About this deal
for a good part of the novel anyway but, unfortunately, towards the end, all hell breaks loose in a confounding, convoluted way that is just too much, even for Dick. The constant paranoia and second guessing was a little too much by the end of the novel and perhaps is a good representation of what it might have been like to live through; nobody feeling 100% comfortable in their own skin, with their neighbours and loved ones or with their governments behaviour making every action and reaction an awkward or painful one to make. There are some vugs here on Earth to keep tabs on human activity, participation in the Game heading up the list. Those vugs, by the way, are silicon based, Phil here beating "Star Trek"'s Horta to the silicic punch by a good four years!
PKD must have dreamed that any one of his five wives or several girlfriends would one day sit across the breakfast table and speak those words to him. What he discovers are conspiracies within conspiracies, Vug infiltration of his closest friends, and an offer to play the ultimate game to decide the fate of the earth.Siccome le donne fertili sono pochissime questa pratica contribuisce de facto ad aumentare le probabilità di concepimento (un termine che in questo romanzo viene sostituito dalla parola "fortuna"). It's all part of the rules of Bluff, the game that's become a blinding obsession for the last inhabitants of the planet Earth. Some of the technologies we use are necessary for critical functions like security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and to make the site work correctly for browsing and transactions. Amongst the wreckage of our lost civilization is the need to play a board game (somewhat resembling Life) to trade property and wives. All our frames and canvas stretcher bars are created from a solid piece of pine sourced from sustainable European forests.
When we first meet the book's central character, Pete Garden, a suicidal, 150-year-old landowner, he is sorely upset due to his recent loss of Berkeley at that night's game.The good news is that, once there is a clearing - once the plot seems to gain some sort of foothold - things improve.