this perfect hell

The inhabitants in Levin's This Perfect Day have to pass checkpoints all over the place, swipe their identification cards and report for medical treatment on a regular basis. The medical treatment includes hormone regulating and mood regulating substances that prevent the population from revolting.

The hero of the story strategically acts in a way that prevents him from getting his medication dose. This starts his revolt against the system.

Their whole world is managed by a powerful computer, itself controlled by an elite of programmers and politicians. Our hero eventually decides to escape that world after having discovered some places that are not under the rule of the current system, only to realize that they are too...

The place he had escaped to was just a place the system "allowed" rebels to escape to - and so, in effect, were prisons isolating dissenters from the medicated workers within the hive.

He thus plans an attack on the system and in the end, after many discoveries on the nature of the system, succeeds in destroying it and frees his people.


This Perfect Day belongs to the genre of "dystopian" or anti-utopian novels, like Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984. Yet it is more satisfying than either. Not only is its futuristic technology more plausible (computers, of course), but the extrapolation of the dominant ideology of the end of the twentieth century is entirely convincing. And from the children's rhyme at the beginning: Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei, Led us to this perfect day.... to the thrilling denouement some 300 pages later, the novel is practically the ideal-type of a good read.

The action begins in the year 141 of the Unification, the establishment of global government, which finally led to consolidating all the world's super-computers into one colossal apparatus lodged deep below the Swiss Alps. Uni-Comp classifies and tracks all the "members" (of the human Family), decides on their work, residence, and consumption goods, whether they will marry and if so whether they will reproduce, and everything else.

Egalitarianism and altruism are all-pervasive. "Losing's the same as winning" is one of the catch-phrases drilled into kids. "Hate" and "fight" are the dirty words – only a very sick member would utter such a shocker as, "Fight you, brother-hater!" Genetics has progressed to the point where skin color (tan), body shape (unisex), and facial features (brown slanted eyes) ran mostly be programmed. Scientists are busily at work rooting out the biological basis of aggressiveness and egotism and implanting docility and loving kindness in their stead. The aim is to have this compassionate race expand across the universe, and space exploration is another of the Family's unifying collective goals.

While awaiting the final solution to the individualist problem, Uni subjects every member to monthly "treatments." The injections include vaccines, contraceptives, tranquilizers as prescribed, and a medication that reduces aggressiveness and limits the sex drive to a lackadaisical once-a-week encounter. All of this is mediated by super-caring Psychotherapists, who constantly monitor the members' mental health.

Enter Chip – official name Li RM35M4419 – the hero, not just "protagonist" of this novel. From the start two things distinguish Chip. First, one of his eyes is green, genetic science not yet being foolproof. Second, he has a grandfather, Papa Jan, a throwback to pre-U times, who bestowed the nickname "Chip" on the lad after his own granddad, a fearless cosmonaut. Papa Jan perplexes Chip: Often he says things in such a way that he seems to mean the opposite of his words. On a family trip to the world's greatest tourist attraction, Papa Jan – who worked on the construction of UniComp – shows Chip the real Uni, not the pastel proxies on inspiring display.

As he grows up, Chip keeps having heretical thoughts. Something about the uniformity of design in apartments and public buildings is vaguely disturbing. Even the pictures on the wall go against the grain – always one of a handful that includes Christ Expelling the Money Changers, Marx Writing, and Wei Addressing the Chemotherapists. But the monthly treatments quickly submerge such troubling ideas.

Chip is discovered by a small group of dissidents, misfits like himself who have found a way to minimize the effects of the treatments. They meet in secret, spending their time cursing Uni, pairing off for "untreated" sex, and most depraved of all, smoking tobacco. To persuade Chip to trick Uni into giving him reduced treatments, they introduce him to the concept of "consent": "Your body is yours, not Uni's." But Chip has had the Family's philosophy drummed into him – there are no ethical or political conflicts, only medical problems, questions of mental health or illness. He argues with himself. "As if consent had anything to do with a treatment given to preserve one's health and well-being, an integral part of the health and well-being of the entire Family!" Uni, after all, has provided everything he's ever had, his food, his clothes, his education; it even granted permission for his conception. Try to trick Uni? Just how sick is he?

This is as much of the splendidly inventive plot as can decently be divulged. It's not really giving anything away to say that Chip will somehow withdraw himself from the Family, and that, in the end, he will keep his destined date with the real UniComp.

Ira Levin's great book cries out to be filmed. Yet who in Hollywood could be trusted to direct This Perfect Day in the spirit in which it was written? The name Mel Gibson comes to mind.

From the book "This Perfect Day" by Ira Levin:

"We're abnormal members, which is fairly obvious," King said. "We do a great many things that are generally considered sick. We think they're not. We know they're not." His voice was strong and deep and authoritative; Chip visualized him as large and powerful, about forty. "I'm not going to go into too many details," he said, "because in your present condition you would be shocked and upset, just as you're obviously shocked and upset by the fact that we smoke tobacco. You'll learn the details for yourself in the future, if there is a future as far as you and we are concerned."

"What do you mean," Chip said, "'in my present condition'?"

There was silence for a moment. A woman coughed. "While you're dulled and normalized by your most recent treatment," King said.

Chip sat still, facing in King's direction, stopped by the irrationality of what he had said.. He went over the words and answered them: "I'm not dulled and normalized."

"But you are," King said.

"The whole Family is," Snowflake said, and from beyond her came, "Everyone, not just you" - in the old man's voice of Leopard.

"What do you think a treatment consists of?" King asked.

Chip said, "Vaccines, enzymes, the contraceptive, sometimes a tranquilizer...."

"Always a tranquilizer," King said. "And LPK, which minimizes aggressiveness and also minimizes joy and perception and every other fighting thing the brain is capable of."

"I don't believe it," Chip said. "Any of it."

They told him it was true.

"You're in genetics," King said; "Isn't that what genetic engineering is working toward? - removing aggressiveness, controlling the sex drive, building in helpfulness and docility and gratitude? Treatments are doing the job in the meantime, while genetic engineering gets past size and skin color."

"Treatments help us," Chip said.

"They help Uni," the woman across the table said.

"And the Wei-worshippers who programmed Uni," King said. "But they don't help us, at least not as much as they hurt us. They make us into machines."

Chip shook his head, and shook it again.

"Snowflake told us" - it was Hush, speaking in a dry quiet voice that accounted for her name - "that you have abnormal tendencies. Haven't you ever noticed that they're stronger just before a treatment and weaker just after one?"

Snowflake said, "I'll bet you made that picture frame a day or two before a treatment, not a day or two after one."

He thought for a moment, "I don't remember," he said, "but when I was a boy and thought about classifying myself, after treatments it seemed stupid and pre-U, and before the treatments it was - exciting."

"There you are," King said, and the woman across the table said, "You were alive, you were feeling something. Any feeling is healthier than no feeling at all."

He thought about the guilt he had kept secret from his advisors since Karl and the Academy. He nodded. "Yes," he said, "yes, that could be."