ORP: PKD: Now Wait Until Last Year

In this novel Philip K. Dick sets up a story in the future in which it turns out that Earth was a colony of another human stellar empire that is in a protracted war with another alien race of insect-like creatures. In this story Earth is ruled by the UN and the Secretary General is like a dictator and gets Earth involved in the stellar war. And in characteristic PKD fashion, it turns out to be the wrong side to be on. Into this back-story the protagonist, a medical doctor, whose job is to watch over the health of the CEO of his company, gets involved in taking care of the Secretary General (a friend of the CEO), but this character is in a loveless marriage with a domineering wife who is a drug user. She stumbles upon a new experimental drug developed for the war. This drug is toxic, it addicts you the first time and it begins to destroy your liver and central nervous system immediately, but it turns out that the side effect of the drug is to cause the person taking it to hallucinate not just a change in perceived reality but to experience an actual change in your reality. Most people travel backward in time, but a few travel forward, and a very few travel sideways (into parallel universes). The doctor's wife viciously slips the drug into her husband's coffee and the doctor finds out that he is one of those who can travel forward in time. The story goes on through many twists and turns, but I found the introspective interaction of the main character and his wife to be the most interesting. Among other things the character has to deal with issues of life and death, responsibility to your spouse (even in this case where his wife has to be committed to psychiatric treatment). The author has good insight because without Christ, if your closest human relationship deteriorates, sometimes intense love can be turned into intense hate, and somehow many women will become ridiculously jealous if you have any desire or interest in something else that does not involve them. It is always true that a wife can make you or destroy you. I feel this sometimes whenever I start to get too involved in my studies or self-improvement. I have so little time left over after working, commuting, trying to sleep, etc. that when I want to spend time studying to better myself or maybe work toward my dream of being a writer, it becomes the end of the world. One needs grace for every second of life.