Now Wait for Last Year
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Average rating3.7
Now Wait for Last Year is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It is set in 2055, when Earth is caught between two galactic powers in an interstellar conflict. Dr. Eric Sweetscent and his wife Kathy get addicted to a powerful drug that appears to cause time travel. The doctor's patient is the world leader, UN Secretary General. Of the twenty-eight novels Dick published in the 1960s and 1970s, this novel is one of the five chosen to represent this period of his career in The Library of America series, Volume Two.
Dr. Eric Sweetscent has problems. His planet is enmeshed in an unwinnable war. His wife is lethally addicted to a drug that whips its users helplessly back and forth across time -- and is hell-bent on making Eric suffer along with her. And Sweetscent's newest patient is not only the most important man on the embattled planet Earth but quite possibly the sickest. For Secretary Gino Molinari has turned his mortal illness into an instrument of political policy -- and Eric cannot tell if his job is to make the Male better or to keep him poised just this side of death.Now Wait for Last fear bursts through the envelope between the impossible and the inevitable. Even as ushers us into a future that looks uncannily LIKE the present, it makes the normal seem terrifyingly provisional -- and compels anyone who reads it to wonder if he really knows what time it is.From the Trade Paperback edition.
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ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.
Earth is allied with the planet Lilistar against the alien Reegs. Gino Molinari, the leader of Earth???s forces, has just hired Eric Sweetscent as his personal physician. For his new job, Eric has to leave his wife Kathy, who has just become addicted to a new hallucinogenic drug. Eric is glad to leave, though, because he and Kathy aren???t getting along.
When Eric arrives at Gino Molinari???s side, he finds that the man has some strange health issues. At first Eric thinks Mr. Molinari is a paranoid hypochondriac until he discovers that he has survived numerous bouts of cancer. Soon there are other strange discoveries about Molinari???s health that baffle Dr. Sweetscent. When he finds out that the drug that Kathy???s hooked on came from off-world and causes its users to travel through time, he wonders if her drug addiction and Gino Molinari???s bizarre symptoms could be related. He also starts to wonder if Earth is on the wrong side of the war.
You never know what you???re going to get with a story by Philip K. Dick. Well, that???s not exactly true. You can almost certainly expect aliens, spaceships, robots, drug use, paranoia, bad marriages, time warps, alternate universes, and badly inaccurate psychology. What I mean is that PKD???s stories vary greatly in quality ??? some of them are incredibly clever and innovative, while others are almost painful to read. This may be because, according to biographers, Dick???s novels reflect his own unhappy life and his struggles with drugs, divorce, and mental illness.
Now Wait for Last Year (1966) is definitely one of the better ones. Eric Sweetscent is a complex character with complex problems for which there are no obvious solutions. A wrong move could endanger all of humanity! There???s mystery, whimsy, and humor here, too ??? the scenes with the talking taxis are funny (humorous situations with automatons are a familiar PKD element).
What stands out most, though, is that Now Wait for Last Year is an unusually emotional novel for Philip K. Dick. Eric deals with a whole spectrum of feelings toward his wife: grief, love, hate, treachery, anger, disgust, and pity. I actually dissolved into tears during the final scene of Now Wait for Last Year when the talking taxi gives Eric some beautiful advice.
I listened to Brilliance Audio???s version of Now Wait for Last Year. Luke Daniels performed it perfectly, as usual. I love old science fiction and I love audiobooks, so I absolutely adore Brilliance Audio for putting so much old science fiction on audio this year!
