This Perfect Day
This Perfect Day by Ira Levin
Dystopian is one of those genres I've discovered I really like over the last year of reading more science fiction, and This Perfect Day might be my favourite yet. It hits on all the things that disturbs me the most, and makes it sound worryingly possible. There’s nothing quite like a dystopia disguised as a utopia, especially when people willingly go along with it.
This Perfect Day follows the story of Chip, known as Li to everyone else, (one of only four male names now used) Chip is taught from a young age by his grandad that there’s something very wrong with the world, but it takes Chip a long time to fully accept that. Part of the reason is the treatment, drugs given to the population every month to keep them decile, while other reasons include fear of what came before, and the incurables.
But, as Chip goes through life he start to feel that there has to be more than the assigned job he’s given. That the lack of art is a bad thing. That you should be able to fuck more than for ten minutes once a week on a Saturday night. That everyone shouldn’t look the same, and that individuality should be a blessing not a curse. The more he delves into those thoughts, the more the lies holding the world together pile up.
It’s a terrifying story. Not in the horror sense, just the world building within. As someone who often writes about individuality, nothing scares me more than that being taken away. And, This Perfect Day is all about that. A world where everyone kind of looks the same, talks the same, acts the same, I can think of nothing worse.
Your job is assigned to you, and you take it no questions asked. And, if you do ask a question, you get ratted out and given a double dose of the treatment, only to then thank the person who turned you in. No love. No marriage unless it’s approved. No kids unless Unicomp let you (okay that one doesn’t sound so bad) Have to ask permission to travel. Have to touch a sensor where ever you go. Everything is monitored, even more so than it is now. Honestly, I'd just fucking kill myself, except, no one does that because the treatment stops any aggressive thoughts.
It’s an incredibly disturbing book, and one that doesn’t take the easy way out at any point. So many of the themes dealt with within the book aren’t black and white. You want Chip to break free, but he causes a lot of damage along the way, a few times being the person who tells on others (like his own grandad) No one is truly themselves, so they can’t be held responsible for their actions, but when they do become themselves they’ve been repressed for so long it’s difficult for them to make the right decisions. It’s absolutely horrifying.
And the writing is fantastic, as you’d expect from Ira Levin. I really can’t say enough great things about this book. It was one of my favourite reads, and I think about it on an almost daily basis since. It’s a world I'd do anything to avoid, yet like I mentioned, it isn’t clean cut. The future they’ve created has plenty of benefits… it will just cost you all your free will, ability to properly love, and you die at 62.
