I was under the impression, somehow, that this was minor PKD. Perhaps it's because the premise seemed so conventional: What if the US lost the war?

But it's not about that. It's a book about the nature of reality and illusion, in classic PKD fashion. But it's unusual how in total control he seems here. Eventually he, like Mr. Tagomi, would stare too hard at the veil of maya and lose control over the illusionary, every day world. I think Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch are perfect, but if you stare at them really hard, you can see the edges beginning to fray. By Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, PKD has begun to leave our world.

But anyway, here, he was still sharp. It's amazing. A high-wire act. He is very close to letting everything spin out, to turn the book into pure mystic nonsense, but it never does. In fact, there are several pages of a Japanese bureaucrat staring at a trinket and having a breakdown with reality, and they were some of the most compelling pages I've read. If a masterpiece is the piece the guild aspirant presented as proof of having mastered his craft, then this is very much PKD's.

I also see no reason why this shouldn't also be a horror novel. Most of PKD's books are horror novels, now that I think of it. But the reason his horrors are so effective is because he shows how *our world* is a nightmare. It is a nightmare, which the book spells out by referencing Stephen Dedalus' famous quote. There is no escape, except possibly the Schopenhauerian extermination of life on the planet, and even then, the book thinks, horrified... Life on other planets! The nightmare is cosmic, endlos!