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Philip K. Dick

Ubik Paperback – April 17, 2012

by Philip K. Dick (Author)

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Named one of Time's 100 Best Books, Ubik is a mind-bending, classic novel about the perception of reality from Philip K. Dick, the Hugo Award-winning author of The Man in the High Castle. “From the stuff of space opera, Dick spins a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you’ll never be sure you’ve woken up from.”??―??Lev Grossman, Time Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business ??―?? deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in “half-life,” a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter’s face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time. As consumables deteriorate and technology gets ever more primitive, the group needs to find out what is causing the shifts and what a mysterious product called Ubik has to do with it all. “More brilliant than similar experiments conducted by Pynchon or DeLillo.”??―??Roberto Bolaño

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Mariner Books
Publication date

April 17, 2012
Dimensions

5.31 x 0.58 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0547572298
ISBN-13

978-0547572291
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

From the stuff of space opera, Dick spins a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you ll never be sure you ve woken up from. Lev Grossman, Time
Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in half-life, a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter s face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time. As consumables deteriorate and technology gets ever more primitive, the group needs to find out what is causing the shifts and what a mysterious product called Ubik has to do with it all.
More brilliant than similar experiments conducted by Pynchon or DeLillo. Roberto Bolano
PHILIP K. DICK (1928 1982) wrote 121 short stories and 45 novels and is considered one of the most visionary authors of the twentieth century. His work is included in the Library of America and has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Eleven works have been adapted to film, including Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly.
"

About the Author

Over a writing career that spanned three decades, PHILIP K. DICK (1928–1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, as well as television's The Man in the High Castle. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, including the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and between 2007 and 2009, the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 17, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0547572298
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0547572291
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.58 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #41,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #107 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books)
- #446 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #542 in Colonization Science Fiction

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Philip K. Dick
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Over a writing career that spanned three decades, Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned toward deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film; notably: Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and in 2007 the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.
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John Atkinson

Is Ubik the best PKD novel? Possibly.

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2021

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My Philip K. Dick binge is finally beginning to tail off.
This is because I am running out of titles to read and he will not be writing any more.
Probably.
Based on this novel, one cannot be sure.
I had read many short stories and a few novels by PKD in the past and something prompted me to read another book by him, so I picked Ubik after checking various rank lists online.
It is an essential read for any person who finds themselves in the throes of a PKD obsession.
It is a mental workout. I would suggest coming to it with a clear head, otherwise threads will be lost and this is a novel with a heavy threadcount.
Is it the best PKD novel? Possibly. It is one I have enjoyed more than others, but I have enjoyed them all, including the philosophical onslaught of VALIS and the early SF novel, Solar Lottery.
PKD is not the greatest stylist who ever lived but the ideas come so fast and so consistently that really, who cares? Literary style considerations are not why you read this guy.
Probably his best writing in that sense is A Scanner Darkly, but it is very dark.
I intend to finish reading all of his novels because I continue to enjoy them.

9 people found this helpful

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Jeff LeVine

One of Philip K. DIck's best novels

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2020

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This book starts off kind of slow – a lot of time is spent introducing a couple of characters and their relationship to the futuristic world of 1992. But around page fifty or so, things start happening that blow one’s mind, and basically, the book rarely lets up from that point, as the mystery of what’s really going on with the set of main characters, anti-psychics, who may or may not have been assassinated on the moon, constantly deepens and the pages just race by. Of special note is the strange set of themes that run through the book, a mix of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a satire of "modern" consumer culture and capitalism gone out of control, and a certain nostalgic feeling for pre-WWII middle America.

5 people found this helpful

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DaveL

Kafka meets the Twilight Zone in the Matrix

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2013

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I'd always heard Phillip K. Dick mentioned in the pantheon of sci-fi writers like Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke and Le Guin. But even though these authors are some of my favorites, I'd never read anything by Mr. Dick. So I decided it was time. When I researched his works, I found that Ubik is considered one of his best and that Time magazine had named it one of the 100 all-time novels (written during Time's publication years 1923-2005).

Starting out, I wondered why. While the plot and world building were intriguing, I found the writing a bit clunky (lots of adjectives and made-up words) and the attempt at future technology dated. (not surprising--it was written in 1969 and takes place in 1992). The style reminded me of a sci-fi version of a Phillip Marlowe detective story--a bit cliché even though it may have been the prototype for the cliché.

But as the book progressed, the mood took hold of me, an unsettling feeling like the kind you get in those seconds between dreaming and awakening, when you struggle to figure out which is which. By the end, I knew I'd been treated to a great book, a complex, well-crafted and intertwined story of multiple realities, none of which is ever grounded enough to let you sort through them. But there's something more: these realities make you question your sense of life, like The Matrix without the machines, a floating reality that is the state of being itself.

The ideas rather than the characters are central to this story. Most of the characters are pretty flat. But once you get used to the world (psychic powers, colony on the moon, dead people in half-life), the mood takes over, as what appears to be reality fluctuates and changes.

It's a slow start, but as I stuck with it, I found it well worthwhile, an original work with a deeply unsettling feel. Think Kafka plus Twilight Zone in the Matrix.

Down-to-earth folks whose world view is grounded in what they perceive to be reality should probably avoid this book. But despite some rough edges, I found it to be a great read.

63 people found this helpful

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Timothy HaughTop Contributor: Baby

Who Is Alive? Who Is Dead?

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2021

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I love science fiction—today perhaps not in the way I loved it back in the 1980’s and early 90’s, when I devoured so much of it—but those authors—Heinlein, Bradbury, Clarke, and, especially, Asimov—were the core of my reading until my tastes expanded as I got older. Dick was not one of my favorites; still, I had read and enjoyed The Man in the High Castle and a few others, and I knew he was the mind behind some of my favorite movies: Total Recall, Minority Report, and, especially, Blade Runner. Ubik was a story with which I was not familiar; however, I decided to give it a read and it took me back to a younger self.

This novel is a mishmash of ideas, which is why I like it. In this world there are people with mental powers like mind-reading, telepathy, and precognition, as well as people who have the ability to counter these powers. Also, people have the ability to communicate with the recently dead, whose personalities live on in an accessible “half-life” for a certain period. Even better is the setting, which shows a world where everything costs, from paying your stove to cook and your front door to open.

The story takes place among a group of people who work for a company that hires people with the counter-powers to deflect the advantages of people who have the powers. After an attack on the company, the world seems to regress back in time for the people in the accident—rockets become jets become bi-planes, etc. The questions the novel explores are things like, is the regression in time truly happening or an illusion? has everyone been killed and is this an experience of half-life? are some dead and some alive? is it ultimately possible to use our experiences to tell who is dead and who is alive? Heady stuff. Great stuff.

Of course, reading it now reminds me also of the weaknesses of some of the science fiction I love. The characters are not drawn particularly strongly. And even the best science fiction cannot help but be a reflection of the time in which it was written. The pay-as-you-go appliances seem surprisingly old-fashioned, and the preponderance of cigarette smoking seems to be something that writers of the 60’s and 70’s couldn’t imagine a world without. And yet, it is easy to immerse yourself in this world and ignore these quaint touches in the face of some very interesting ideas.

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Top reviews from other countries

Steven Kay

Thought-provoking, funny and disturbing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2020

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Philip k. Dick is masterful at creating worlds with different rules - but similar enough to our world that they remain believable. This is the kind of book that you need to read more than once - discovering more layers and detail on each reread. I found it at times funny, at times confusing and always disturbing. If you like light fiction, this isn't for you. If you like something that stretches your imagination - give it a try!

3 people found this helpful

Deckard

Get UBIK! Science fiction masterwork. (Safe if read as directed)

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 3, 2014

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Although I'm familiar (as most people are) with the work of PKD through the various films that his short stories and novels have spawned, and others he has inspired, this was to my shame, my first ever PKD read. Ubik centres on a near future earth where telepathic and pre-cognitive abilities have become commonplace, and indeed dangerous to big business. As Dick wonderfully explains, in a form of natural evolutionary balance, an opposing force has developed alongside them, that of the "inertials": people born with an innate the ability to "block" specific types of psychic ability. When a business magnate hires the Prudence organisation (a company of such inertials) to secure his lunar facilities from telepaths, it's owner Glenn Runciter assembles eleven of his agents for the task, including Joe Chip a debt-ridden technician, and the newly hired Pat, a young woman with the unprecedented parapsychological ability to counter pre-cog ability by undoing past events. But what follows sends Chip and the team spiralling into peculiar events where their very existence seems to shift between past, present, and an eerie alternative universe where an ominous presence appears to be bearing an unfathomable influence. As they struggle to understand what's happening, the lines between reality and unreality begin to blur and the truth perhaps lies only in the strangely scrawled messages and notes that begin to appear in impossibly random locations, and the significance of the mysterious multi-purpose product "UBIK". But can the team survive long enough to find the answers and save themselves?

Ubik firmly deserve the accolade of "Masterwork". It's amazing to think that this visionary novel, exploring the themes of technology and reality is over 50 years old and it's clear why PKD continues to be such a massive influence on the science fiction community. The book itself is beautifully told, with the downbeat and broke Technician Joe Chip, and Prudence owner Runciter sharing the pov for the majority of the narrative. Dick's concise descriptions of a somewhat disconnected and impersonal future through its incessantly rigid machine operated systems and steampunk-esque 'retro-future' devices are brilliantly evocative, whilst his explanations of complicated physics keep you firmly rooted in the genre, yet awlays on the right side of sci-fi babble. In fact, through a seamless use of character and scene, Dick does a perfect job of maintaining tension and momentum in a story that in other hands could easily be nothing more than a massively self indulgent mess. Above all, in spite the wealth of its wonderfully inventive ideas and tehcnological world building, Ubik is much mroe than a set of brilliant concepts moulded into a story. It's a darkly comic, intriguing, and thoroughly absorbing narrative that works because of a perfect symbiosis between setting chracter and story and pushes forward to the next mind bending twist and turn with the masterful ease of an author who understands his reader.

At a basic level it's a solid sci-fi yarn, but Ubik has so much more to offer than that; with PKD's typical themes of humanity and boundaries of reality and in the case of Ubik itself, even the very nature of faith in its human and theological forms.

As an intro to PKD's writings, I can't recommend this highly enough. I for one will now be scouring through his catalogue!

17 people found this helpful

Matt Jenkins

Another Classic Dick Novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 10, 2011

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"Glen Runciter is dead. Or is he? Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages from their boss. And the world around them is warping and regressing in ways which suggest that their own time is running out. If it hasn't already."
-- from the back cover

Written in 1966 and published in 1969, Ubik is Philip K Dick's twenty-fifth published novel. PKD's abiding themes were 'What is reality?' and 'What is it to be human?' and it is perhaps the first that is explored most obviously.

As with all PKD's works this novel makes you marvel at his imagination but also (if you are of a philosophical turn of mind) brings you to question and consider the themes he raises for yourself. PKD also creates characters that I at least find believable. As Ursula Le Guin has said "There are no heroes in Dick's books, but there are heroics. One is reminded of Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people." PKD's characters always strike me as in some way authentic.

In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik as one of the 100 greatest English-language novels published since 1923.

"[Dick] sees all the sparkling and terrifying possibilities. . . that other authors shy away from."
--Paul Williams, Rolling Stone

"Philip Dick does not lead his critics an easy life, since he does not so much play the part of a guide through his phantasmagoric worlds as give the impression of one lost in their labyrinth."
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans"

If you are new to Philip K Dick's work I would also recommend the following novels (which generally seem to be regarded as among his best):

The Man In The High Castle (S.F. Masterworks)
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (S.F. Masterworks)
A Scanner Darkly (S.F. Masterworks)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (S.F. Masterworks)
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (S.F. Masterworks)

That said, though some of PKD's works are better than others, to my mind they are all well worth reading. I would also recommend his short story collections:

Beyond Lies The Wub: Volume One Of The Collected Short Stories
Second Variety: Volume Two Of The Collected Short Stories
The Father-Thing: Volume Three Of The Collected Short Stories
Minority Report: Volume Four Of The Collected Short Stories
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale: Volume Five of The Collected Short Stories

5 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

No

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2018

Verified Purchase

That's a day of holiday reading I'm never getting back.
Painful. Gave up. Tedious tosh. Think I'm done with Mr Dick after a couple such experiences. Paper thin characters. Confusing dialogue and plot.

3 people found this helpful

PTF

Quite good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2018

Verified Purchase

It was an easy read and had some interesting ideas. I like old Sci-Fi as they seem to go in different directions that those of today.
Was quite short and I personally would not award it 'Classic' status as I was not really blown away by it. Maybe my idea of classic is not the same as everyone elses! Would try another of his books in the future, though.

2 people found this helpful