Now Wait for Last Year
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 Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | Philip K. Dick |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Released | 1966 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 214 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
Now Wait for Last Year is a 1966 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick.
[edit] Plot summary
Set during a war between the 'Starmen (inhabitants of the planet Lilistar) and the Reegs, Now Wait for Last Year is the story of Eric Sweetscent, an organ-transplant doctor who gets wrapped up in Earth-Lilistar politics, and who is stuck in an abusive relationship with his manipulative wife.
At the onset of the story, Sweetscent is the personal org-trans surgeon for Virgil Ackerman, the president of Tijuana Fur & Dye. Using an off-world lichen which can imitate the cell structure of anything it touches, TF&D had been the largest manufacturer of synthetic furs on the planet. But like all of the major corporations on Earth at the time, has been requisitioned to produce for the war effort.
Ackerman invites Sweetscent to his vacation getaway on Mars where he announces he had an ulterior motive in inviting him along. Waiting for them when they arrive is a guest—Gino Molinari, the elected leader of Earth. Known as "the Mole", he is rumored to have the enigmatic ability to repeatedly die and return from the grave. He has requested the services of Sweetscent. Ackerman glady passes Sweetscent on to Molinari.
Meanwhile, Sweetscent's wife, Kathy, participates in a test trial for a new drug, JJ-180, which proves to be highly toxic and highly addictive. The effects of the drug are not clear at first. However, only hours off of the drug, Kathy finds herself unable to function and violently craving it again. She is visited by the 'Starmen who claim that the Reegs invented JJ-180 as a chemical weapon against the 'Starmen and Terrans. There is no possible cure for the drug's addiction. Kathy is now a slave to JJ-180.
The 'Starmen inform her of her husband's new employment to Molinari and suspect Molinari's possible defection to the Reegs. Kathy is promised more JJ-180 if she agrees to spy on her husband for Lilistar. Kathy is hesitant to comply, not willing to face the reality of the impossibility of recovery, but is given a sample retainer while she considers her offer. Eventually, she takes a second dose of the drug as her ability to perform at her job becomes nearly impossible due the effects of the withdrawal. Jumping into a taxi-cab, both she and the cab are plunged back in time to the mid-20th century. As the effects of the drug wear off, they slowly make their way back to the present time, uncertain as to whether or not the past visited was theirs or an alternate timeline.
Paranoid, Kathy sets off to visit her husband.
Under his new employer, Eric Sweetscent is let in on a few secrets. Molinari seems to have a psychosomatic condition that mirrors any illness or disease of anyone else in his vicinity. The effects of this condition appear to be real, yet the mole pulls through every time, always just on the brink of death.
Molinari, like everyone else, has realized that in siding with the 'Starmen against the Reegs, Earth has doomed itself to the wrong side of a losing battle. There does not seem to be any safe way to defect to the Reegs, and Molinari fears that his current deteriorated state will not instill any confidence into the people of Earth should the 'Starmen retaliate, as they are certain to do. Sweetscent is shown footage of a healthier, younger version of Molinari in uniform and is led to believe that an android look-alike of the President has been created for public appearances. But that does not account for the fact that scattered throughout the Mole's headquarters are his various corpses, all killed in different fashions.
Kathy arrives and informs her husband of her addiction. In an effort to motivate him to find a cure, she slips a pill of JJ-180 into his drink. Without enough time to be furious, Eric slips a year into the future where he is informed by his colleagues that he had disappeared the day that Kathy came to visit.
He also witnesses that Earth has sided with the Reegs and Lilistar has lost the war.
Upon returning to the present, Sweetscent is eager to present this information to Molinari, who reveals that he too has been taking JJ-180, and that the effect is different for each user. Some are sent to the past, and some are sent to the future. Each trip is in an alternate universe, and therefore no one can effectively change their own past or future, just that of another version of themselves. However, aside from minor details, all of the universes seem to be traveling along at the same rate with the same histories and outcomes, and therefore, information obtained from one future will most likely be applicable to another.
Molinari, however, slips sideways in time under the drug's influence, and is able to pull present versions of himself into his own timeline as his previous self dies, always being replaced by a youthfull, more zealous Mole.
Having learned the secret to Molinari's remarkable recoveries, as well as confirming the feasibility of an alliance with the Reegs, Eric takes a larger dose of JJ-180 which propels him farther into the future than the first time. While there, he obtains a cure for JJ-180's addiction, an item of wide accessibility in the future, as well as obtaining more information about the future of the war. He also gathers information about the effects of JJ-180 on the brain as he is increasingly worried about Kathy's mental condition. Taking a fraction of a pill to send him back to the almost-present, he ends up one year in his future again, where the 'Starmen have occupied earth after learning of Earth's defection to the Reegs. He is arrested by a 'Star patrol and saved by his future self, who informs him that Ackerman and the rest of the crew at TF&D have taken a stand against Lilistar.
Now knowing the general history of the next few years, Eric returns to his own time where his wife is deteriorating every day. He resolves to check her into a clinic and is sent into deep reflection about the nature of their relationship. Attempting to arrange an affair with a younger girl that Molinari recommends to him, he backs out in the end and begins to slip into a deep depression in reflection of his life and goes to Mexico to purchase poison with which to commit suicide. He decides against it at the last second, just as the 'Starmen begin their invasion of Earth. Deciding that he is destined to join Ackerman's resistence against the 'Starmen, Eric enters a cab bound for TF&D. He asks the automated cab driver what it would do if its wife suffered from brain-damage and there was no possibility of recovery (which Eric had found out by contacting future self). The driver concluded that it would stay with her. Life, argued the driver, is made up of a series of situations, different for each person, and to leave one's wife would be to say that he/she requires a uniquely easier set of conditions than what has been provided, which, to the driver, was an illogical way of thinking. Eric agrees and decides to stay with his wife despite their challenges and her condition and is commended by the driver.
