4/5 (Very Good)
“In the privacy of his living room, he sat dully examining a series of reports on carrot mutations.”
Paul Sharp files reports on what to rebuild in the swathes of H-bomb blasted California landscape for the Division of War Destruction Salvage… Sharp’s yet another anxiety-ridden citizen attending the Pysch Front for therapy — he has a type of hallucination triggered by walking up steps that spins out of control. Humphreys, an analyst for the Pysch Front, attempts to treat him. But the cause of his trauma is from six months in the future…
Philip K. Dick, as always, is adept at creating his iconic post-war California with a series of unusual images: the Detroit Rat and its webs, mutated carrots and the accompanying diseases, bombed eucalyptus groves… ‘Recall Mechanism’ is most interesting (in regards to the continuity of the PKD canon) for its discussion of the origins of one of PKD’s central themes — precognition and its practitioners, precogs.
Definitely worth finding/reading!