Time travel via taking drugs is a strange idea, although it's maybe not so strange that Philip K. Dick would take it on. (What's strange to me is that
Daphne du Maurier tried it too.) As usual, there is a lot going on here. Earth is involved in an interstellar war in which Terrans (so-called) have an uneasy alliance with Lilistar, who are genetic cousins. But it appears likely their common enemy, an alien insect race, might make the better partner. Leaders of nations and captains of industry clash with mixed motivations. It's not actually a very interesting story. But Dick has a way about him. Here he introduces parallel universes as well as time-travel paradoxes—or more accurately, perhaps, uses the one to explain the other, as convenient—and quickly lets the implications run to infinity. So a wise leader of Earth has spent years yanking in counterparts of himself to serve various roles, dipping in as needed to alternative time streams and/or parallel universes. In the present time and space of most of the novel the leader, Gino Molinari aka "The Mole," has a perplexing medical condition in which he continually contracts fatal diseases from which he always mysteriously recovers. This is never exactly explained. But there is one very funny scene in which he stalls for time in a delicate political negotiation by lapsing into a severe medical condition that requires immediate major surgery. What this "ploy" accomplishes is explained a little better—the political gamesmanship. But many other things happen that make little sense. Eventually the drug JJ-180 appears and something like a plot clanks into view. The ideas are interesting in flashes, not unusual, but here I'm not otherwise very satisfied with the clinical way Dick sets up his pieces and moves them about—a doctor and his wife, an antique dealer, have a bad marriage. The Moles spins and pirouettes to a tune only he can hear, evidently successful at minimizing risk and danger to Terrans—a hero. People take JJ-180 and move about in time. There are questions about why some go forward and some go back. There are questions about moving physical objects between time streams, and of course there are the usual questions about various time travel paradoxes. Questions, questions, questions. I want some answers!
In case it's not at the library.
