The Zap Gun

Posted On October 7, 2015

The Zap Gun

by Philip K. Dick

Pages: 176
Genre: Science Fiction
Published: 1967

Set in 2002, Earth thinks there is a cold war happening between the western and eastern parts of the world called Wes-bloc and Peep-East. Each side has weapon fashion designers that go into a trance to come up with the next fantastical weapon in case a war does decide to break out. The funny thing that the general public doesn’t realize is these weapons do nothing. A truce was called between the nations and they keep the public busy with this cold war nonsense. Then alien satellites start to appear in the sky and the two sides have to work together to try to develop an actual weapon to fight off an attack before all the cities of Earth are enslaved.

The first half of this book was very slow. I was not very interested in the world building. The fake war didn’t interest me or even designing the fake weapons. I could see the overall bigger picture that Dick was trying to create, how he was trying to relate it to wars going on, and how the government was run, but it wasn’t really all that interesting to read. The only part I enjoyed was how quickly Lars, the West weapon fashion designer, could travel across the U.S. or over to Europe and Russia. The future world (that is now our past) that Dick describes is really missing that speedy travel.

The story did pick up, but I think I would have had more interest if the characters weren’t so thinly drawn. From what I have read so far, he isn’t the best about writing characters, but the plot keeps things moving along enough that you can usually ignore that. In this case, if the characters were better written, I could have forgiven some of the slack in the story itself.

I did laugh when they learned the truth about the weapons they had been designing. I also found Febbs to be the most interesting character in the book. He was a guy that was called upon to work for the government, but when he showed up, they were all busy with the actual aliens that they shooed him away. I feel if he was used any more, he would have become annoying, but I did enjoy his entitlement that he felt when he couldn’t get in to where he thought he should and how he riled up the troops to get all the weapon parts for himself. I also loved how his storyline wrapped up with the puzzle.

I know they used the puzzle to win the war, but I would have loved more details on how they got the puzzle to the slavers. Also, there never seemed to be a big sense of urgency about all these cities and people missing. They were mentioned, but no one really seemed alarmed. It was a very oddly written book.

Grade: C-