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Now Wait for Last Year
First published 1966 · 296 pages
A paranoid, time-bending descent into the messy intersections of political duty, toxic marriage, and reality-shattering addiction.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like waking up from a fever dream only to realize you are still dreaming. It is a deeply anxious, hallucinatory experience that drags you through the claustrophobic corridors of a failing marriage and the paranoid war rooms of a crumbling galactic empire. The prose is frantic and utilitarian, serving as a rapid-fire delivery system for mind-bending existential questions rather than lyrical beauty. You are constantly kept off-balance, unsure of what is real, what is a drug-induced hallucination, and what timeline you are currently inhabiting. It will delight readers who love classic, cerebral science fiction that uses bizarre, reality-warping concepts to explore the very human burdens of empathy, addiction, and the inescapable weight of our choices.
- Mood
- hallucinatory
- claustrophobic
- anxious
- surreal
- Tone
- paranoid
- cynical
- philosophical
- desperate
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- reality and illusion · the burden of empathy · marital decay · political manipulation · the fluidity of time
- The writing
- Utilitarian and frantic, prioritizing mind-bending concepts and psychological unraveling over lyrical beauty.
- The arc
- Starts in domestic and political anxiety, spirals into hallucinatory paranoia, and resolves in a bleak but strangely resilient acceptance of duty.
- Who it's for
- Fans of classic sci-fi who enjoy having their grip on reality loosened and exploring the messy intersections of politics, marriage, and mind-altering substances.
Content notes
- drug addiction
- toxic relationships
- terminal illness
- war themes
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
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