The Dream of Perpetual Motion

The Dream of Perpetual motion is an erudite, weird, modern fantasy, science fiction book. It can be difficult to determine what is exactly happening. There is a rich guy. He has a daughter. He also pretty much owns the world. He has a birthday party for his daughter. He later gives the participants the "thing they most want." One day he decides he will destroy the world. Or maybe just scare the people. He is entombed in a zeppelin, to be woken up a long time later when the world is a better place. The zeppelin is powered by a perpetual motion device that may involve his daughter. But it is losing its ability. Eventually his plug is pulled. But that's not important. It many be fore the best. The anticipation of something is almost always better than the actual event. The feeling right before the first kiss is the best. Thus, by having his plug pulled, he can now have as his final memory the anticipation of his future.

Anticipation can be better than the actual end result. The modern materialist society makes obtaining anything so easy that we have lost some of the jot of this anticipation. In this novel, Palmer takes it to an extreme. While the novel can be a little long and disjointed, it does take "anticipation" to the extreme.