a very exciting story about human nature.
The main difference between humans and androids is empathy. We humans, are full of it, anyway most of us are. Androids don't have that capacity.
Rick is trying to get a hold of them, seeing if they are cold enough in their motives to be considered an android, while he struggles with his own issues. He becomes afraid he might have developed empathy for the androids, where he has always seen them as objects he needed to stop. While he reflects where that leaves him, trying to come clean with the religion of that day and age which is called Mercerism and is based on sharing your struggle and feelings with everyone around you, basically an empathic religion, the androids themselves have some devastating secrets to announce as well.

All in all a very well written novel that I enjoyed very much. Science fiction as it should be.

Review of The Minority Report

You may already know what I will tell, in that case none of it will be a surprise.
Isn't that a shame, really?

My first by Philip K. Dick, and what an introduction!

The story, as most of us already know of course from the blockbuster starring Tom Cruise, revolves around a system of Precrime where crimes are predicted and the culprits are being arrested and detained beforehand so the crime never happens.

Pretty awesome, right?
But look at it from this perspective. Let's say someone tells you you're going to kill someone next week, someone you don't even know. What would your response be? Would you meekly along and be imprisoned for something you haven't even done yet?

I don't think so.
Well, in this novel Philip K. Dick pulls you to either side of this argument and you'll be confused by the time you end this short story.

It's about a futuristic view on justice, but also about conspiracy and doing what needs to be done to protect what you believe in, which is of all times, isn't it?

Well, I found it a very progressive read. To the point, quick and quirky. I loved it and it's making me want more.
Maybe the fact that it's so short and concissive is what attracted me to the story in the first place? Who knows, I just think that Philip might have a new member to add to his parade.

It's even making me decide to chose another Sci-Fi book again. Third in a row.