Ubik (Vintage)

Media:	Paperback
Author:	Philip K. Dick
Publisher:	Vintage
Release date:	03 December, 1991
List price:	~~$12.95~~
Our price:	$10.36 that is 20% off!

Ubik (Vintage)

Average rating: Stars

Is it MY fault?

I have just withdrawn my earlier review for this novel because Amazon does not like the same item to be reviewed by one reviewer more than once. But I have just reread this novel and the light of my life experience has exposed so much more in it. Philip Dick is my absolute favourite writer - ahead of such others as Ivan Turgenev, Joseph Conrad, WH Hudson, Anna Kavan, Mary Shelley.... Not only is it his mind-bending plot lines, his dead pan humour, his gruelling descriptions of disaster (almost minimalist but enormously effective) but also his research - philosophy, theology, psychology. When I read 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' he taught me all about empathy.

This novel is about a psychopath - hidden until the very end, but impacting everywhere. There is a remedy for the disastrous personal collapses the psychopath triggers and how I wish I had just such a remedy for a colleague of mine! Not for me, but for her and all those who work and live around her. I suffered a recent bout of bullying in the workplace which alerted me to the fact that this bully might be something much worse and his impact in our community of workers may be much wider than just against me.

By chance a television program alerted me to a book, just published, called 'Working with Monster' by John Clarke and published by Random House Australia. Reading Clarke's book - not only about the workplace psychopath but also about his or her victims - has shown me how well Philip Dick plotted these characteristics into his novel. There was, for me, another inexplicable link between my workplace candidate psychopath (I cannot diagnose it - I am not a professional in these matters) and 'Ubik' - so spooky as to suggest to me that there are messages for me in this - but from where?

'Ubik'is a great novel, and its foundations are very sound. Read it and laugh at Joe Chip's fight with the autonomous doors and other devices, be fascinated at the wonderful pen picture of Wendy Wright, be horrified at Joe Chip's stagger up the stairs under the unsympathetic eyes of Pat Conley, follow the speculations of the characters in this thriller that takes you back from the future of 1990 (as it was imagined by Philip Dick in 1969) all the way back to 1939.

My heading to this review is the question posed by so many psychopath's victims - and it is a quote from 'Ubik'.

What did I write in the earlier review?

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After scanning some reviews of 'Ubik' I was appalled. There are people who believe Philip K Dick couldn't write, couldn't plot a story!!!! Now I don't claim to be a technical purist in these matters but I can certainly tell great writing when I read it. Here are two things to look out for in 'Ubik'. Firstly there is a character description of Wendy Wright that starts 'As always, when the opportunity arose, Joe took a long astute look at the girl whom, if he could have managed it, he would have had as his mistress, or even better, his wife.' and ends with '...... She had too much control over herself and outside reality for that.' And then there is the chilling collapse of Joe Chip at the start of Chapter 13, watched by an apparently unsympathetic Pat Conley.
I recommend those who have not yet experienced 'Ubik' to read it with an open mind and a preparedness to let the plot take you for a ride - whatever you do, don't try to make your 'solution' to the twists and turns as they unfold THE only possible resolution. Philip Dick will almost certainly take you another direction.

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other recommended reading:
John Clarke - Working with Monsters
Philip Dick - A Maze of Death
Philip Dick - A Scanner Darkly
Philip Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Ubik (Vintage) - Philip K. Dick

Dick at his best

UBIK is easily my favorite P.K.D. novel, and for good reason. Excellently paced with plenty of mystery, intrigue, and dashed with Dick's trademark humor. A rollercoaster of a plot dressed in great sci-fi concepts. This is sci-fi at its best!

Philip K. Dick - Ubik (Vintage)

One of PKD's best

Glen Runciter is the head of a prudence organisation, a company which utilises "inertials", people who are able to counteract the powers of "psis", i.e. telepaths, pre-cogs and other espers. Runciter, his main talent scout Joe Chip and 11 of his top inertials are lured to the Moon to scan a company which has possibly been infiltrated by psis. They are attacked however by one of their business rivals and Runciter is apparently killed. Chip and the others frantically return to Earth and transfer his body into cryo-stasis, where his consciousness continues in what is known as "half-life", a state midway between life and death. Shortly afterwards, Runciter's image begins to manifest itself everywhere. Chip hears his voice speaking on phones, while he appears on TV commercials and even on coins. The world around Chip begins to de-evolve and regress into the past. He starts receiving cryptic messages which direct him to get hold of a substance called "Ubik", which seemingly holds the key to the strange events happening around him.

This is one of PKD's more focused works, with a far more satisfying conclusion than many of his other novels. A surreal fugue set in the afterlife, where Dick's trademark quirky dialogue and characterisations seem perfectly at home. This is a memorable sci-fi novel which stayed on my mind for days after finishing it.

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