The Simulacra (S.F. MASTERWORKS)
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Product Description
Book Description
A prescient tale of political satire set in a near future America by a master of the genre.
Product Description
A few years from now the President of the USA will be an android and his entire government a fraud. Everyone in the country is maladjusted. Doesn't seem possible, does it? Welcome to the world of Dr. Superb, the sole remaining psychotherapist. Philip K. Dick tells a story of desperate love, lethal body odour and an attempted fascistic takeover of the USA and shows that there is always another layer of conspiracy beneath the one we see.
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First Sentence
The interoffice memo at Electronic Musical Enterprise frightened Nat Flieger and he did not know why. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The interoffice memo at Electronic Musical Enterprise frightened Nat Flieger and he did not know why. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Simulacra is not one of Dicks very best science fiction novels, it is not on a par with, say, "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldricht", or "A Scanner Darkly". It is however very very good and bares many of the marks of classic Dick. Like "Do Android Dream..." it features a band of semi-pathetic characters who deep down want to leave Earth like everyone else and start a new life on a Martian colony but for whatever reason they can't seem to do it. Most of these characters are under the care of Dr. Egon Superb (as usual Dick's characters have the best names in fiction) who is the last psychologist on Earth, who serves as a device to link together the various different plot strands. Like many good Dick books, the first couple of chapters can be a little dizzying as you get acclimatised to the world and characters he is writing about. This deals very much with the shifting nature of reality, what is real, what isn't real and does it even really matter? For example one of the main characters Richard Kongrosian is the worlds most famous classical concert pianist but he never physicaly touches the keyboard, he projects the music into the audiences mind. The great thing about the book really isn't the plot or themes but the qreat quality of the writing. He wrote quickly often with the aid of prescribed anphetamines and it really shows. His sentences and paragraphs have a real verve, momentum, and plain weirdness unlike anyone (with the exception maybe of Hunter S. Thompson). This does seem to mean that his novels don't end so much as crash, often unravelling spectacularly but sometimes a little unsatisfactorily. In summing up I'd say this is definately a book you should get round to reading but if you are new to Dick (hee hee hee) then I'd recommend starting with A Scanner Darkly. Oh as a little adjunct if you are really into Dick (hee hee hee) I'd really recommend Carrere's biography "I am alive and you are dead" it is one of the best biographies I have ever read.
Keep on Pushing and Increase the Peace
Keep on Pushing and Increase the Peace
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
This is a message to the publishers not just of this book but of several other Kindle editions:
If you are going to charge us for Kindle editions then at least have the courtesy to employ someone to read the Kindle book at least once to remove all of the stupid and obvious typos and misprints and absurd "predictive text" type substitutions of the wrong word that are generated by the (apparently) automatic scanning of the print edition into the electronic Kindle edition.
If you are going to charge us for Kindle editions then at least have the courtesy to employ someone to read the Kindle book at least once to remove all of the stupid and obvious typos and misprints and absurd "predictive text" type substitutions of the wrong word that are generated by the (apparently) automatic scanning of the print edition into the electronic Kindle edition.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Simulacra is a good novel that goes quite well with The Penultimate Truth. It has all the hallmarks of a PKD book; a middle-aged loser everyman as its main protagonist; rampant paranoia; and layers of truth that are gradually unfolded. I enjoyed this book because it depicts a totalitarian future threatened by neo-Nazis told through the eyes of each character. We never get bogged down with the politics too much but rather we see the implications such changes have upon the people.
This now completes the Masterworks’ current run of Philip K. Dick and am proud that I have read them all (11, I think). I will say that the blurb on many of these books is true: he was the most consistently brilliant SF writer about. He had his masterpieces but it’s his average books that elevate him to greatness and I can only think of Robert Silverberg as a rival of both quality and quantity.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great novel, bad edition
I am half-way through reading what is already turning out to be classic Philip K Dick fare. However, the edge has been taken off my enjoyment of the book by the numerous typos and... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Stevoid
A Fine PKD Novel
"A few years from now the President of the USA will be an android and his entire government a fraud. Everyone in the country is maladjusted. Doesn't seem possible, does it? Read more
Published 14 months ago by M. D. Jenkins
Decent but disappointing for PKD
This one is firmly in the middle ground of PKD's wide repertoire. It's certainly not one of his few really awful SF novels. Read more
Published on 11 Sep 2006 by Ronan Keane
Visions and Nightmares: Dick and Baudrillard
The Simulacra, put quite simply, is a triumph of maddening hysteria taken to its fatal and ultimate conclusion. Read more
Published on 27 May 2005
A vivid scary vision
Philip Dick close to the peak of his visionary talent though this sometimes makes it difficult to follow exactly what is happening to the characters. Read more
Published on 22 Aug 2002
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