everal years into the spacefaring future, Earth is embroiled in a long war with aliens known as the Reegs. This war is not only hopeless, but pointless; anybody with any political savvy can see that the real threat comes from Earth's nominal ally, the 'Starmen of the Lilistar empire, which is using the war to gain deeper and deeper control of Earth's government. The Earth government, as personified by the ailing despot, U.N. secretary Gino Molinari, holds a tiger by the tail; it cannot withdraw from the war without making the Lilistar Empire an enemy, nor can it continue the war without giving up more and more of Earth's independence.
The one force holding the 'Starmen back is the indomitable will of Secretary Molinari, who has spent years battling a succession of fatal illnesses that somehow still leave him alive when they're done. The 'Starmen cannot even get his approval on an order drafting millions of Earthmen as slave labor without being stymied by such obstructions as Molinari's immediate need for a heart transplant. Molinari is tired of being sick all the time, and wants to die ... but only his constant hovering at the brink of death is keeping Earth free.
Doctor Eric Sweetscent, a transplant specialist, is an employee of a powerful corporation called Tijuana Tool and Dye. He is unhappily married to Katherine, who makes a much better living obtaining authentic artifacts for a replica of 1935 Washington D.C. owned by their mutual boss, Virgil Ackerman. In part because he wants to escape Katherine, who torments him at every opportunity, he accepts a job on Molinari's staff, where his many discoveries include the source of Molinari's many illnesses and the bullet-riddled corpse of a man who seems to be Molinari himself. The real Molinari might be a robotic substitute, or an imposter from an alternate world. But even as Sweetscent struggles to negotiate that minefield, Katherine becomes addicted to a mysterious drug called JJ-180, which may or may not be an alien manufacture ... and which causes its users to travel in time. ...
Nothing that you know is true
Philip K. Dick was science fiction's high sultan of paranoia. In the best of his books, the physical reality experienced by his characters is entirely a function of their shifting perception of it; nothing, not even their deepest convictions, can be trusted, and the world beneath their feet seems as solid as a shifting ice floe ready to dump them over the edge at any moment. The continued availability of his books, almost 20 years after his death, is a testament not only to the frequency with which his stories get made into films (Blade Runner, Total Recall and the upcoming Minority Report being only the three best-known examples), but to his continued impact on new generations of writers and readers.
Now Wait for Last Year is particularly over-the-top. Defying any rational attempt at synopsis, its many elements include not only those listed above, but also such outrageous touches as an army of small wheeled carts manufactured by an eccentric genius named Bruce Himmel. Himmel creates these little mechanisms and then sets them free to live out their days in alleys. There's also the character of Mary Reineke, the 19-year-old kept woman of Secretary Molinari; her main function in the government--a vital one--seems to be treating the great man with as much contempt and disgust as she can manage. He needs this treatment in order to keep going. And then there's the seeming explanation for all of Molinari's illnesses, which seems to be common knowledge among his aides; it's a character detail here, but is so fascinating that other writers may have used it to fuel an entire novel all by itself. The last third of the book, a race against time through a number of possible alternate futures, is downright lunatic.
Even so, the emotional core of the novel is Eric Sweetscent's relationship with his shrewish wife, Katherine. Katherine hates him, and gives him every reason in the world to hate her--but even as she attempts to drag him down with her in her spiraling fall toward self-destruction, it may be his capacity for forgiveness that provides him with the only salvation possible. When the moment of epiphany comes, it's as breathtaking, in its own way, as any of the weird plot twists that precede it.
