The Penultimate Truth Dick, Philip K.

In the future, most of humanity lives in massive underground bunkers, producing weapons for the nuclear war they''ve fled. Constantly bombarded by patriotic propaganda, the citizens of these industrial "anthills" believe they are waiting for the day when the war will be over and they can return aboveground. But when Nick St. James, president of one anthill, makes an unauthorized trip to the surface, what he finds is more shocking than anything he has been told.

From the Publisher:

In the future, most of humanity lives in massive underground bunkers, producing weapons for the nuclear war they've fled. Constantly bombarded by patriotic propaganda, the citizens of these industrial "anthills" believe they are waiting for the day when the war will be over and they can return aboveground. But when Nick St. James, president of one anthill, makes an unauthorized trip to the surface, what he finds is more shocking than anything he has been told.

Annotation:
Originally published in 1964, Philip K. Dick's novel THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH rings with as much prescient truth 50 years later. Given the slow progress humanity has made since Dick imagined his futuristic world, this novel--dealing with political scams, the creeping influence of the military, and the repressive power struggles--will likely remain relevant for quite some time. And Dick's novel holds purely literary interest as well: In a richly imagined dystopian future, most humans conduct their daily existence underground, believing that World War III rages on the surface. Things are bleak above ground, but they are not exactly the way the political leaders would like their citizens to believe. When tank leader Nicholas St. James is assigned a mission that takes him to the surface, he discovers the truth, and his life changes forever.

Author Bio

Philip K. Dick

Generally regarded as one of the most important American science fiction writers, Philip Kindred Dick was one of a pair of twins born on December 16, 1928; both suffered from a series of physical and mental problems, which would kill Dick's sister, Jane Kindred, 41 days later, and would continue to plague him for the rest of his life. Exacerbated by a voluminous intake of amphetamines, his health continued to worsen as he produced an enormous body of work--nearly 50 novels and 115 short stories in the 29 years following his first published story at the age of 24 to his death from a stroke at the age of 53. Characterized by feelings of paranoia and underlying pessimism, his work includes the 1963 Hugo Award-winning THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE--an alternate history account of the post-World War II United States--THE CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST, loosely based on the breakup of his second marriage, and DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, which became the basis for the movie BLADE RUNNER. In 1974 he experienced what he referred to as a "mystical experience," which he spent the last nine years of his life exploring in an unfinished book called EXEGESIS. By the time he died, it had swollen to 8,000 pages. Though he is best known outside the science fiction community as having written the sources for the movies BLADE RUNNER and TOTAL RECALL, his work was instrumental in bringing about a radical shift in American science fiction, moving it away from the stereotypical space adventure, infusing it with explicit political content, and introducing psychological depth to the characters.

Product Attributes

Book Format:		Paperback
Number of Pages:		0256
Publisher:		Mariner Books

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The Penultimate Truth (Paperback)

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