Denis's Reviews > The Penultimate Truth

One of PKD's better ideas, yet it is somewhat flawed. Unlike most of his novels, this one is more tell than show. It seemed as though it was a bit rushed; it was as though I was reading expanded notes rather than the brilliant dialogue he is known and loved for. There were many seeds of characters and situations planted that, in the end came to nothing or to very little. It is unfortunate as this could have been a great novel had he put in the the adequate time and effort to fully develop it. This might be becauss it was based on two previously written short stories: The Defenders (1955) and The Mold of Yancy (1955). It is not so much a "fix-up" as van Vogt did regularly - which he claimed was as much work, if not more, as writing a novel from scratch - but rather it is an expanded merging of the two ideas. However, the overall theme of miss-information and recreated history is clear. I particularly liked the segment in which the events of WWII are distorted claiming, somewhat plausibly, that Roosevelt and Hitler were actually secretly allied in order to defeat Russia.

A very worthwile read just the same.