The Penultimate Truth
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4.2 • 14 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this dystopian novel from the author of The Man in the High Castle, humanity is forced to live underground while a great secret hides above them.
In the future, most of humanity lives in massive underground bunkers, producing weapons for the nuclear war they’ve fled. Constantly bombarded by patriotic propaganda, the citizens of these industrial anthills believe they are waiting for the day when the war will be over and they can return aboveground. But when Nick St. James, president of one anthill, makes an unauthorized trip to the surface, what he finds is more shocking than anything he could imagine.
“At a time when most 20th-century science fiction writers seem hopelessly dated, Dick gives us a vision of the future that captures the feel of our time.”—Wired
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this audio edition of Dick's futuristic dystopian novel, narrator Nick Podehl demonstrates his impressive range and turns in a compelling performance. The story wastes no time imparting pessimism with descriptions of an inner "fog of loneliness" to match the low-hanging clouds and landscape of dead trees "in the former city of San Francisco" before presenting listeners with a post-WWIII United States in which survivors live in underground "ant tanks." Podehl takes his time with such descriptive passages, allowing the author's prose to truly have an impact on listeners. Podehl also deftly imparts a patrician accent to an addictive computer assistant for writers called a "rhetorizor," and employs staccato, machine-like tones for the leadies, robots that did most of the fighting during the war. The narrator is no less skillful with his rendition of the book's lead character, Joseph Adams, using tentativeness to convey the propagandist's inner conflict at purveying lies.
