![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Or as fast as I need to, and that’s fast enough, really.
Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is Philip K Dick’s first novel, published in 1955, and it’s obvious from the start he was already thinking in terms of Big Concepts about control. Set in 2203, the story’s premise centres around the idea that the solar system is governed on a Minimax system of statistics and percentages, and people are employed by swearing loyalty to organizations based on their status classifications. The leader – whose title for some reason is Quizmaster – is chosen from the populace by random draw. Meanwhile, largely for entertainment purposes, another person is chosen at random to assassinate the Quizmaster, and they get the job if they succeed. So in essence, you’re Quizmaster for as long as you can stay alive, or until a new one is selected at random.
That’s the basic setting for a plot in which idealistic biochemist Ted Bentley loses his job and, tired of the corporate system, decides to swear loyalty to the current Quizmaster Reese Verrick – only to discover that Verrick knew he has just been replaced by a new Quizmaster, Leon Cartwright. Bentley resents the deception but is stuck helping Verrick’s team game the system to have their own assassin chosen to take out Cartwright. As it happens, their assassin has a secret advantage to defeat the army of telepaths whose job it is to protect the Quizmaster. Bentley has to decide whose side he’s really on – and how to survive the consequences of his decision.
As PKD novels go, this is pretty good in terms of the ideas he explores and the schemes by different players to manipulate what is supposed to be a random system, even though a lot goes underexplained, and the dialogue is typically clunky. The story is also saddled with a subplot involving the Preston Society, a cult (which Cartwright is a member of) that follows the writings of the late John Preston and sends a ship to find a legendary lost planet he claimed exists – which is interesting but seems superfluous to the main storyline. The highlight is the assassin plot, which is actually quite inventive, and the eventual resolution to the feud between Bentley, Verrick and Cartwright. PKD would go on to write better and worse novels, so in terms of quality, this sits fairly comfortably in the middle range of his output.
Psychedelic-40 by Louis Charbonneau
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is my second time reading Louis Charbonneau, after No Place on Earth, which was flawed but alright. Published in 1965 and set in 1993, this novel’s jacket blurb describes it as a “frighteningly prophetic novel of the USA under the rule of irresponsible, power-mad politicos”. Which, it turns out, is nowhere close to accurate. But it IS about a powerful (and legal) drug syndicate that traffics PSI-40, a drug that gives most people transcendental serenity, but for some people (namely, the “Specials” who run the Syndicate), it gives them superior psionic powers, including the ability to read and control minds.
Syndicate agent Jon Rand is a Sensitive – someone who gets limited (but not Special-grade) psionic powers from PSI-40 – who is sent on a mission to find and kill Kemp Johnson, an outlaw Special believed to be in Baja working with an anti-Syndicate group trying to stop distribution of PSI-40. Rand goes to Baja (which has been transformed into a tropical resort paradise by cheap salt-water conversion technology) and immediately someone tries to kill him. Is Johnson already onto him? Or is someone inside the Syndicate setting him up?
Plotwise, it almost reads like a James Bond novel, except there’s only one love interest, the mysterious Taina Erickson, who isn’t everything she seems, etc. I get the feeling Charbonneau was riffing off the panic over the growing popularity of LSD in American counterculture at the time, and imagining a future where LSD was used to control people and make America a nation of blissed-out dopers. Not exactly prophetic, but not a bad guess, considering this came out ten years before the CIA’s MKUltra programme became public knowledge. Like No Place on Earth, Charbonneau invests more effort in action than world-building to the novel’s detriment, but as pulp action yarns go, it’s pretty decent.
View all my reviews
Camping on acid,
This is dF
Solar Lottery by Philip K. DickMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is Philip K Dick’s first novel, published in 1955, and it’s obvious from the start he was already thinking in terms of Big Concepts about control. Set in 2203, the story’s premise centres around the idea that the solar system is governed on a Minimax system of statistics and percentages, and people are employed by swearing loyalty to organizations based on their status classifications. The leader – whose title for some reason is Quizmaster – is chosen from the populace by random draw. Meanwhile, largely for entertainment purposes, another person is chosen at random to assassinate the Quizmaster, and they get the job if they succeed. So in essence, you’re Quizmaster for as long as you can stay alive, or until a new one is selected at random.
That’s the basic setting for a plot in which idealistic biochemist Ted Bentley loses his job and, tired of the corporate system, decides to swear loyalty to the current Quizmaster Reese Verrick – only to discover that Verrick knew he has just been replaced by a new Quizmaster, Leon Cartwright. Bentley resents the deception but is stuck helping Verrick’s team game the system to have their own assassin chosen to take out Cartwright. As it happens, their assassin has a secret advantage to defeat the army of telepaths whose job it is to protect the Quizmaster. Bentley has to decide whose side he’s really on – and how to survive the consequences of his decision.
As PKD novels go, this is pretty good in terms of the ideas he explores and the schemes by different players to manipulate what is supposed to be a random system, even though a lot goes underexplained, and the dialogue is typically clunky. The story is also saddled with a subplot involving the Preston Society, a cult (which Cartwright is a member of) that follows the writings of the late John Preston and sends a ship to find a legendary lost planet he claimed exists – which is interesting but seems superfluous to the main storyline. The highlight is the assassin plot, which is actually quite inventive, and the eventual resolution to the feud between Bentley, Verrick and Cartwright. PKD would go on to write better and worse novels, so in terms of quality, this sits fairly comfortably in the middle range of his output.
Psychedelic-40 by Louis CharbonneauMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is my second time reading Louis Charbonneau, after No Place on Earth, which was flawed but alright. Published in 1965 and set in 1993, this novel’s jacket blurb describes it as a “frighteningly prophetic novel of the USA under the rule of irresponsible, power-mad politicos”. Which, it turns out, is nowhere close to accurate. But it IS about a powerful (and legal) drug syndicate that traffics PSI-40, a drug that gives most people transcendental serenity, but for some people (namely, the “Specials” who run the Syndicate), it gives them superior psionic powers, including the ability to read and control minds.
Syndicate agent Jon Rand is a Sensitive – someone who gets limited (but not Special-grade) psionic powers from PSI-40 – who is sent on a mission to find and kill Kemp Johnson, an outlaw Special believed to be in Baja working with an anti-Syndicate group trying to stop distribution of PSI-40. Rand goes to Baja (which has been transformed into a tropical resort paradise by cheap salt-water conversion technology) and immediately someone tries to kill him. Is Johnson already onto him? Or is someone inside the Syndicate setting him up?
Plotwise, it almost reads like a James Bond novel, except there’s only one love interest, the mysterious Taina Erickson, who isn’t everything she seems, etc. I get the feeling Charbonneau was riffing off the panic over the growing popularity of LSD in American counterculture at the time, and imagining a future where LSD was used to control people and make America a nation of blissed-out dopers. Not exactly prophetic, but not a bad guess, considering this came out ten years before the CIA’s MKUltra programme became public knowledge. Like No Place on Earth, Charbonneau invests more effort in action than world-building to the novel’s detriment, but as pulp action yarns go, it’s pretty decent.
View all my reviews
Camping on acid,
This is dF
