Ubik

This is one of those books that has had a whole lot said about it, so I'm not going to go too deep right now. Maybe I'll have more thoughts later. Suffice to say, I bloody loved it.

In the far flung future of 1992 capitalism has reached the point where you have to pay your front door door to be able to get in or out and corporate espionage teams are made up by all groups with various psychic and anti-psychic powers. When a mission on the moon blows up in his face Joe Chip is hurled into the past and and must try to work out what the hell is going on as time decays around him.

Essentially, this is a murder mystery with a phenomenal sci-fi framing device using denaturing time and instability of objects that echo the confusion and degrading show more sanity of the protagonist and reader. This doesn't do it justice though. It also has some fun and pithy adverts.

There's commentary on capitalism, consumerism, death, letting go, and more, which is hardly surprising for a Philip K. Dick novel, but there is something truly fascinating about how he goes about all of this, even when compared to his vast and bizarre library. I can see why this was his favourite.

This book is incredible. I literally said, "what the fuck?!" moments before it ended and then, "motherfucker!!!" much louder when it finished. I'm not saying I haven't ended a few books that way before, but it is rate that they are accompanied by positive feelings towards said book. show less

Ubik is easily one of my favorite PKD novels: less lauded but more tightly composed than VALIS, it too makes pervasive but subtle use of Gnostic themes throughout. In his self-exegetical notes, Dick paired Ubik with The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch as stories grounded in the mechanism of the Eucharist. (In Three Stigmata the Eucharist is averse or malign--a sort of interplanetary Black Mass.) The initial science-fictional concept in Ubik is that of the "moratorium," a medico-funerary facility that arrests brain deterioration in fresh corpses, so that the "dead" can be milked for small amounts of further interaction with their survivors; all of which opens up the question of the subjective experience of such "death," not to mention show more all death, and perhaps life as well.

The characters are unusually clear, lacking the amorphousness that Dick's psychological approach often inflicts on his protagonists, and this feature may well have been a function of his onetime development of this story as a prospective film treatment. In my dream universe, David Cronenberg has already directed a production of Ubik! show less

This one was weird -- the kind of weird that makes me feel like it was a first draft that ended up different than what the author imagined at the start. For such a bonkers book it felt pretty uninspired.

Ubik is an almost Van Vogt-esque series of plot twists that don’t read like they were planned. The beginning of the novel is set up as a conflict between a group of telepaths and precogs used for corporate espionage, and a counter-corporation of “inertials”, who nullify the gifts of the former group. But every few chapters, the plot turns around, time travel is introduced, and a new series of concerns takes over the main stage. What starts as a futuristic telepath corporation on a lunar mission ends in an American hotel in 1939 show more where telepathy is entirely irrelevant, with a “plot twist” that really is an infodump out of left field. (The infodump is another reason I suspect this novel was largely unplanned.) There’s an aimless critique of sorts of capitalism that runs through the novel, but it all peters out into nothing of substance.

Ubik was written in the late sixties and I found it dated in many ways. For one thing, its future setting with colonisation of the solar system and organised psi power corporations is the year 1992. I tried, but I couldn’t suspend my disbelief: in 2019 more years have passed since 1992 than there were years between 1992 and 1969, when this book was published (27 vs 23). Then there was the ostentatious drug-taking, and the madcap clothing choices -- I couldn’t take that seriously either. There are also many plot devices that have been done to death since the sixties, including the big twist at the end, where it turns out everything takes place in someone’s headspace.

In addition to being a very 1960s book, this was also a very American book, and a number of factors would have more of an impact on me if I were either from the US or had lived through the sixties. For instance: the USA have ceased to exist as a nation, having been absorbed by the North American Freedom Confederation; the fact that the former US is now called a Confederation; the Confederation’s currency is routinely accepted in Zürich, Switzerland; taking drugs -- both uppers and downers -- is an entirely normal part of daily life. Also, the time travellers can tell what year they are in by looking at car models and the kind of brands for sale in shops, and those sections were very nostalgic for certain kinds of americana. All that felt decidedly part of the unexciting American wallpaper to me, a 21stC European.

So yeah. This one was not really for me: I found it pretty lacklustre. The Van Vogt-esque plot was not entertaining, and many other things were either too dated or too American for me. show less

To make a living as a writer Philip K Dick had to hammer out novels at an incredible rate, typically two or even three a year, and I’ve once or twice found myself wishing he’d had a bit more time. That isn’t the case with Ubik though, which is one of his best.
    It’s the near future (1992, still decades away when he wrote this one and which seems to have been a favourite year of his) and there are people around with psychic abilities: telepaths who can read your mind, precogs who can see what you’ll do next. Inevitably, too, there are businesses who employ them to snoop on the rest of us—and, in opposition to these, also anti-psi prudence companies who use anti-telepaths and anti-precogs able to find and neutralise the show more snoopers (“Defend your privacy. Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really alone?”). Glen Runciter is co-owner of one of the latter—or was at least, until during a field operation his team is bombed by its main competitor and Runciter himself killed…apparently. But is he really dead, or is something far stranger going on?
    All this is just the set-up though and doesn’t even hint at where the story takes us next, because it isn’t really about psychic powers at all and is much more yet another exploration of one of the author’s career-long obsessions: the nature of reality and the question of whether the world we think we’re living in is what it seems. The events which follow Runciter’s death are like a dream, but more in the sense of a bad dream: the world is pervaded by a sinister atmosphere and a strange feeling of things out of control, of slipping away or running down like entropy.
    This is probably my favourite novel of Dick’s and has everything in it that’s typical of his writing: it’s funny, intelligent, imaginative, unsettling. Since his death in 1982 they’ve filmed a growing number of his short stories and novels (Total Recall, Blade Runner, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, A Scanner Darkly), but this is the one I’ve always most wanted to see up there on the silver screen. show less

"I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be."

Wow. How I overlooked this book for so long, I don't understand. It is an amazing work, a dark and stormy night of the soul, no doubt, and I have two threads of thought about it as I stare at the closed book I just finished.

The first starts with simple comparison; if Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" is an absurd, darkly-humorous scramble of time and reality, "Ubik" is a grim rumination on reality as a construct beyond our control. As the pace and intensity mount over second half of the novel, the lurking fear of alienation and dislocation become a palpable presence that can follow you around the neighborhood. Living in the current dystopia of 2020, it is easy to wonder show more what lurks behind the appearances of real life. The USA of 1969 in which Dick wrote "Ubik" must have seemed as hallucinogenic and malignant to him, to imagine such conscious manipulation occurring.

The second is a set of "Aha!" moments, in which Tad Williams' "Otherland" comes into a clearer focus. TW's "Sprootie" and "The Other/Lord Set" are pretty much riffs on Ubik and, [no spoilers] here, if played out differently. It is certainly easier to sleep at night having read of Otherland's uber-VR than Dick's world of RL and "half-life"; in TW's net, the characters but for Jonas know they're in a simworld, but characters in "Ubik" don't know where they stand. Nightmare times, indeed.

This is a top-shelfer, to go on a read-again rotation. But not too often. show less

Well, damn. I think this was the quickest I've gotten through a Dick novel, and I'm not sure what to think of it. The speed, not the book. I loved the book.

Look, I love Philip K. Dick. I frequently joke with students and colleagues that I'm going to form a religion based on his writings, and I'm not half joking. I've actually thought about how I would do this, from writing down all declarative sentences in each novel, with each novel's compression equalling a book in new holy text. There are 44 novels, more than the Protestant bible, and I dare say mine would be more interesting. I don't know what I'd do with the short stories, however. Maybe psalms?

I think part of the subconscious reasoning behind my "joke" is the fact that all of show more Dick's novels seem to have to do with religion anyway-- or they are at least metaphysical in nature, dealing as they so often do with perception and reality. [b:Ubik|22590|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327995569s/22590.jpg|62929] is no different, and is perhaps the least "scientific" of Dick's novels. The central characters are all psychics of various kinds, though this is like so much of the details of Dick's writing beside the point. What the book really seems to be about is the essence of existence, what happens when between life and death, and how (or if) we can even tell the difference. I suppose, in a sense, Dick writes the same story over and over again, only with different MacGuffins.

As always, I hesitated in giving this novel five stars. If Dick's greatest novel is [b:Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep|7082|Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?|Philip K. Dick|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327865673s/7082.jpg|830939], as I think it is, and that is five stars, how can this one also be? Of course, my relative enjoyment and appreciation of this or any book can't be in comparison of any other, but I do tend to think that way. Unlike most Dick novels, there was even a point late in the reading when I felt a discernible sense of disappointment. Certainly, the "soft" nature of the science in this fiction contributed to that. But then, the best science fiction in my view is the kind that places the world before you and doesn't attempt to explain how things are different. Dick, in fact, rarely bothers. At times, it almost seems he doesn't care too much if the tropes of science fiction present in his novels hold up-- by that I mean, [b:Ubik|22590|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327995569s/22590.jpg|62929] takes place in what is obviously meant to be the future, but much like Orwell, Dick didn't bother to put it too far into the future. Not even thirty years. It's strange, at times, when you realize that you're reading a book about a future world that takes place in 1992, twenty-one years in the our past.

Ultimately, however, my disappointment faded as I remembered that Dick is no dogmatist. His books don't serve the expectations of science fiction as a genre, those expectations provide the backdrop for his books. Never does Dick attempt to explain the science behind the psychic "talents" the characters in [b:Ubik|22590|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327995569s/22590.jpg|62929] have (but rarely use), or the science that allows other characters to exist in a kind of cryogenically-frozen "half-life". Nor does he need too, because this isn't the point. They simply can, and do, and besides he has a story to tell, ideas to explore. In [b:Ubik|22590|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327995569s/22590.jpg|62929], he does so with great humor (the ad copy that prefaces each chapter are hysterical and get more so as the novel progresses), and the character of Joe Chip, like Rick Deckard and so many others, is just so downtrodden but likable. That goes a long way in my book. What goes even farther is the fact that, yet again, Dick gives me a premise that I'll undoubtedly chew on for days to come. This time, it's the idea that all forms of advancement, be they technological or social, contain within them images of past iterations, so that the advance form draws on the early one. We see this literally when cars revert to older models, sociologically when attitudes toward race and global politics revert to more narrow-mindedness (at least to this progressive reader), and metaphorically when the cure-all Ubik reverts to other forms of snake oil.

What I really love is that, having completed the book, I have a sense of what is going on under the surface, but I haven't figured it out completely, not just yet. In that way, reading Dick is like having a good meal, but not eating to over-full. Rather, I now can look forward to feeling sated, and begin to digest. That will always get five stars in my book. show less

A clever, original and often very funny sci-fi story. It is about psychic power battles, the nature of death, alternative reality and changing the past. Or not.

FUN, FUN, FUN - the clothes
It was published in 1969 and starts off in a sufficiently plausible but amusingly implausible 1992. In particular, the clothes take the flamboyance of the late '60s to extraordinary heights, for no obvious reason, other than fun. On the second page, we meet a man wearing "a tabby-fur blazer and pointed yellow shoes", which is fair enough, but only three pages later, an elderly man wears "a varicolored... suit, knit cummerbund and dip dyed cheesecloth cravat". After that, you're on the lookout for them, so here are more:

* "gay pin-stripe clown-style show more pajamas"
* "a sporty maroon wrapper, twinkle-toes turned-up shoes and a felt cap with a tassel"
* "electric yellow cummerbund, petal skirt, knee-hugging hose and military-styled visored cap" plus gauntlets. And that's a man.
* "a cowboy hat, black lace mantilla and Bermuda shorts"
* "wrapped in a superior and cynical cloud of pride"
* "floral mumu and spandex bloomers"
* "natty birk-bark pantaloons, hemp rope belt, peek-a-boo see-through top and train-engineer's tall hat" (a man, as most of these are)
* "hip-hugging gold lamé trousers, yet somehow created a stylish effect. Perhaps the egg-sized buttons of his kelp-green mitty blouse helped... he exuded a dignity"!
* "a shift dress the color of a baboon's ass" (a man)
* "fuchsia pedal-pushers, pink yak fur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse and a ribbon in his waist-length, dyed white hair"
* "the elastic band which - fashionably - compressed her breasts... had elegant embossed fleur-de-lys"
* "tweed toga, loafers, crimson sash and purple airplane-propeller hat"
* "green felt knickers, gray golf socks, badger-hide open-midriff blouse and imitation patent-leather pumps"
* A girl wearing jeans, a canvas work shirt and muddy boots is told she's "dressed oddly"!

You have to wonder what might have prompted such wild flights of fancy. ;)

Another distinctive feature is that every chapter is prefaced with a short advert for Ubik, and each one demonstrates a different and amazing use for the wonder product. Each ends with a slightly worrying caveat about only being safe if used exactly as directed. Its enormous range of uses remind me of Flanders and Swann's Wompom. They sing it here, or read the lyrics here. I've also reviewed their songbook here.

Twice, characters say "so it goes", which I assumed was a nod to the famous catchphrase of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (see my review here), but both were published in the same year, so I guess it's just a coincidence. There is also mention of a dead parrot, but that can't be a nod to Monty Python as their famous sketch also dates from... 1969! Spooky, eh? Maybe PKD really could glimpse the future?!

Runciter's space transporter is called Pratfall II.

PLOT
Anyway, the crux of the story is the constant battle between people with psychic powers (such as precognition and telepathy) and "prudence" organisations that supply "inertials" who block such powers (often by using such powers themselves). Who are the goodies and who the baddies in such a setup: "A policeman guarding human privacy" or "trying to turn the clock back"?

Glen Runciter is the larger than life figure who heads one such prudence organisation, and Joe Chip is his right hand man. Pat is a new recruit who can change the past in such a way that people don't even know it. She and Joe may or may not have a thing for each other.

They and eleven of their best go to Luna for a rather mysterious job. After that, things turn strange: perceptions of reality shift, and time seems to slip back as well. Some objects age, some change, but not everyone's experience is the same. Are they going back in time, is the past receding, or are they in some other reality? The only shame is that from this point on, the clothes are less mad.

Joe is the principal character trying to work out what is going on, how to survive and so on. It's hard to explain further without spoilers.

THE FUTURE
Dick's 1992 is very commercialised: you have to pay for almost everything, though it's mostly coin-operated - even one's own front door! When someone couldn't find a coin and tried to dismantle his own lock, it threatened to sue him!

But on Luna, "All our medical care... is free. But the burden of proof that he is genuinely ill rests on the shoulders of the alleged patient." I hope no UK politicians think of that as a way to "save" the NHS whilst also saving money. (They'll love the "alleged".)

Dick doesn't foresee mobile internet etc (who did?), but the pape machine is rather like a printer connected to the internet.

HALF-LIFE
Runciter's wife, Ella is at a moratorium, in cold-pac half-life. She died, or near enough, but is in cold storage which provides a sort of life-extension. Most of the time she's unconscious, but she can occasionally be contacted; how many times, over how many years depends on lots of factors around the death and the freezing.

The moratorium and its inhabitants are significant plot elements, but are also used to explore the fuzzy boundary between life and death. Runciter consults with Ella, but how is this different from using a medium to consult the properly dead? Those in half-live can sometimes communicate with each other, "wandering through one another's mind gives those in half-life the only -", but they can't initiate contact with those outside. "'She exists... she merely can't contact you.' Runciter said 'A metaphysical difference which means nothing to me.'"

QUOTES
* "Herbert felt the weight of the hand, its persuading vigor". Runciter's hand (and vigor).
* "Nothing touched his mind... He chuckled, but it had an abstract quality... his voice always boomed, but inside he did not notice anyone, did not care; it was his body which smiled, nodded and shook hands." (Runciter again.)
* A messy apartment "radiated the specter of debris and clutter".
* "On his face, a feral, hateful expression formed, giving him the expression of a psychotic squirrel."
* "His voice had a squeaky, penetrating, castrato quality to it, an unpleasant noise that one might expect to hear... from a hive of metal bees." show less