Ace Double edition
DESTINY WAS IN HIS HANDS!
Security agent Cussick was an old hand at outwitting possible enemies of the Twenty-first Century government. But in the bespectacled young man named Jones he met his match.
Because Jones could call Cussick's every move - and call it in advance! For that matter Jones knew everthing in advance-except the nature of the cosmic visittors who drifted down from outer space. And yet it was around these aliens that Jones built up his drive to absolute power - a drive which was unversal in scope and which no one could stop.
Because Jones knew all the answers a year ahead of time. That is, all the answers but one.
1967 Ace edition
"THE WORLD JONES MADE is a spectacular, brim-full grab bag of ideas. The central story concerns a new and fascinating style of conquering villain, but Dick has skillfully woven in such diverse and unlikely elements as (1) a race of artificial mutants; (2) the 'Drifters' -mindless blobs of protoplasm that float in from space; (3) world peace enforced by 'Relativism' ...
"Uniting all this is the central idea, the tyrant who can see the future.
"His name is Floyd J. Jones. . . . To Jones, the future, one year ahead, is always more vivid than the present. The real horror of this peculiar kind of limited precognition does not appear till the end of the book. . . ."
-DAMON KNlGHT (INFINITY S-F)
1975 Ace edition
Jones was cursed. lHe could see one year into the future-one year exactly-but he wasn't able to change or affect the course of events in any way. He could only watch them unfold. Jones would see the arrival of the alien organisms called drifters, and watch the waves of fear that would sweep the Earth. Then he would see himself become the leader of this movement, gathering power until he became the supreme dictator of the planet. But would he see the true nature of the drifters and the terrible extent of their powers in time? And when he had his final visions, would Jones be able to find any chance, any way to cheat Fate?
Floyd Jones is sullen, ungainly, and quite possibly mad, but in a very short time he will rise from telling fortunes at a mutant carnival to convulsing an entire planet. For although Jones has the power to see the future-a power that makes his life a torment-his real gift lies elsewhere: in his ability to make people dream again in a world where dreaming has been made illegal, even when the dream is indistinguishable from a nightmare.
1967 Panther edition
Strange New World.
Earth had never before known a dictator like Jones. His body was unremarkable, but with his mind he could see a year into the future. With total accuracy he could predict exactly what was going to happen to himself and to civilization. In a world ravaged by atomic war and denied the false comfort of absolute belief by its Relativist rulers, Jones offered a credulous people the precious gift of total certainty. He swept to power, bloodily and triumphantly. But Jones had a blind spot-the huge, mysterious, bloblike 'drifters' that came floating down from outer space. Through the unconscious agency of these beings, security agent Cussick saw his one chance to rid Jones's world of its tyrannical maker. . .
1994 Harper Collins edition
The precognitive talent of Floyd Jones - he can see a year into the future - demolishes Fedgov and the state policy of Relativism. This is post-World War III, rubble and radiation all over, and labour camps full of people convicted of crimes against revolution. By the author of "Martian Time-Slip".
2003 Gollancz edition
Floyd Jones is sullen, ungainly and quite possibly mad, but he really can see exactly one year into the future. And this talent means that in a very short time he rises from being a disgruntled carnival fortune-teller to convulse an entire planet. For Jones becomes a demagogue, whipping up the ideal-starved population into a frenzy against the threat of the 'drifters' , enormous single-cell protoplasms that may be landing on Earth soon. But, in a world of engineered mutants, hermaphrodite sex performers in drug-fuelled nightclubs, Jones is a tragic messiah. His limited precognition renders him helpless because he cannot bring himself to fight against what he knows will happen ...