Content:

Fourty-two years before the historic presidential election year2008 in the USA, Philip K. Dick transports the reader into the middle of a fictional election year that bears some striking similarities.

For the first time, a black presidential candidate has a fair chance of winning. Dick named his protagonist James Briskin and reading this in 2008, one can't help but be reminded of Barack Obama.

In Dick's alternate reality, humans zip back and forth between cities by means of so called Jiffi-Scuttlers. Naturally, these devices can develop a malfunction and one of them actually opens a gate into a parellel universe.

This parallel world is inahbitable but seemingly uninhabited. It is regarded as a welcome solution to one of mans pressing problems: millions and millions of deep frozen people waiting in their "fridges" to be thawed and have a btter life.

As you may have guessed, the other wold is all but empty. Add a good measure of greed, some applied for personal reasons, some to help others, and you have a classic novel.

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