Just Finished Reading Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick

Solar Lottery, a 1955 science fiction novel of Philip K. Dick and the thirteenth book of his I've read so far, creates a future world that I don't want to live in.  Mathematicians in government have devised a strategy of a worldwide society based on a lottery system...how people do depends on their "luck", which they can (and usually do) trade in for the benefit of contracting their labor (and ultimately, freedom) to different powerful employers.  The protagonist, a young engineer named Ted Benteley, one day finds himself out of a job when his employer he is contracted to has to lay off much of their workforce due to a fire.  Benteley wants to climb the ladder of success and seeks the current Quizmaster, i.e. the lottery-winning most-powerful person in the Solar System, to contract himself out to.  Unfortunately, after taking his loyalty oath he finds out that this individual, Verrick, is no longer Quizmaster and he is once again stuck working for a "lesser" employer.  Here the story takes a sharp turn, as the assassination of a Quizmaster is completely legal and Verrick schemes to knock off the new one, a guy named Cartwright.  Since Benteley is in contract to Verrick, he must go along with his new boss's plans...and there the story works it way through to a pretty interesting conclusion.  Throw into the mix that Cartwright is involved with a cult-like movement led by a man named Preston to colonize a yet-undiscovered outer planet, and you pretty much have a sketchy outline of this tale.  Oh, and telepathy plays a role here...causing me to groan a little on the inside since I'm sick and tired of sci-fi stories featuring the phenomenon as an integral element...I don't hanker much to time travel fiction, either (although Stephen King's excellent 11/22/63 is a striking exception).  But I need to consider that the author wrote it in 1955 and it was, according to Wikipedia, his first ever published novel.  As Philip K. Dick novels go, I thought it was one of his better works. From time to time I'll seek out another story of his...he wrote a lot of novels and not all of them were science fiction, although that is the genre for which he is best known...