Solar Lottery

Philip K. DIck's first novel, and it shows. Some great ideas, but missing in detail and prose to carry the story. I think its successful in that the reader has to finish it to find out what's going on with John Preston (an allusion to the old Prester John myths of medieval Europe?), but that subplot is given the short end of the stick. Dick also could have used more detail or even additional minor characters to round out the ensemble and create a fuller world. That said, the "assassination" chapter works quite well, illustrating Dick's talent for depicting action. Indeed, it brought to mind parts of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and subsequent novels. 

I liked the telepathy, androids, dystopic society, determinism vs. free will, social commentary via imagined 23rd century of fuedalism, and the idea of mathematics/M-Game and the bottle determining everything. I wonder if, considering the captain of the ship, Groves, is black, and the 'unks' are at the bottom of this horrible regime Benteley is determined to change, is this novel also hinting at the rising mainstream attention to the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement after the ongoing Montgomery Boycott, as well as the Bandung Conference and decolonisation in the Global South. I recall some of Dick's novels in the 1960s offer some witty and perhaps exasperated emotions toward the newly independent countries in the distant future, but Dick offers a rather optimistic or hopeful view of humanity through Benteley and a rather dismal take on religion or allegiance to individuals elsewhere here.

I will have to read more about game theory and zero-sum to properly understand the dynamics of the novel, too, yet it seems like another avenue for Dick to explore fate like the I Ching in The Man in the High Castle. The prisoner's dilemma is about the only scenario I am familiar with, which is all over the conflict or stalemate between Reese and Cartwright over what to do with Bentelely on Luna. Very interesting novel, but, as mentioned above, not technically his best writing, I think.