[.ca] Ubik (ISBN 8498000831)

From Amazon.com:
Nobody but Philip K. Dick could so successfully combine SF comedy with the unease of reality gone wrong, shifting underfoot like quicksand. Besides grisly ideas like funeral parlors where you swap gossip for the advice of the frozen dead, Ubik (1969) offers such deadpan farce as a moneyless character's attack on the robot apartment door that demands a five-cent toll: "I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it." Chip works for Glen Runciter's anti-psi security agency, which hires out its talents to block telepathic snooping and paranormal dirty tricks. When its special team tackles a big job on the Moon, something goes terribly wrong. Runciter is killed, it seems--but messages from him now appear on toilet walls, traffic tickets, or product labels. Meanwhile, fragments of reality are timeslipping into past versions: Joe Chip's beloved stereo system reverts to a hand-cranked 78 player with bamboo needles. Why does Runciter's face appear on U.S. coins? Why the repeated ads for a hard-to-find universal panacea called Ubik ("safe when taken as directed")? The true, chilling state of affairs slowly becomes clear, though the villain isn't who Joe Chip thinks. And this is Dick country, where final truths are never quite final and--with the help of Ubik--the reality/illusion balance can still be tilted the other way. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk

Reality in a can:
In Ubik, first published in 1969, we find the first distinct appearance of the transcendental element in Dick's work. In his earlier novels, he had been content to demonstrate that there is no "objective" reality irrespective of consciousness: the mind essentially constructs its own world. In Ubik, the protagonist Joe Chip, condemned to a perpetual "half-life" of suspended animation after a fatal accident, finds his world inexorably deteriorating around him. The only thing standing between Joe and complete extinction is a product called Ubik, which comes in spray cans, and, when sprayed on, instantly counteracts the forces of destruction. Among other things, Ubik appears as a razor blade, a deodorant, a bra, a breakfast cereal, a pill for stomach relief, plastic wrap, a salad dressing, a used car, and a savings and loan. As its name implies, it is ubiquitous. Though a symbol of the divine, it is not a mere magical aid but a gift that can only be summoned by the person who needs it through an exercise of will and intelligence. The ending of Ubik has a twist that calls into question the substantiality of the "real world." This is my favorite PKD novel, the one that combines the most dazzling metaphysics with the most involving story and characters. After reading it, one can only start scanning one's own environment for hopeful signs of the redeeming Ubik!

Unbelievably weird, quite funny, and thought-provoking:
I've been reading the works of Philip K. Dick for several years now, and have read most of his more well-known works, thought I still have a lot to go. I have read a lot of books from many different genres, including the classics and technical writings, and the books of Philip K. Dick are, in many ways, the most complex of them all. Ubik was not his most original or creative work, as the author himself admitted, but is a great blending of many of the elements that make up the PhiDickian universe. Here we find Dick toying with many of his favorite themes: paranoia, isolation, alienation, paranormal phenomenon, and, of course, the slippery nature of reality. Ubik works on several levels, as do all of Dick's books; one is a quasi-detective story, which will interest the average reader with its suspense and intrigue, and another is as a dark metaphysical comedy. Much of the book is funny, in its way, wavering from black humor to near-slapstick. All the time, we are drawn further and further into the world of the book as weirdness piles upon weirdness and the mystery of the book thickens. Like all PKD, it is superbly and complexly plotted -- almost unimaginably so. His works never cease to amaze me. How did he come up with this stuff? It is almost incredible that he did -- and so easily and quickly at that. Dick spits out immensely imaginative subplots and asides that lesser authors could build an entire career on. His plots are the most complex I have ever encountered in literature, surpassing even the convuluted multiplexity of other science fiction works. Dick had a truly incredible imagination. That said, Ubik, as with all PKD, is very tightly written and extremely focused; though all of his books contain enough material for years of pondering, most all of them are around the 200 page range. Not a word is wasted. Aside from the ideas -- Dick peppers all of his books with philosophical asides, caustically witty remarks, and laugh-out-loud funny dialogues -- Dick is always worth reading for his superb writing and masterful technique. Ubik is quite a disorienting read at first: it drops right into the middle of the story, and it will take the reader a little bit to come to grips with what is going on (as another reviewer pointed out, another author would've spend many pages setting this part of the story up.) As with the best PKD, just when it all starts to come together in one's mind, the book takes a completely different turn, and everything that one has thought up to that point is eradicated. And then it makes another twist, destroying again everything that had come before. And then another. And then, finally, the ending offsets everything that has come before and puts the entire book in a different light. Only Philip K. Dick could make this work. This is a rich, rewarding, and immensely engrossing work that is complex, funny, and highly entertaining. I finished it several days ago, and have been pondering it -- but I'm still not sure I understand the ending. Or the book at all. I almost always have this feeling after reading Dick. Is there something more? What did I miss? One always wants to read the book all over again. That is the true mark of a great author.

Ubik Ubik Ubik!!! 5 stars!!!:
This book is fantastic! I have to admit that Ubik was the first Philip K. Dick book I read and I was thrilled by his concepts. I loved this book from the very first page on because it is...abnormal. In the meantime I have also read a couple of other Philip K. Dick books but Ubik is the one which is above all them. The kind of ideas he throws at you are just stunning. Objects are morphing back into earlier technologies (a fancy high speed elevator transforms into an old cable operated thing), a talking doors threatens to prosecute one of the main characters, messages from a dead guy, the picture of the same dead guy turns up on money coins, and last but not least the all important question: are we dead or is everybody else dead? The book has only 200 pages and not a single word is wasted. The story is superbly and plotted in a complex way and takes countless unexpected turns. Every single time when you start to believe what this is all about, it just changes in such a drastic way that you have to put your thoughts together from scratch. Philip K. Dick is a master in his own genre and I don't think anybody else dares to enter his realms. The only sad thing which is currently happening to his brilliant stories is the way Hollywood turns them into cheap blockbusters such as Pay check. I can understand that the complexity of his stories can not be easily turned into movies but using 10% of his genius ideas and 90% action crap is not good Enough!

Trying too hard, far from the subtlety of other works:
Dick once more plays with his favourite theme, i.e. whether reality is for real. But in Ubik he does so in a heavy way, far from the subtelty one can see in The Man in the High Castle for example. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of books dealing with Reality that are more subtle and smarter than this one. It's not that Dick was uninspired when he wrote it - it's full of energy, has humour as usual. But it just did not work out well that time. Age cannot have been the problem because he was just 7 years older (41) when he wrote Ubik, than when he wrote TMITHC. I am a big fan of Philip K Dick, but Ubik is simply one of his weaker books - most if not all writers have them.

One of Dick's weaker books:
Phil Dick is my favorite writer, but of the 15 books I've read by him, this is my least favorite. The plot is confused and the characters, never a strong point in PKD's books, are one-dimensional at best. The title of the book, which seems to be related to entropy, reality, and the notion of saving grace, is given very little treatment. These notions could have made for a great novel, but the ideas are not even half-fleshed out.