Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
DAW (1981), Paperback
Description
Earth is trapped in the crossfire of an unwinnable war between two alien civilizations. Its leader is perpetually on the verge of death. And on top of that, a new drug has just entered circulation -- a drug that haphazardly sends its users traveling through time. In an attempt to escape his doomed marriage, Dr. Eric Sweetscent becomes caught up in all of it. But he has questions: Is Earth on the right side of the war? Is he supposed to heal Earth's leader or keep him sick? And can he change the harrowing future that the drug has shown him?
User reviews
LibraryThing member ChrisRiesbeck
Like The Game-Players of Titan, this is set in a near future California where aliens have arrived and changed everyday life in significant ways. In this case, there are two sets of aliens -- the LiliStars who look just like us and the insectoid reeg. In a callout to Vietnam (the book was published
Highly recommended for Dick fans, but perhaps a bit advanced for those new to his fiction.
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in the mid 60's), the aliens are at war, and Earth has allied with the LiliStars, who are losing, and may be the bad guys. It wouldn't be Dick in the 60s without a hallucinogenic drug. No one did better than Dick at describing trips that cracked perceptions of reality and, in this case, time. And, as with The Game-Players, there's a highly dysfunctional marriage. There are some great encounters with Dick's surprisingly sympathetic talking cabs. There's even a trip to Mars, but it's the weakest part of the story, since we never see Mars, just a recreation of historical period of Earth. Like a chef, Dick was always experimenting with different ways to mix the same ingredients. The opening chapters looked like this would be one of his failed recipes, but things do settle down to an enjoyable action plot that eventually morphs into a nice discussion on personal responsibilities. Highly recommended for Dick fans, but perhaps a bit advanced for those new to his fiction.
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LibraryThing member roxy
This is the first novel by this author that I read… yes that only helps to show the incredible blanks in my SF culture. I also read somewhere that the author had a very particular style that didn’t appeal to all readers and that perhaps it would be better for one unfamiliar with Dick’s to
Eric Sweetscent is an artiforg doctor working at TF&D and trapped in a doomed marriage with a hot looking, cold hearted bitch. He’s responsible for the health of Mr. Ackerman himself who’s something over a 150 years old. The storyline takes place in 2055; Earth or Terra is the middle of war, on her side Lilistar (some long distant and more advanced cousins), opposite them the reegs who need a box to communicate with them. Gino Molinari is Terra’s Supreme leader, elected years before but his health is gradually deteriorating and so Eric is sent to Cheyenne in order to cure him… but the old man refuses artiforg and more than that when Eric consults his medical file, he’s confronted with questions and event he can’t find a rational explanation to. This gets further complicated when Terra realizes that she’s probably locked in the wrong war and against the wrong enemy… Freneksy and his ‘Starmen turn out to be much bigger threat than the reegs. On top of that, add a recently manufactured drug, JJ 180 which allows transport in time and you’ve got yourself an enthralling twisted and complex intrigue.
The author’s future is filled with robants, talking cabs and babylands on Mrs for those who can afford it… for example, Ackerman has a precise replica of 1935’s Washington which is where he grew up.
Anyway, Eric is the kind of hero unwillingly trapped into this huge adventure and everything he tries to do doesn’t always quite work out the way he had planned. If you like time travelling novels, you’ll definitely love this one and even you’re not used to the author’s style, like I was, you won’t get lost.
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start with other, more accessible novels such as Ubik or The Man in the High Castle. Far from stopping me, this statement, of course, only encouraged me to pick up the book and I didn’t put it down till I was done. Eric Sweetscent is an artiforg doctor working at TF&D and trapped in a doomed marriage with a hot looking, cold hearted bitch. He’s responsible for the health of Mr. Ackerman himself who’s something over a 150 years old. The storyline takes place in 2055; Earth or Terra is the middle of war, on her side Lilistar (some long distant and more advanced cousins), opposite them the reegs who need a box to communicate with them. Gino Molinari is Terra’s Supreme leader, elected years before but his health is gradually deteriorating and so Eric is sent to Cheyenne in order to cure him… but the old man refuses artiforg and more than that when Eric consults his medical file, he’s confronted with questions and event he can’t find a rational explanation to. This gets further complicated when Terra realizes that she’s probably locked in the wrong war and against the wrong enemy… Freneksy and his ‘Starmen turn out to be much bigger threat than the reegs. On top of that, add a recently manufactured drug, JJ 180 which allows transport in time and you’ve got yourself an enthralling twisted and complex intrigue.
The author’s future is filled with robants, talking cabs and babylands on Mrs for those who can afford it… for example, Ackerman has a precise replica of 1935’s Washington which is where he grew up.
Anyway, Eric is the kind of hero unwillingly trapped into this huge adventure and everything he tries to do doesn’t always quite work out the way he had planned. If you like time travelling novels, you’ll definitely love this one and even you’re not used to the author’s style, like I was, you won’t get lost.
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LibraryThing member ehines
Dick's books sometimes collapse under the weight of the conceptual elements he puts into play--futuristuc psychedelic drugs, time travel, alternative universes, aliens, dopplegangers, space colonies, ESP and more. This one has most of those elements, but manages to keep reasonably focussed. Though
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it all frays at the edges--there's too much concept and not enough development--the book works. Show Less
LibraryThing member iftyzaidi
Has many of the familiar PKD elements: reality-altering drugs, a faltering marriage, simulated realities, political conspiracy and talking taxis (seriously, talking taxis whose soulless electronic circuits seems to thrum with the wisdom of the ages seem to me to be a reoccurring PKD story element).
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Good stuff though I wouldn't rank it amongst my PKD favourites, perhaps because I'm coming to it when many of the elements are so familiar now? Show Less
LibraryThing member saroz
I've spent a day, basically, trying to determine what I make of this one. I read a lot of Philip K. Dick when I was in my late teens, and I specifically remember trying to read this one twice - and giving up before I got very far in at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure video evidence exists of me
Now Wait for Last Year was composed during PKD's incredibly prolific early '60s period, although it wasn't published until a little later. Strong books from the period include Martian Time-Slip, We Can Build You, and perhaps most especially, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Like most of his writing in the '60s, PKD is playing with fluid ideas of reality and time, the relationship between the hell of drug addiction and the excitement of an altered perception, the power of nostalgia, and of course, what it is to be human (and when it is that the humans, or good guys, are actually less human than the ones they abhor). They're big ideas, and that's what I always really enjoy about Philip K. Dick: this is not a man who kept his big ideas under wraps. He laid them out for everyone to see, even when they twitched and sputtered and were a little bit discomfiting.
And therefore I have to admit that I found this an uncomfortable book, for all its interesting qualities, and it's really down to one strand of the text. PKD is never somebody you can go to for totally fair depictions of relationships between men and women; women - especially wives - are often presented as shrews, as manipulators, or as enigmatic mystery desires. (I guess to his credit, PKD never pulled a Friday and tried to suggest he knew anything about a woman's mindset, so he was at least pretty honest in his misogyny.) Sometimes, these depictions are minor enough to fall away before the sheer grandiosity of his ideas; sometimes, they even benefit the plot, as with the cold and alien "andy," Pris, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, or the mysterious guide figure of Ella Runciter in Ubik. Here, though - ho boy. The toxic relationship between the main character, Dr. Eric Sweetscent, and his wife, Kathy, is the focus of the novel, and (unsurprisingly) while neither of them is a saint Kathy is undeniably worse. She is the woman scorned of every man's nightmares, and she revenges herself in ways that don't even befit a teenager. Other women glide in and out of the narrative, most of them shown to be manipulative, self-centered, and unsympathetic, with the possible exception of an actual teenage girl, Mary, who functions as the lover of the aged leader of Earth and one of the few competent - even world-weary - characters in the novel. I found myself wishing she had a bigger role, for no other reason than that she actually felt grounded. I think another author might have tried to use her as a sort of idealized surrogate for Kathy, or even a potential mistress for Eric. Not PKD, though. He hovers over a similar possibility late in the novel, and ultimately rejects it. The result feels very one-sided; there's a lot of worrying about Kathy, there's a lot of venom toward Kathy, and there's ultimately some acceptance of Kathy - a lot of it achieved through encounters with secondary characters. Kathy, though, remains an alternately pathetic and vicious representation of everything wrong with Eric's life.
It's hard to guess what was going on with PKD when he was writing this one. He was in the middle of the third of his five marriages; perhaps there's a clue in that he didn't publish Now Wait for Last Year until that marriage ended in divorce. And for those who think I'm barking up the wrong tree, it's clear from the final pages that he intended the reader to see Kathy and Eric's relationship as central to the novel. It's hard, though - since he abandons Kathy as a functional character midway through the narrative - to see the end result as anything other than very, very bitter. And that's my summation, really: Now Wait for Last Year leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. I enjoyed a lot of the ideas at play here, but it's probably not one I will revisit again. There are other, less uncomfortable PKD novels to be enjoyed.
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reading this book at community college. This time, more than a decade later, I decided to try it again as one of Brilliance Audio's rapidly-expanding range of PKD audiobooks - and although I finished it, and I can only applaud the performance of Luke Daniels, it's pretty obvious to me why it was a bit of a slog.Now Wait for Last Year was composed during PKD's incredibly prolific early '60s period, although it wasn't published until a little later. Strong books from the period include Martian Time-Slip, We Can Build You, and perhaps most especially, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Like most of his writing in the '60s, PKD is playing with fluid ideas of reality and time, the relationship between the hell of drug addiction and the excitement of an altered perception, the power of nostalgia, and of course, what it is to be human (and when it is that the humans, or good guys, are actually less human than the ones they abhor). They're big ideas, and that's what I always really enjoy about Philip K. Dick: this is not a man who kept his big ideas under wraps. He laid them out for everyone to see, even when they twitched and sputtered and were a little bit discomfiting.
And therefore I have to admit that I found this an uncomfortable book, for all its interesting qualities, and it's really down to one strand of the text. PKD is never somebody you can go to for totally fair depictions of relationships between men and women; women - especially wives - are often presented as shrews, as manipulators, or as enigmatic mystery desires. (I guess to his credit, PKD never pulled a Friday and tried to suggest he knew anything about a woman's mindset, so he was at least pretty honest in his misogyny.) Sometimes, these depictions are minor enough to fall away before the sheer grandiosity of his ideas; sometimes, they even benefit the plot, as with the cold and alien "andy," Pris, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, or the mysterious guide figure of Ella Runciter in Ubik. Here, though - ho boy. The toxic relationship between the main character, Dr. Eric Sweetscent, and his wife, Kathy, is the focus of the novel, and (unsurprisingly) while neither of them is a saint Kathy is undeniably worse. She is the woman scorned of every man's nightmares, and she revenges herself in ways that don't even befit a teenager. Other women glide in and out of the narrative, most of them shown to be manipulative, self-centered, and unsympathetic, with the possible exception of an actual teenage girl, Mary, who functions as the lover of the aged leader of Earth and one of the few competent - even world-weary - characters in the novel. I found myself wishing she had a bigger role, for no other reason than that she actually felt grounded. I think another author might have tried to use her as a sort of idealized surrogate for Kathy, or even a potential mistress for Eric. Not PKD, though. He hovers over a similar possibility late in the novel, and ultimately rejects it. The result feels very one-sided; there's a lot of worrying about Kathy, there's a lot of venom toward Kathy, and there's ultimately some acceptance of Kathy - a lot of it achieved through encounters with secondary characters. Kathy, though, remains an alternately pathetic and vicious representation of everything wrong with Eric's life.
It's hard to guess what was going on with PKD when he was writing this one. He was in the middle of the third of his five marriages; perhaps there's a clue in that he didn't publish Now Wait for Last Year until that marriage ended in divorce. And for those who think I'm barking up the wrong tree, it's clear from the final pages that he intended the reader to see Kathy and Eric's relationship as central to the novel. It's hard, though - since he abandons Kathy as a functional character midway through the narrative - to see the end result as anything other than very, very bitter. And that's my summation, really: Now Wait for Last Year leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. I enjoyed a lot of the ideas at play here, but it's probably not one I will revisit again. There are other, less uncomfortable PKD novels to be enjoyed.
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LibraryThing member write-review
Living in Different Times
Those old enough can recall the 1960s, specifically the mid 60s when the hallucinogenic LSD became the rage. The epicenter of the LSD era was in San Francisco, home to the Merry Pranksters and the first LSD lab, established by Owsley “Bear” Stanley, sound engineer for
Dick sets the novel in the near future, now nearly tomorrow for us. Earth is caught in the middle of an ages old epic war between Lilistar (‘Starmen), who resemble us, and the reegs, multi limbed insects (shades of Heinlein here?). Earth has allied with Lilistar, though the Earth leader and Eric Sweetscent, too, come to believe the reegs would be better allies; this switching of alliance comprises the central plot of the novel. JJ-180 enters the picture to toss Eric around on a roiled sea of reality, delusion, and personal angst.
Eric works for Tijuana Fur & Dye Company as physician to the mega wealthy and nearly ancient Virgil L. Ackerman. Eric specializes in artiforg, the transplanting of organs using an alien space amoeba that takes on the form of anything, including human organs and luxury furs. He has been using them to prolong Ackerman’s life. Kathy Sweetscent also works for Ackerman, acquiring historical pieces for his retreat called Wash-35, a replicate of 1935 Washington D.C., Ackerman’s hometown and his cherished memory. It’s located on Mars. Eric and Kathy have an acrimonious relationship that Eric explores in detail. Kathy, in addition to tormenting Eric in a variety of ways, also illustrates Dick’s rather skewed view of women as manipulative, hyper-critical shrews.
In the course of events, Eric gets assigned to the UN Secretary General, who is the leader of Earth, Gino “The Mole” Molinari. He’s a sickly man but a great strategist, essential to the survival of Earth. The ‘Starmen know about this assignment and to gain information and influence with Eric they addict Kathy to the new deadly drug JJ-180. She, in turn, secretly hooks Eric on it.
JJ-180 psychologically transports a person back in time (Kathy), or in some rare cases, forward (Eric), or still yet, and revelatory to Eric, between dimensions (Gino). Early in the novel, there’s some question as to whether the transporting is purely in the minds of the addicted or real. Eric uses the drug to see into the future both to foresee how the war will end and to find a cure for his addiction. Throughout, however, his main concern and obsession is Kathy and their relationship. The final question he faces in the end is what to do about a very sick and helpless Kathy. It’s really a question about living in reality or abandoning it for something easier, and one that he cannot answer for himself. He famously asks and takes the advice of an automated cab.
Readers with recognize many Dickian hallmarks within the novel, but none more than its sense of spontaneity and disjointedness, as if Dick were pulling things from the ethers left and right in a sprint to the end.
Those old enough can recall the 1960s, specifically the mid 60s when the hallucinogenic LSD became the rage. The epicenter of the LSD era was in San Francisco, home to the Merry Pranksters and the first LSD lab, established by Owsley “Bear” Stanley, sound engineer for
Show More
the Grateful Dead and midnight chemist. It was also home to Philip K. Dick. So it’s no surprise that Now Wait for Last Year (1966, also sees a raging Vietnam War and fierce domestic opposition) features a drug as a featured player, something more than a mere hallucinogenic and far more pernicious. There lurks within the questions of what’s real or delusion and what people, specifically what one-time lovers, owe each other. It’s as much a novel about men and women and the conflict between them as it is about alien invasion, war, and time travel. Dick sets the novel in the near future, now nearly tomorrow for us. Earth is caught in the middle of an ages old epic war between Lilistar (‘Starmen), who resemble us, and the reegs, multi limbed insects (shades of Heinlein here?). Earth has allied with Lilistar, though the Earth leader and Eric Sweetscent, too, come to believe the reegs would be better allies; this switching of alliance comprises the central plot of the novel. JJ-180 enters the picture to toss Eric around on a roiled sea of reality, delusion, and personal angst.
Eric works for Tijuana Fur & Dye Company as physician to the mega wealthy and nearly ancient Virgil L. Ackerman. Eric specializes in artiforg, the transplanting of organs using an alien space amoeba that takes on the form of anything, including human organs and luxury furs. He has been using them to prolong Ackerman’s life. Kathy Sweetscent also works for Ackerman, acquiring historical pieces for his retreat called Wash-35, a replicate of 1935 Washington D.C., Ackerman’s hometown and his cherished memory. It’s located on Mars. Eric and Kathy have an acrimonious relationship that Eric explores in detail. Kathy, in addition to tormenting Eric in a variety of ways, also illustrates Dick’s rather skewed view of women as manipulative, hyper-critical shrews.
In the course of events, Eric gets assigned to the UN Secretary General, who is the leader of Earth, Gino “The Mole” Molinari. He’s a sickly man but a great strategist, essential to the survival of Earth. The ‘Starmen know about this assignment and to gain information and influence with Eric they addict Kathy to the new deadly drug JJ-180. She, in turn, secretly hooks Eric on it.
JJ-180 psychologically transports a person back in time (Kathy), or in some rare cases, forward (Eric), or still yet, and revelatory to Eric, between dimensions (Gino). Early in the novel, there’s some question as to whether the transporting is purely in the minds of the addicted or real. Eric uses the drug to see into the future both to foresee how the war will end and to find a cure for his addiction. Throughout, however, his main concern and obsession is Kathy and their relationship. The final question he faces in the end is what to do about a very sick and helpless Kathy. It’s really a question about living in reality or abandoning it for something easier, and one that he cannot answer for himself. He famously asks and takes the advice of an automated cab.
Readers with recognize many Dickian hallmarks within the novel, but none more than its sense of spontaneity and disjointedness, as if Dick were pulling things from the ethers left and right in a sprint to the end.
Show Less
LibraryThing member write-review
Living in Different Times
Those old enough can recall the 1960s, specifically the mid 60s when the hallucinogenic LSD became the rage. The epicenter of the LSD era was in San Francisco, home to the Merry Pranksters and the first LSD lab, established by Owsley “Bear” Stanley, sound engineer for
Dick sets the novel in the near future, now nearly tomorrow for us. Earth is caught in the middle of an ages old epic war between Lilistar (‘Starmen), who resemble us, and the reegs, multi limbed insects (shades of Heinlein here?). Earth has allied with Lilistar, though the Earth leader and Eric Sweetscent, too, come to believe the reegs would be better allies; this switching of alliance comprises the central plot of the novel. JJ-180 enters the picture to toss Eric around on a roiled sea of reality, delusion, and personal angst.
Eric works for Tijuana Fur & Dye Company as physician to the mega wealthy and nearly ancient Virgil L. Ackerman. Eric specializes in artiforg, the transplanting of organs using an alien space amoeba that takes on the form of anything, including human organs and luxury furs. He has been using them to prolong Ackerman’s life. Kathy Sweetscent also works for Ackerman, acquiring historical pieces for his retreat called Wash-35, a replicate of 1935 Washington D.C., Ackerman’s hometown and his cherished memory. It’s located on Mars. Eric and Kathy have an acrimonious relationship that Eric explores in detail. Kathy, in addition to tormenting Eric in a variety of ways, also illustrates Dick’s rather skewed view of women as manipulative, hyper-critical shrews.
In the course of events, Eric gets assigned to the UN Secretary General, who is the leader of Earth, Gino “The Mole” Molinari. He’s a sickly man but a great strategist, essential to the survival of Earth. The ‘Starmen know about this assignment and to gain information and influence with Eric they addict Kathy to the new deadly drug JJ-180. She, in turn, secretly hooks Eric on it.
JJ-180 psychologically transports a person back in time (Kathy), or in some rare cases, forward (Eric), or still yet, and revelatory to Eric, between dimensions (Gino). Early in the novel, there’s some question as to whether the transporting is purely in the minds of the addicted or real. Eric uses the drug to see into the future both to foresee how the war will end and to find a cure for his addiction. Throughout, however, his main concern and obsession is Kathy and their relationship. The final question he faces in the end is what to do about a very sick and helpless Kathy. It’s really a question about living in reality or abandoning it for something easier, and one that he cannot answer for himself. He famously asks and takes the advice of an automated cab.
Readers with recognize many Dickian hallmarks within the novel, but none more than its sense of spontaneity and disjointedness, as if Dick were pulling things from the ethers left and right in a sprint to the end.
Those old enough can recall the 1960s, specifically the mid 60s when the hallucinogenic LSD became the rage. The epicenter of the LSD era was in San Francisco, home to the Merry Pranksters and the first LSD lab, established by Owsley “Bear” Stanley, sound engineer for
Show More
the Grateful Dead and midnight chemist. It was also home to Philip K. Dick. So it’s no surprise that Now Wait for Last Year (1966, also sees a raging Vietnam War and fierce domestic opposition) features a drug as a featured player, something more than a mere hallucinogenic and far more pernicious. There lurks within the questions of what’s real or delusion and what people, specifically what one-time lovers, owe each other. It’s as much a novel about men and women and the conflict between them as it is about alien invasion, war, and time travel. Dick sets the novel in the near future, now nearly tomorrow for us. Earth is caught in the middle of an ages old epic war between Lilistar (‘Starmen), who resemble us, and the reegs, multi limbed insects (shades of Heinlein here?). Earth has allied with Lilistar, though the Earth leader and Eric Sweetscent, too, come to believe the reegs would be better allies; this switching of alliance comprises the central plot of the novel. JJ-180 enters the picture to toss Eric around on a roiled sea of reality, delusion, and personal angst.
Eric works for Tijuana Fur & Dye Company as physician to the mega wealthy and nearly ancient Virgil L. Ackerman. Eric specializes in artiforg, the transplanting of organs using an alien space amoeba that takes on the form of anything, including human organs and luxury furs. He has been using them to prolong Ackerman’s life. Kathy Sweetscent also works for Ackerman, acquiring historical pieces for his retreat called Wash-35, a replicate of 1935 Washington D.C., Ackerman’s hometown and his cherished memory. It’s located on Mars. Eric and Kathy have an acrimonious relationship that Eric explores in detail. Kathy, in addition to tormenting Eric in a variety of ways, also illustrates Dick’s rather skewed view of women as manipulative, hyper-critical shrews.
In the course of events, Eric gets assigned to the UN Secretary General, who is the leader of Earth, Gino “The Mole” Molinari. He’s a sickly man but a great strategist, essential to the survival of Earth. The ‘Starmen know about this assignment and to gain information and influence with Eric they addict Kathy to the new deadly drug JJ-180. She, in turn, secretly hooks Eric on it.
JJ-180 psychologically transports a person back in time (Kathy), or in some rare cases, forward (Eric), or still yet, and revelatory to Eric, between dimensions (Gino). Early in the novel, there’s some question as to whether the transporting is purely in the minds of the addicted or real. Eric uses the drug to see into the future both to foresee how the war will end and to find a cure for his addiction. Throughout, however, his main concern and obsession is Kathy and their relationship. The final question he faces in the end is what to do about a very sick and helpless Kathy. It’s really a question about living in reality or abandoning it for something easier, and one that he cannot answer for himself. He famously asks and takes the advice of an automated cab.
Readers with recognize many Dickian hallmarks within the novel, but none more than its sense of spontaneity and disjointedness, as if Dick were pulling things from the ethers left and right in a sprint to the end.
Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Gigamesh Award (1989)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1966
Physical description
205 p.; 17.5 cm
ISBN
0879976543 / 9780879976545
Local notes
Omslag: Michael Mariano
Omslaget viser et rektangel med en mand som overlap på et landskab og noget, der ligner en flyvende rokke
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Omslaget viser et rektangel med en mand som overlap på et landskab og noget, der ligner en flyvende rokke
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Similar in this library
Pages
205
DDC/MDS
| 813.54 |