I finished this in 24 hours and it was a ridiculously amazing and verbose read. people always namecheck the dude for obvious reasons but his thought processes were definitely on some other shit. I feel like his world was based on a bad speed trip after reading Brave New World or 1984 or some other dystopian world book of the time (if there were any others) and period.
I also think that it’s pretty wild that these dudes future couldn’t go past the 20th century. none of them.
This was the first PKD book I ever read. I got hooked on these joints for a minute, I was reading 3-4 of them at the same time, which was a trip considering these story lines. Sometimes I’d get 2 or 3 of the plots confused and just get totally mindfucked.
As for the speed thoughts, yeah PKD was known to do some speed and bang out stories in 24-48 hours. Dude was questioning reality enough as it was, drugs just fueled his paranoia. There are a few of his books I want to revisit lately as I came across a stack when I was at my parents last.
Oh and old school sci fi covers are the look, especially foreign versions. There is a version of the ubik cover that inspired some old defjux comp which isn’t a surprise considering el’s small obsession with the dude at that time.
point is, more people need to check dude’s shit.