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Douglas Cobb, August 23, 2008

Dr. Bloodmoney is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which much of America has been devastated by hydrogen bombs. There are pockets of humanity left alive, trying to rebuild and maintain a semblance of civilization.
Though the novel is entitled Dr. Bloodmoney--he's a scientist who helped bring about a previous nuclear holocaust in P.K. Dick's alternate-reality vision of 1972--and he is a major character in the book (his actual name is Dr. Bruno Bluthgeld. He feels intensely guilty about his role in the previous holocaust, and has moved to the Californian town of West Marin to try to start his life over again, with a sheep farm there, under the name of Jack Tree.
The novel is populated with some of Dick's best-developed characters, such as the phocomelus Hoppy Harrington, a person who becomes West Marin's Handy, or handyman. He is a Thalidamide flipper-armed and legged person with psychic abilites who is also very good at repairing machinery, which is vital in a future where machines exist, but the knowledge to keep them going is gradually becoming a lost art.
The people of Earth who remain are inspired to keep struggling on by hearing via radio the folksy voice of Walt Dangerfield, who had been sent up into space on a voyage to Mars with his wife, who passed away. His ship's retrorocket didn't fire, though. so he ended up continously circling the Earth. He dispenses wit and acts as a disc jockey of sorts, playing requests from the ship's vast store of recordings, and reading from the book Of Human Bondage.
Like with all of Dick's works, it's not easy to give a brief synopsis of Dr. Bloodmoney, because it is such a complex work. It is not, in my opinion, his best novel; but, it has many moments of sheer brilliance, and is well worth adding to your scifi library.

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