Ubik

Rating:
Summary: I laughed, I cried...
Review: This was the first PKD I ever read, so it's got some sentimental value...as it is, it's stood the test of time to remain one of my all time favorite PKD novels.

Supposedly one of the major influences on The Matrix (along with The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch), Ubik is about the subjectivity of physical reality, death, advertising, consumerism...

In the first few pages PKD introduces more ideas than most sci-fi (I cringe to pigeonhole him so, but it's the closest comparison) authors are capable of their entire careers.

You can't take this book on face value, it engages the reader so completely with it's energy, style and fiercely challenging ideas. Not to mention the plot twists, which will keep you guessing to the final page (without sounding too horribly cliched I hope).

For PKD vets it's comforting to revisit the world he established in his most blatantly sci-fi phase, with all the standbys like precogs, conapts, talking kitchen appliances, etc.

For PKD newbies Ubik is a perfect choice to start in on the incredible feast that are the novels of PKD - trust me.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: With the release of the film Minority Report, Philip K Dick is undergoing a slight revival at the moment. Having read Ubik it's hard to understand why he should have ever fallen from favour. The style of this novel is somewhere between Science-Fiction and Cyperpunk, but since it was written over thirty years ago its science is not really an extrapolation of today's technology like most cyperpunk and a lot of sci-fi, making Dick's future feel both "futuristic" and dated, yet still as fresh and exciting as anything written today.

Are the main characters in Half-life, a computer generated reality created for those that are not alive, yet not quite dead yet? Or are they alive? These, and many other questions, will be answered upon reading Ubik! (Warning: Safe when used as directed. Read with caution)

Rating:
Summary: "UBIK" is Ubik for the reader, read as recommended..
Review: Ubik relieves the user of old realities, of imposing personalities and of tiredness. With all the twists and turns in this fantastic novel, questions are raised in opposition to the reality that we, in the gestalt of the "Chip", normally take for granted.

This book reminded me very much of the movie "Vanilla Sky", so much in fact that I now suspect where the writers behind the movie got their ideas from ...

But unlike the movie, this novel excells in several plots and paranoias, constant dialectic oppositions, either towards competing companies, multi-millionairs, or life/death itself.

This is litterary UBIK, its everywhere in the book, just look closer, there between the lines...
Ubik will relieve you of stagnated attitudes towards the world, and you might even become reborn into a new litterary womb :)

Rating:
Summary: A classic, but not for beginners
Review: With UBIK, Dick wrote a book which is, in the same time, extremely pleasant to read and extremely confusing - quite a feat...

UBIK is a "best of" Dick's obsessions: it contains obvious reminiscences of The Eye in the Sky (the collective nightmare), The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (the greedy, almighty, elusive son of a b...), Counter-clock world (time running backwards), The World Jones Made (precognition), Time Out of Joint (the fake world), to name a few. In a way, it is also reminiscent of VALIS (the Godlike entity which communicates with the hero by mystical means), which was written 12 years after UBIK!

How could so many themes be exploited so intelligently in such a short novel? The answer is: thanks to Dick's straightforward style. In UBIK, every word counts. The hero, Joe Chip, races with Death: each passing minute lowers his chances to find a UBIK vaporizer and to save his skin. Through Dick's sparing use of words, the reader understands this message: if Joe Chip rests, he will die. Some of Dick's despisers criticize his so-called "hasty" style: can't they see that, thanks to this style, he could describe the undescribable? When you get rid of the superfluous, you get a chance to grab the true essence of horror. At least, that's what Dick thought; I personnally think he was right and that he should be remebered of today not only for his hallucinatory visions but also for his style.

The style allows Dick to exploit the above themes "intelligently", ie in depth and by intertwinig them. But it will probably not allow the reader to fully understand the book after the first reading, unless he's VERY familiar with Dick's tricks, mainly the different levels of reality. One of my friends, who is an experienced sci-fi reader (but not a Dick's reader), still can't understand the last few lines of UBIK, where Runciter finds a Joe Chip coin in his pocket. She asked me, and I said: "I think you should re-read the book entirely." I all the less recommend UBIK to people who don't usually read sci-fi: insofar as the style is pleasant, and the basic cat-and-mouse story catching, they may 1) have a superficial reading of it, ie think that it works only on one level (as an "adventure" novel, like, for instance, Solar Lottery); 2) thus, read 90 per cent of it and think they have understood it all; 3) be completely bewildered by the last 10 per cent and make the conclusion that all the book is a piece of nonsense.

At the end of his life, Dick said in an interview that he was not very satisfied with UBIK: he felt that with this novel, he started to repeat himself. That is absolutely true. There is nothing new in UBIK - Dick only picked up the best of his previous books, confronted for the first time his obsessions one with another, and tried to examine whether the whole could be superior to the sum of its parts. It was like playing poker, canasta, baccara and gin rummy with the same deck of cards. The result is convincing.

Rating:
Summary: Safe When Taken as Directed
Review: Every time I read a book by Phil Dick, I'm surprised. How did he come up with this stuff? You get repetitive themes: alternate realities, psychic phenomenon, alienation, a constant questioning of the nature of reality, and so on. But he managed to make it fresh and exciting nearly every time. And if the uniqueness of his prose and plotting isn't enough, he off-handedly peppered all his writing, especially his best, with interesting thoughts, bits of philosophy, and keen insight. Granted, the man's no philosopher, but he'll still get you thinking.

Ubik as a particular manifestation of Dick's psyche is no different. From a few chapters onward, Dick continuously keeps us guessing, trying to figure out what the heck is going on, what Ubik is, and why reality keeps slipping out from under our feet. With almost disgusting ease, Dick manufactures worlds, situations, people, and technology that, though slightly dated faced by today's hyper-aware (of itself, science, theory, fad psychology, what-have-you) sci-fi, nonetheless flawlessly convey something true about man and his relationship to a rapidly changing (some, including Dick, might say disintegrating) world.

What is Ubik? How safe is it? Is Glen Runciter really dead? Why do all the objects in the book keep morphing into earlier technologies (so that what is a state-of-the-art stereo one day is an old phonograph the next)? This book will keep you guessing until the very last page, building up new theories of what's 'really' going on only to dash them to pieces a few pages later.

If you like PKD and haven't read Ubik, get it now. It's one of his best. If you haven't read any PKD, Ubik is a good place to start. Though it's a little disorienting at first, especially if you aren't familiar with his fascination with psychic phenomena, the story quickly grips you, and will also introduce you to most of his major themes. Great, great stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Reality in a can
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Unbelievably weird, quite funny, and thought-provoking
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Ubik Ubik Ubik!!! 5 stars!!!
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: One of Dick's weaker books
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Trying too hard, far from the subtlety of other works
Review: 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.