Written in 1964, it sets the Third World War in 1982. It began as a two-year conflict over the conquest of Mars; all the minorities of Earth had been transferred there, and they die in the battle. The war continued on Earth for one more year. The population had taken refuge underground. The military leaders who signed the peace treaty (both Russian and American) decided not to announce the end of the conflict, so that the vast majority of the population continued living, thirteen years later, confined in underground factories and knowing the outside world only through televised reports.
Dick presents a dystopian world in which totalitarianism uses television to keep citizens deceived, where the military leaders who have agreed to peace live in a kind of feudal relationship supported by armies of robots, and where the serfs are the rest of humanity, marginalized underground.
The violence among these feudal lords, the end that justifies the means, lies, and the absence of religion (which, as in many of Dick’s writings, is regarded as something already overcome) provide fertile ground for reflection on the human condition.