Jason Taverner, like me, is in his early forties. However, unlike me, he is an international superstar. Somewhere between a Kardashian, Jimmy Fallon, and Kelly Clarkson, Taverner is lab created to be a charismatic talk show hosting crooner. He is a “Six” – a special kind of genetically modified cool guy. There’s a schmooze-ness to him, sure, but he is undoubtedly magnetic. That’s why the whole world knows who he is, and why they buy his records.
Until they don’t.
One day Taverner is minding his a-list business, deep in thought about his next worldwide jaunt with his super-hot girlfriend, when a c-list celebrity confronts him about a dubious event in his past. All of a sudden, Taverner wakes up in a world where no one seems to know him. He has no credentials, no friends. What happened?
To even get around town, Taverner finds himself trying to negotiate some fake papers to get by security. This is where things get interesting. When you’re rich and famous, you can do anything. When you’re a normie, you can’t even talk your way down the street. Obtaining fake papers requires trusting strangers and being in debt, and having to swallow pride.
At this point, the reader realizes that life isn’t so futuristic and glitzy for the majority of the world. Tech is high, but human life is low. There’s some kind of civil war going on, or gone, and the government has put “students” in camps. Black people are undergoing a slow genocide. Things that were mere banter at Taverner’s dinner parties are now the life and death discussions in front of him.
This is a PKD book, and all the PKD tropes are there. Drugs, pontificating women more than happy to throw themselves at the protagonist, philosophical monologues, and plenty of tension. Most interesting are the discussions about whether love makes any sense relationally or evolutionarily, or whether selfishness is best. As a subdiscussion of love, does it matter whether anyone knows who you are? Does recognition of art matter? Or is it enough to do your work well?
For me, this is a level 2 PKD. It’s not as gripping as, say, Ubik, but it has interesting ideas married with entertainment. It’s definitely better than some of his muted LSD trip books in which nothing really happens, except the reader burns a couple hours figuring out whether they’re the idiot or PKD is.
I will also add that I listened to the audiobook narrated by the great Jefferson Mays. He narrated nearly all of The Expanse audiobooks, and it was great to have him here.
3.5/5, rounded up.
