The Simulacra

“… the story of an America where the whole government is a fraud and the President is an android.” Replace ‘android’ with ‘asshole’ and you would be describing America right now!

“All these years, Dr. Superb thought. We’ve worshipped a dummy. A being inert and devoid of life.”

A simulacrum is a fake version of something real. Like the current president of the United States. Really, this couldn't be a timelier read! Who is the real power behind the thing we see on our screens? And why are we following it, some of us blindly? A very timely read indeed!

Part of the story takes place in Jenner, CA, which is close to where I live!
Big pharma getting psychologists banned from practicing... sounds like something they'd show more do...
Time machines
Jug playing
A papoola!
First Lady in charge - for 73 years! AND, Hermann Goering has been brought from the past to help her!

“I wonder if our society, our style of life, will survive this.” - something I myself think every day under president 47… show less

My reactions to this novel upon reading it in 1989 -- spoilers follow.

The worst Philip K. Dick novel I’ve read to date. It was obvious what Dick was trying to do. His main inspiration, I’ll wager, was William Manchester’s The Arms of Krupp (or, if not that specific book, the same historical topic). The book is inspired by the Nazi political structure, its various battling factions, and its industrialist underpinnings. Dick also speculated on the nature of media and psychology in American politics. The Magna Mater and simulacra are clearly themes derived from Dick’s earlier work, We Can Build You.

But Dick produces a wandering plot with a real conflict introduced only about half way through the story and one of Dick’s show more notoriously ambivalent endings; this one is very reminiscent of Dick’s The Penultimate Truth. Surprisingly enough, Dick doesn’t even produce any memorable characters and few memorable scenes (the best and funniest one involving talking, alive, insect-like commercials). Nicole Thibodeux is little more than a straw figure and not fleshed out. Walter Penbroke is little more than a conniving, manipulative, Gestapo-like figure. Maury Frauenzimmer (A character with an almost identical name and business appears in We Can Build You.) and the other characters seem to be little more than collection of neuroses with the people from Electronic Music Enterprises being particularly superfluous (Molly Dondolo and Julie not even being fully realized versions of Dick’s rapacious women).

Dick’s society and political machinations are absurd. The idea of the President becoming a straw figure and the First Lady becoming a media image and Fuhrer image was interesting. But Dick completely mishandled it with a hodgepodge plot -- Goltz’s secret coven of leaders, the constant use of time travel equipment, and the development of the peculiar political system is very unbelievable. In the hands of, say, Norman Spinrad it would have been much better done. show less

I'm really digging Philip K Dick lately. The Simulacra has a lot of different layers and seems to be a commentary about the illusory underpinnings of the culture in which we live. Seems to suggest that the structure on which we base our lives and which we find vitally important may be a construct. Not just an organic construct, a gradual building up of the system as we know it by generations of individual actions and an unwritten social contract, but an intentional construct devised by individuals for the purpose of controlling the masses and maintaining their own power. This book explores what happens when those in power learn they really aren't and the reality on which we all depend crumbles. When I put it that way, it sounds a little show more bleak. But I actually found it somewhat hopeful. show less

I barely know how to rate this one. All the right elements are here and it is full of interesting ideas. But it’s Philip K. Dick writing it, so the end result is a disjointed mess of a story which adds no weight to the concepts it explores. Nor are there any deep, engaging or unique characters to follow.

Putting aside his well documented personal problems, you can feel he wants to explore what he perceives as realities beyond the veil, but like in every other PKD I’ve read (this being my seventh), he simply lacked the ability to do so. And here is a perfect example of him trying to connect random, disconnected situations without really making any sort of point along the way. I really wanted to like this one just because of certain show more things he was grasping at - the false government, the OCD sufferer, the fascist takeover - but none are explored intelligently and circumstances seem to move around without direction.

It does at least eerily echo today’s political circus, but there’s little else here of value. Genuinely one of the most overrated writers that has ever existed. show less

I am not, I will happily admit, a fan of Dick’s books, and the only reason I read this one is because it’s in the SF Masterworks series (and the series has way too many books by Dick in it, as well). I find his novels slapdash, the good ideas wasted on haphazard plots and inconsistent settings. In this one, the US and Germany have formed the USEA, the president is a simulacrum (although only those in the know, er, know it), and the country is effectively ruled by the First Lady. There are also colonists on Mars, and roadside spaceship dealers who sell craft capable of reaching the Red Planet to those wishing to emigrate. The dealers are apparently mobile and unregulated. The novel opens with all psychotherapists, except one, being show more banned from practising. And that one is needed to treat a psychokinetic pianist who is a favourite of the First Lady. Meanwhile, the current president, or the der Alte (“the” and “der” are tautologous), is about the be retired and a new one built–but this time by a small firm and not a large German cartel. There’s also the Sons of Job, which seems to be a weirdly inoffensive neo-nazi popular movement, whose leader has access to a time-travel device. As indeed do the upper echelons of the USEA. A handful of ordinary people sort of bounce around the US–well, California and Washington, DC–stumbling into various plots and conspiracies, and so bringing everything crashing down to a somewhat abrupt end. And that’s it. A pretty fast read, and mildly amusing, but certainly not a Masterwork and not even one of Dick’s better books. show less

Philip K Dick - The Simulacra
Philip K Dick at his most weird and wonderful, but weird and wonderful even in science fiction stories doesn't always provide a coherent novel. I read about a third of this novel and put it aside for a few days and when I picked it up again I realised I had not much of a clue to the storyline and so I started again. It made a little more sense the second time round but when I got to the unread part of the book I soon became lost again. I ploughed on through realising it would be fairly pointless to get to grips with the plot. There are so many science fiction themes crammed into this short novel: time travel, alternate time lines, colonies on mars, robots as simulacrum, use of new technologies, telekinesis, show more mutants, throwbacks, post nuclear devastation that the many characters struggle to make much of an impact and seem as confused by events as I became.

Trying to summarise the plot would be a pointless exercise even if I was capable of doing it. Its all a bit of a mess, but it is a Philip K Dick mess shot through with interesting ideas and lots of silliness. 3 stars. (It is another Philip K Dick novel from the SF Masterwork series). show less

Classic science fiction published in 1964 in which the government has a simulacrum as a figurehead. It tells a story of maintaining control through sustaining the status quo and limiting access to information. It is quite forward-thinking for its time of publication, anticipating the equivalent of video chat, increased roles for women, environmental degradation, self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and machines that are mixtures of the biological and the mechanical.

This book in particular explores the idea that the status quo will be maintained until it falls into complete disorganization. The author applies scientific principles to social systems and plays with them in interesting ways. It also anticipates a social show more stratification based on access to information. The “Bes” are basically at the lowest access level. They only get carefully edited information based on officially approved broadcasts. The “Ges” are the highest level. They know precisely what is going on and they engage in power plays with each other to gain ultimate control over the government. Speaking of government, this future world has the United States of Europe and America (USEA), where Germany and other European countries have joined the US as a single conglomerate.

It includes an ability for people to escape the earth and live on Mars next to a family of simulacra neighbors, the capability of teleporting people from the past, laws outlawing the practices of mental health therapists, and a colony of modern Neanderthals living in the Pacific Northwest. It feels a bit fragmented at first, but once the puzzle pieces come together, it is quite compelling. I always find Philip K. Dick’s works creative and thought-provoking. show less