Given the events of the past six months (market crash, presidential election) I thought it would be appropriate to reread PKD's 1966 novel The Crack in Space. Currently, no other PKD novel better captures the current times; a horrible economy, an unpopular outgoing President, and the election of the first Black President. All of this and more in Dick's underrated Crack.
From the Ace 2nd Edition blurb:
"Every crisis that had been building through the 20th century came to a head in the year 2080. And it was an election year.
There were tens on millions of people in deep-freeze waiting for better times--and the pressure was on to wake them up or throw them away. Unemployment had reached an all-time high -- and the people were demanding jobs.
The jiffi-scuttlers which made space travel possible were breaking down and someone had to find out why fast.
The racial problem had become dangerous -- and one of the candidates for President was Black.
But most important of all, scientists had broken into another dimension and found another world -- and a long forgotten ancestral race."
Aside from a few minor details PKD seems to have predicted the future quite admirably. However, Ace probably probably made a printing error and it should have read 2008 rather than 2080. Either way, this is one of PKD's better efforts.
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