(Another Facebook review)

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 The Simulacra (1964, USA), 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, 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 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 to 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 neo-nazi popular movement which no one finds offensive, 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 plans 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.