Customer Reviews

Ubik: A Novel

5 star:		(84)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Although "Ubik" wasn't the first Philip K. Dick novel I read (having read just about all of them now, it's hard to remember which was first, but I think it was "Martian Time-Slip"), I would recommend it as the best starting point for someone trying to decide if PKD is your cup of tea. "Ubik" has all of the major elements of the typical PKD novel (to the extent there is any typicality): (1) questioning of the meaning of reality; (2) an almost pathetic sense of humor in the face of the unraveling of reality; (3) an everyman protagonist; and (4) extreme readability despite a somewhat pedestrian writing style.

The plot can be summed up like this: some humans have psychic powers, but rather than being seen as heroes (as is the case in most sci-fi), they're possible sources of invasions of your privacy. Never fear, however, because some humans have developed anti-psychic powers -- they block the powers of the others. A bunch of anti-psychics go on a mission, but something goes wrong and they barely get away with their lives. Almost immediately, they notice that something is not right. Phone directories are out of date, coffee is disgustingly stale, and so on. Time, it seems, is flowing backwards!

For readers who aren't aware, PKD was one of the most influential sci-fi writers, with his reality-warping stories. His interest in this topic can be traced, no doubt, to his youthful experimentation with narcotics -- an experience recounted largely in "A Scanner Darkly."

PKD was an incredibly prolific writer; he wrote something like 16 novels in a five year stretch in the late-1960s, including "Ubik." Many of his best novels were written during that stretch. If you like "Ubik," I would suggest in no particular order: "The Gameplayers of Titan," "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (made into the movie "Bladerunner"), "Dr. Bloodmoney," and "The Man in the High Castle." By the 1970's, PKD stopped writing as many novels, and they became more thematically complex, with increasing emphasis on religious spirituality.

This was the first PKD I ever read, so it's got some sentimental value...as it is, it's stood the test of time to remain one of my all time favorite PKD novels.

Supposedly one of the major influences on The Matrix (along with The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch), Ubik is about the subjectivity of physical reality, death, advertising, consumerism...

In the first few pages PKD introduces more ideas than most sci-fi (I cringe to pigeonhole him so, but it's the closest comparison) authors are capable of their entire careers.

You can't take this book on face value, it engages the reader so completely with it's energy, style and fiercely challenging ideas. Not to mention the plot twists, which will keep you guessing to the final page (without sounding too horribly cliched I hope).

For PKD vets it's comforting to revisit the world he established in his most blatantly sci-fi phase, with all the standbys like precogs, conapts, talking kitchen appliances, etc.

For PKD newbies Ubik is a perfect choice to start in on the incredible feast that are the novels of PKD - trust me.

I finished reading Ubik and I couldn't even start any other books for a week because I had to sit and think about everything that had just happened. I've read several other books by Mr. Dick and, while they are all excellent, this is the best. So far. It has everything that I have come to expect from him. You never quite know where reality is. Then you figure it out only to find that you are wrong. Then another twist comes. It has excellent pacing, a good bit of humour, and - of course - loads of wild ideas about life, death, the future, consumerism, dreams, drugs, psychic abilities, and the human condition.

The first few pages set up the stage for the story in a way that an average author would have required 100 pages of descriptions and explanations. And it all made sense. This is a good book if you have never been introduced to PKD's work, since it is very accessible and well written. It is required reading for any PKD fans who have not yet gotten around to it.

Just remember- it is safe when taken as directed.

I was hesitant to leave a review for this book, since 36 people have already done so before me. But I had to! It's probably my favorite novel.

Although the first 50 pages or so might make you think of this as a science fiction adventure about telepaths and terrorists, the story subsequently becomes rather ... um, weird. It's a chilling study of reality. People who have seen the film The Matrix will doubtless see how much that film borrows from Dick's sensibility, particularly in terms of this novel.

The book is somewhere between horror and science fiction. Dick's interest in Gnosticism, the Kaballah, and Jungian psychology all factor into this nightmare-like story. Other Dick novels with a flavor similar to UBIK's include THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH, MAZE OF DEATH, and VALIS. That's probably an overly short list, however, since most of his books deal with reality and metaphysics in some sense or another.

Five stars for sure, but for God's sake use only as directed.

With UBIK, Dick wrote a book which is, in the same time, extremely pleasant to read and extremely confusing - quite a feat...

UBIK is a "best of" Dick's obsessions: it contains obvious reminiscences of The Eye in the Sky (the collective nightmare), The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (the greedy, almighty, elusive son of a b...), Counter-clock world (time running backwards), The World Jones Made (precognition), Time Out of Joint (the fake world), to name a few. In a way, it is also reminiscent of VALIS (the Godlike entity which communicates with the hero by mystical means), which was written 12 years after UBIK!

How could so many themes be exploited so intelligently in such a short novel? The answer is: thanks to Dick's straightforward style. In UBIK, every word counts. The hero, Joe Chip, races with Death: each passing minute lowers his chances to find a UBIK vaporizer and to save his skin. Through Dick's sparing use of words, the reader understands this message: if Joe Chip rests, he will die. Some of Dick's despisers criticize his so-called "hasty" style: can't they see that, thanks to this style, he could describe the undescribable? When you get rid of the superfluous, you get a chance to grab the true essence of horror. At least, that's what Dick thought; I personnally think he was right and that he should be remebered of today not only for his hallucinatory visions but also for his style.

The style allows Dick to exploit the above themes "intelligently", ie in depth and by intertwinig them. But it will probably not allow the reader to fully understand the book after the first reading, unless he's VERY familiar with Dick's tricks, mainly the different levels of reality. One of my friends, who is an experienced sci-fi reader (but not a Dick's reader), still can't understand the last few lines of UBIK, where Runciter finds a Joe Chip coin in his pocket. She asked me, and I said: "I think you should re-read the book entirely." I all the less recommend UBIK to people who don't usually read sci-fi: insofar as the style is pleasant, and the basic cat-and-mouse story catching, they may 1) have a superficial reading of it, ie think that it works only on one level (as an "adventure" novel, like, for instance, Solar Lottery); 2) thus, read 90 per cent of it and think they have understood it all; 3) be completely bewildered by the last 10 per cent and make the conclusion that all the book is a piece of nonsense.

At the end of his life, Dick said in an interview that he was not very satisfied with UBIK: he felt that with this novel, he started to repeat himself. That is absolutely true. There is nothing new in UBIK - Dick only picked up the best of his previous books, confronted for the first time his obsessions one with another, and tried to examine whether the whole could be superior to the sum of its parts. It was like playing poker, canasta, baccara and gin rummy with the same deck of cards. The result is convincing.

Anti-precogs have just upped and vanished from the face of the Earth and the corporation they work for, Runciter's Associates - a psychic security firm - does not know where they have gone. Glen Runciter, the boss who is losing workers, consults his dead wife in cryo-stasis at the Swiss Beloved Brethren Moratorium to see if she can use her telepathic abilities to help them. Runciter suspects that precogs have infiltrated their world by the hand of a competitive corporate business and so assembles a group of anti-precogs for a lunar trip to scan a commercial enterprise for a possible enemy, only for Runciter to end up violently murdered. On their way back to Earth to put Runciter into cryo-stasis Anti-precog Joe Chip, who has now taken charge of the group, notices that their reality may have shifted during the murder as new food appears spoiled and other items have aged. One by one the assembly of anti-precogs must discover what is happening to them, why they are digressing in time and yet aging, why some of them are disappearing, why Runciter is trying to contact them from beyond the grave, which of the anti-precogs may be a competitor trying to control their fate, and what is this "meaning of life in can" called UBIK all about? Chip starts to receive data voice messages from the past and the future that belong to his dead boss prompting him to penetrate the mystery further as the team members vanish or are murdered. Is it possible that Joe Chip may be dead? Are they are in half-life suspended animation? Is this a big dream or a computer controlled virtual reality?

Ubik is one of Dick's more upbeat books, reading more like a high paced action movie than some of his deeper more psychological stories. Instead of creating too many internal questions there is lots of dialogue and a quickly changing environment from apartment rooms, to office blocks, the moon and the virtual world. At the start of every chapter Dick has an interesting anecdote that does not make sense until we are introduced to what this mysterious Ubik actually is. It is also interesting to note that the science term `half-life' is used here to express a virtual world that become an exceptional computer game in our own reality.

Written as a satirical metaphysical comedy Philip K. Dick's delivers on a highly heady tale of anti-precogs in alternative realities predicting the future by manipulating the past in a suspenseful light hearted detective mystery tale that is the perfect intoxicating mind stimulation that the reader seeking original creative science-fiction writing needs. UBIK is the UBIK we search for in our lives, tales that keep us going, beautifully crafted - a theory of life within a theory of life - the endless possibilities of UBIK make it an instant science-fiction classic by the master of science-fiction. A superb follow-up the year after his other masterpiece "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (Blade Runner) was released.

Read more of Philip K. Dick by starting with "Do Androids Dream" then try his early Hugo awaring winning book "The Man in the High Castle" and then this one. The man has some 50 works, each superb novels worthy of any collection.

Ubik is one of PKD's best books. Although the prose is not amongst his best (the openning few pages seem particularly cumbersome) as the story begins to unravel, the characters come alive as only PKD could achieve, and we are taken into a very dark, disturbing yet humourous world where everything might just be nothing that it seems. I don't want to give anything away, to know in advance the path of the story would ruin the effect I'm sure; suffice to say that I can't understand why anyone wouldn't find UBIK a fantastical medition on reality, humanity and survival against the final 'form destroyer' that appeared in so much of PKD's work, death and decay.

This book is an extremely compelling and entertaining novel. Written in a fast-paced style, it is replete with interesting characters, an enticing mystery, foreshadowing elements, and well-placed humour. I was so enthralled with the novel that I could not put it down and finished it in one night.

If you are well-read in sci-fi and watch a lot of sci-fi movies, you will be familiar with the universe and themes here. The novel takes places in a future where pre-cogs and others with telepathic abilities are commonplace, exactly as was portrayed in Minority Report (the PKD novel made into the movie). There is also an overarching theme of living in a virtual world that just isn't right and having to find one's way out (c.f. The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, and many Star Trek episodes such as Spectre of the Gun and The Royale).

This book is simply outstanding. From the opening chapter where the morbid idea of preserving a dying person in "cold-pac" is presented, I was intrigued by the mix of dystopian future and mystery throughout.

The only negative about this book is that whoever wrote the synopsis on the back cover of this Vintage edition was an idiot, giving away way too much information. The information there references a key point that doesn't occur until half way through the novel, and even then that info gives away the whole nature of the remaining story.

This novel will simply take the top of your skull right off...I can still remember exactly where I was when I read those last few pages -- walking between the history and humanities building my fresh year in college...all of a sudden it was like a railroad spike had been driven right through the center of my soul...and this was 20 years ago! This is Dick at his absolute finest...everybody seems to give the awards to 'The Man in the High Castle' (which is a good book), but UBIK is PKD totally uncorked...there are more genuinely fresh ideas in this one book than any 100 average SF tomes, including the ones from the masters. I thought I was the only one who got such a thrill out of this book! Even the names reverberate in my head, GG. Ashwood, Joe Chip, Glen Runciter....oh boy! And, perhaps most mysterious of all, S. Dole Melipone (whose flag fell off the telempath map) -- a psychic so uncontrollably powerful that it takes 3 'anti-psi's to neutralize his field...and then he is GONE! What a wild ride! And when you make it to those last few pages, hooo boy! When I was watching the movie Blade Runner for the first time at theatres in 1982, I felt like I had been sledgehammered when I saw that Dick had died..and there I was, stationed at an Army Base not 80 miles from where he had lived...what a writer. There will never be another like him! LONG LIVE THE DAYS OF PERKY PAT!

Some PKD books are failures and some are not. This is not.

The use of technologies and backgrounds keep you wide awake (interested) to read the first bit of the book. There is one major twist from there. After that particular explosive twist (you'll know when) you're hooked.

The first thing some of you may know is that "Ubik" is short for the latin word that means "everything". You will encounter some major twists and turns in the book that captivate you rather than confuse you. The uses of the beginnings of each chapter are unique and innovative and Joe Chip (from the major explosive twist onwards) is always hanging on the edge, guaranteeing that you'll swallow it in one 4-hour gulp.

The use of words make you want to read it again and again.

The elements just mentioned here make it the best SF ever made.