American Editions
From the back cover of the 1964 Belmont Edition
THE WORLD ELITEFrom the back cover of the 1975 Leisure edition
THE MASTER RACE
Almost all mankind lives underground now, in the antiseptic tanks constructed during World War III. They do not know that the war ended ten years ago.
Special interests want his situation to exist They are the Yance-mcn, the elite of humanity who govern people through the President, Talbot Yancy, who is a product of their fertile imaginations.
Joseph Adams is a Vance-man, living on the surface of the earth, dispensing his tissue of lies to men and robots, until the day his boss and best friend is mysteriously murdered, in the most imaginative, bizarre manner possible.
-He wonders is it is too late for him to act now. The machines think so and what else matters?
From the back cover of the 1984 Bluejay edition
THE ULTIMATE NUCLEAR WAR
has taken place: first and second strike, with just enough advance warning to !lend Americans scurrying underground to safety. Now thousands of people are living in crowded warrens where they labor to meet the production quotas on the big machines that carryon the battle on the burnt-out landscape that was the United States. For fifteen years they haven't seen the sun, only films of the nuclear devastation, and inspiring speeches sent down by a President who never seems to age... There's something strange going on up there. Beautiful physician Carol Tigh knows it. Tortured writer Joseph Adams has always known it. And now a man named Nick St. James, who only knows things can't go on this way, is going to risk death on the surface to discover
From the back cover of the 1989 Carroll & Graf edition
The lies began when the first thermonuclear devices scorched America's heartland, drenching populations with radiation. According to plan, survivors were sent scurrying into underground warrens where they labored long and hard to meet mounting military production quotas. For fifteen years their zealous patriotism was fired by moving speeches from a President they had never seen, a President calling them to make more sacrifices for the memory of the Founding Fathers... and more armaments. . But the tortured writer Joseph Adams knew that these speeches were concocted to persuade and placate. And now, with the beautiful physician Carol Tigh and the mysterious Nick St. James, he would soon leam what was going on above ground... he would soon learn.
From the back cover of the Vintage edition
What if you discovered that everything you knew about the world was a lie? That’s the question at the heart of Philip K. Dick’s futuristic novel about political oppression, the show business of politics and the sinister potential of the military industrial complex. This wry, paranoid thriller imagines a future in which the earth has been ravaged, and cities are burnt-out wastelands too dangerous for human life. Americans have been shipped underground, where they toil in crowded industrial ant hills and receive a steady diet of inspiring speeches from a President who never seems to age. Nick St. James, like the rest of the masses, believed in the words of his leaders. But that all changes when he travels to the surface—where what he finds is more shocking than anything he could possibly imagine.