Simulacra- Part 2

I must admit, I am getting a little bored with time travel, Mars, and the future. But, I’m guessing that’s all PKD writes about, so I will just have to endure it. I didn’t follow this book as well as the other stories we’ve read, with there being so many different character plots to connect. Again, I felt that the central theme was government control, its oppression of the people, and the use of time-travel for personal gain. The individual characters were interesting, especially Kongrosian and his phobias and illnesses. As I said on the discussion post, it’s rather difficult to pin down one protagonist and antagonist. It seems as though the goal of the novel was either to overthrow and expose the flaws of the government, or for human survival, which would’ve been a fail with the end of the novel showing that the human race was no longer going to be the dominant race. I do wish PKD would expand and tell us more about life on Mars and what happens once people immigrate there. I’d also be interested in hearing the specifics on WWIII and how that all went down. I did enjoy how each story line about the individual characters connected towards the end of the novel through Superb and Nicole. The patient that Superb was supposed to stay open for and fail to help really surprised me; my guess was Kongrosian, but I was wrong! I did wonder how the government functioned so long with it being led by fakes; I can’t believe the Ges kept their secrets from the Bes even though they are in contact with each other every day. The storyline seems to be the same in this book as the others, but we’ll have to see what the next novel holds in store for me.