Ubik

1969. Written five years before PKD experienced his 2-3-74 vision which he then spent the rest of his life exploring, researching, recording, challenging, buttressing, re-examining, and relating to his body of work.Ubik-you'll have to read the book to get the meaning of the term-unspools in a future (1992)Dickian world where corporations are interplanetary, the government is global, communication is by fixed-line vidphones, and telepaths, inertials, and precogs read telepathic aura. Oh, and time is fungible.When Glen Runciter of the Runciter organization is wakened in the middle of the night due to the sudden disappearance of yet another of his telepaths, he is concerned enough to "consult his dead wife" in Switzerland. And we enter PKD-land.A ruthless competitor prompts Runciter to assemble a team of inertials for a project on Luna, and then....But I don't want to lay out the plot. Too much is going on in Dick's world. The story is enjoyable and you need to read carefully, flip back and forth sometimes to keep it all straight. Life and death, time and space, forward and backward, energy and entropy are slippery concepts in Dick's hands. Of course no one is what they seem, but neither is the entire tale what it seems. That's what I like and admire about Dick's novels and stories: they take up residence in my pea brain and bug me long after I've finished them.And trying to explain what Ubik is about I feel is only a subjective retelling of the bones of the story, a retelling which can't do justice to the reading/thinking/puzzling experience. A retelling which reduces a story to just a story. Or more likely, I'm just not up to the task. I can't tell you with great confidence what the story is about because I believe the story is so expertly told that it will have a different meaning for a different reader.In Exegesis by PKD, he talks alot about Ubik, (Ubik the book and Ubik the term). He talks alot about Runciter. The novel is one of the several works which figures prominently in his exegetical exercise. In a way, he seems to believe that his body of work, of which Ubik is an important waystation, presaged his 2-3-74 vision. His work became clearer to him after he saw through to the informational underpinning of the universe. That sound crazy to you? Well Dick wasn't crazy and he wrote more than a half million published words (who knows how many unpublished) after 2-3-74 in pursuit of an understanding of that vision.Ubik by itself stands as an entertaining read, a sci-fi tale that challenges our concepts of reality, life, death, and the big one: why are we here? Serious topics explored in a whimsical, playful, smart narrative with oddball characters at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. Misfits like Dick up against the man, trying like hell to make some sense out of this life down here on earth.Ubik is more than a fun sojourn into PKD-land. But if that's all you get out of it, it'll work that way too. Me: I can't get it out of my mind.[...]

As much a mystery-style thriller as science-fiction novel, "Ubik" projects a future (1992, but no matter) in which telepathic citizens, or "psis," are hired to invade privacy and spy on businesses, while "inertials" are employed to neutralize these insidious forces. In this new world, technological advances maintain recently departed citizens in "half life," a temporary state of suspended animation, and commercial moratoriums provide access to loved ones until they eventually pass on to their next full life.Glen Runciter is co-owner, with his half-dead (or half-alive) wife, of the leading anti-psi firm. He and his assistant, Joe Chip, find themselves challenged by new, even more sinister forces they don't quite understand. Some of the members of their firm seem to have died in an act of sabotage, but which ones? Who's responsible? What is Ubik, the aerosol spray that claims to do everything (when used as directed)? And why is time regressing to 1939? Every clue seems to be a red herring, and the "truth" isn't revealed until the very end--or is it?As others have noted, Dick's writing is characteristically featureless (a minimalist, almost pulp-fiction style), but the intricacies of the page-turning plot more than compensate for the pedestrianism. Published in 1969, "Ubik" still entertains while it scrutinizes (and lampoons) both crass commercialism and metaphysics. On the one hand, the omnipresence of advertising and pay-per-use dispensers is dead-on satire in a century where we've become seemingly immune to paying a couple of bucks for a bottle of water with a fancy label on it. (Perpetually in debt, Joe Chip has to pay every time he opens his refrigerator, uses the shower, and enters--or leaves--his apartment, which leads to some pretty hilarious dilemmas.) On the other hand, how seriously you take the "philosophy" presented in this book might depend on your beliefs in the afterlife and/or reincarnation (not for nothing does Dick refer twice to the "Tibetan Book of the Dead"). But even if such metaphysical concepts aren't your thing, you can still sit back and enjoy the ride.

This is my 3rd PKD novel, and much like the others, they start out so slowly that it took me several tries to get past the first chapter without wanting to just put it back down. It took a full 68 pages to get the story rolling to the point where it wasn't just utterly boring. I guess it's like waiting for the LSD to kick in....the first few hours are just waiting for the full effects.Having read PKD a couple times previously, I found the book rather predictable, but after it got rolling, hard to put down. I did have the ending pretty well pegged right from the start. That's what dismayed me when I came to the end and was not at all surprised. It was a typical Dick ending, and therefore predictable. I can say that even with having my own precog ability to guess the ending, it was enjoyable. I wonder how this would really work in a screen play. I kept thinking about that the enitre way through the book...I just don't see it working. I see a lot of Minority Report in there, and didn't much like the screen version of that either...mind numbingly dull and with someone else's interpretation that just didn't work.I can see where people want to say UBIK was God, and Jory seeming like the devil...or death...the way he "ate" people. That was rather odd, and just like someone on acid may think up. It's like he was on one bad acid trip the entire time he wrote the book....which is probably right.

Scritto bene e con una trama tanto interessante quanto scorrevole. L'autore si conferma come un punto fermo nella letteratura di genere, e, in questo libro, riesce a tenere il lettore incollato alle pagine grazie ad uno stile asciutto e, nel contempo, avvincente.I salti nel tempo e nelle realtà si intrecciano in modo limpido e con una fludità narrativa che non risente di un racconto che mette in discussione concetti quali tempo, verità, vita e morte.Da leggere.

Beau livre et très bonne histoire,

Nice copy, I won't attempt to review the book as it is an all time classic. haha.

No es el mejor de Dick pero no está mal. Prepárate para viajar en el tiempo en un multiverso de eventos.

和訳に違和感があり、英語で読んでみました。読んでみると、ああいう訳しかないのかなと感じます。和訳を読んでいないと、やや難しく感じると思います。長いですが、ディックファンなら挑戦すべきかと。