Review

“The Penultimate Truth” by Philip K. Dick is a book set in a post-apocalyptic world, in which humanity has to a large extent been placed underground in nuclear bomb-shelters to wait out the war. The life below ground is largely controlled by producing units for the war effort in order to ensure victory for one side. The only knowledge of the war effort is provided through frequent broadcasts by “the Protector”, a powerful leader that ensures that the production of units for the effort does not cease and the citizens of the bomb-shelters keep their heads down, so to speak.

The story is a tale of the struggle for power and control of the populace. It is a tale of life under a dictatorship in which the threat of total annihilation is always close at hand and how effective a tool such a threat is to controlling people. While the book itself feels like a dark and depressing read, it carries with it a quite hopeful note. All dictatorships come to an end, the big question is whether one dictator is just replaced with another.

For comparisons I must once again turn to “1984” by Orson Welles, which this very closely resembles. If one then combines “1984” with “Wool” by Hugh Howey, then you have “The Penultimate Truth”.

Score: 8/10

Philip K. Dick is one of the greatest Sci-Fi-writers. This particular book seems more clear-cut than other books I’ve read by him. It is definitely more political in style than some of his other works, but he does write exceedingly well. The notion of the book is quite scary and the particular way in which the world is controlled in this book is becoming increasingly likely with the emergence of generative AI in our society combined with the Internet. These two technologies can in unison be misused to create and place a pebble upstream in the river of time and forever alter the future.

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