Dr. Bloodmoney (Book Review)

Book review from The Movie Snob

Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb, by Philip K. Dick. This is the second story in the Library of America collection Five Novels of the 1960s and 70s. I got a kick out of it. At first we meet some characters in the San Francisco Bay area. We come to realize that some time earlier, there was some sort of serious nuclear accident. Then there is an actual nuclear war, and the rest of the story is about, well, how the characters get along after the bomb. The story is somewhat realistic about how survivors band together in towns outside the old cities--kind of like Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank--but of course there's lots of weird stuff too, as people develop ESP and other weird powers in the wake of the atomic disaster. And there's an astronaut stuck in high Earth orbit, unable to get down after the war, who kind of brings everyone together with his radio transmissions as he passes overhead. A good story.