- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (9 Oct 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0575074574
- ISBN-13: 978-0575074576
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 1.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 895,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The World Jones Made (Gollancz S.F.)
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Product Description
Book Description
A prophetic and unsettling chronicle detailing the rise and fall of a post-nuclear messiah, by the author of BLADE RUNNER and MINORITY REPORT.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Floyd Jones is sullen, ungainly and quite possibly mad, but he really can see exactly one year into the future. And this talent means that in a very short time he rises from being a disgruntled carnival fortune-teller to convulse an entire planet. For Jones becomes a demagogue, whipping up the ideal-starved population into a frenzy against the threat of the 'drifters' , enormous single-cell protoplasms that may be landing on Earth soon. But, in a world of engineered mutants, hermaphrodite sex performers in drug-fuelled nightclubs, Jones is a tragic messiah. His limited precognition renders him helpless because he cannot bring himself to fight against what he knows will happen . . .
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The temperature of the Refuge varied from 99 degrees Fahrenheit to 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Read the first page
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The temperature of the Refuge varied from 99 degrees Fahrenheit to 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this early SF-novel we get to follow a crippled psychic, mr Jones, with the power (and curse) of predicting the future. Jones organises a mass-movement against some harmless race of alien amoebas, partly serving as a pretext to seize power from the government, partly because of misguided paranoia and partly as a biologistic way to define himself as more "human" than he really is. The novel deals with the psychological aspect between this Jones fellow and his main counterpart, a government official. The novel is quite linear, though, without PKD's usual multifocal perspectives, parallell stories, time paradoxes, breakdown of illusory realities and artificial sentients who challenge our view of what constitutes humanity. If you're not a fan, choose some other novel.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This novel is set in an America where voicing any subjective opinion is a crime. "Fed-Gov" agents enforce the law by arresting people who make comments that cannot possibly be true, such as "a dog is a man's best fried". Perpetrators are quickly sent to forced labour camps. We learn that this repressive and draconian society has developed in the wake of a cataclysmic war. Its citizens have quietly accepted it as the price of peace. Enter Floyd Jones, a circus freak who has the ability to see events happening one year in the future. He sees the extra-terrestrial problems that the Earth will encounter as it sends ships to other solar systems and he also knows how to deal with the strange creatures that are beginning to land on the Earth's surface. He knows that repression will not solve the Earth's problems and that consequently its people can be free again. He knows how and when he will die and even what happens for the 365 days after his death.
This book tells the story of how Jones rises from circus fortune-teller to absolute dictator. To a people overburdened by repression and beset by an unknown menace from another planet, the all-knowing Jones is feted as a saviour. Eventually the cult of his own personality risks destroying the lives of the people he governs. Dick wrote this story in 1956 and did not look far for inspiration; he does not attempt to hide the echoes of Hitler and Stalin. But this early novel shows Dick's trademark skill at characterisation (Jones' descent into his own paranoia and psychosis is well drawn) and his fascination with illogical, quirky situations (how do you assassinate someone who knows you are coming?).
As is common with many of Dick's post-apocalyptic societies, we never really discover what happened to create the police-state in which the book's action happens. Neither does Dick really explain why Jones receives such popular support, but that seems to emphasise Dick's point that demagogues can gain power simply by feeding off and manipulating subconscious anxieties. Some plot strands feel disjointed. For example, one such element concerns a potential next leap in mankind's evolution; one senses Dick could have (or may have wanted to) make more out of that particular sub-plot. Some of Dick's very early novels were altered by his publisher to make them more commercial, often without Dicks consent, and this book is probably a victim of that: some plot strands are neatly tidied up, others just fall away. But this is still an entertaining read, if not as complex or rich in ideas as his best work, and well worth looking at.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is one of PKD's earlier works and lacks some of the mad unsettling reality trip down satan's brain cell kind of approaches. It centres on Floyd Jones, a "precog" with a limited talent enabling him to see exactly one year into the future. The description and zeal of this talent is amazing, it's not visionary as such but Floyd Jones lives two lives simultaneously, one in the here and and now and the other exactly a year in the future. All the character traits of Floyd Jones, being egotistical, anti-authoritarian and visualizing himself as as the people's choice can only lead to one dramatic conclusion to this story - this is a book you won't be able to put down.
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