Ubik

Rating:
Summary: Ubiquity on sale now at a low price. UBIK solves everything!
Review: Ubiquity on sale now at a low price

Anti-precogs like Joe Chip, have just upped and vanished from the face of the Earth and the corporation he works for do not know where they have gone. Glen Runciter, the boss who is losing workers, consults his dead wife in cryo-stasis to see if she can use her telepathic abilities to help them. Runciter suspects that precogs have infiltrated their world by the hand of a competitive corporate business and so assembles a group of anti-precogs for a lunar trip to scan a commercial plant for their enemy only for Runciter to end up violently murdered.

On their way back to Earth to put Runciter into cryo-stasis Mr. Chip leading the group notices that their reality may have shifted as new food appears spoiled and other items have aged. One by one the assembly of anti-precogs must discover what is happening to them, why they are digressing in time and yet aging, why some of them are disappearing, why Runciter is trying to contact them from beyond the grave, which of the anti-precogs may be a competitor trying to control their fate, and what is this "meaning of life in can" called UBIK all about?

Written as a satirical metaphysical comedy Philip K. Dick's delivers on a highly heady tale of anti-precogs in alternative realities predicting the future by manipulating the past in a suspenseful light hearted detective mystery tale that is the perfect intoxicating mind stimulation that the reader seeking original creative science-fiction writing needs. UBIK is the UBIK we search for in our lives, tales that keep us going, beautifully crafted - a theory of life within a theory of life - the endless possibilities of UBIK make it an instant science-fiction classic by the master of science-fiction. A superb follow-up the year after his other masterpiece "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (Blade Runner) was released.

Read more of Philip K. Dick by starting with "Do Androids Dream" then try his early Hugo awaring winning book "The Man in the High Castle" and then this one. The man has some 50 works, each superb novels worthy of any collection.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good Finish
Review: Ubik, what is it? That you will not know until near the end of this book... kind of a surprise. "Ubik" is a world of precogs, anti-precogs, telepaths, anti-telepaths, and other "6th sense" individuals, and how they are used as a business. In this world of the supernatural, the dead can be reached in "half-life," allowing them to help run companies from beyond the grave.

The plot: Runciter Associates, which specializes in anti-precogs and anti-telepaths, is summoned for the "job of a lifetime" to Luna. Unknown to them, this job turns into an assasination attempt by a rival firm. Following the attack, with Runciter apparently dead and unreachable in half-life, things in the world are changing rapidly... but why? "Ubik" leads the rest of the firm through a deadly ordeal, one in which most will not survive. Who will live, who will die, and who is behind the radical changes being made to the world?

"Ubik" is a good read for pure entertainment. Part of the middle of the book was drawn out, hence only 4 stars. Recommended for anyone with some spare time who wants to read a novel.

Rating:
Summary: You are dead and I am alive !!!!
Review:
This is my PKD festival time, as I am buying all the PKD novels and reading them straight one aft the other. I read UBIK after VALIS. There is a vast difference in the material and the plot. UBIK, is core sci-fi. It describes a society where, Psi, telepathic and precog ability is a norm and is considered a menace against society. Pre-cogs are people who have the native ability to predict events before they happen. You'll recognize the universe in this novel, if you have seen the movie. "Minority report" which is based on the short story by PKD of the same name.

The universe in this novel: In this PKD universe, People don't completely die, when they die so to speak. There is a continuous "half-life" which follows the death in full life. Here, People don't get buried when they die, but are kept in "Cold-Pac", that is they are kept in freezer like temperatures, connected to certain high-tech apparatus, due to which they can commune with the living for half hour periods a month till the half-life energy exist. This storage happens in moratoriums, where a relative could come, present the id no of the deceased after which the deceased will be pulled out to the consultation room and will be revived for real world communication with the visitor. The person continuous to be awake in half-life, that is the person continuous to live in his own mind, but communicating with the external world, requires the use of photo-phasons and the strength of photophasons keeps diminishing with more communication with the outside world. There are photo-phason amplifiers which try to keep the half-lifer going as much as possible, but a time will come when the half-lifer will even consume this and then even half-life ends and actual brain-death also takes place. This is complete death, death in full and half-life, after which half-lifers take birth in other wombs to start a new life. In this way all energy in the universe is conserved. Anti-psi, anti precog and anti telepath are the people who can be hired, for keeping the Psi's, precogs and telepaths out. The Psi, Precogs and telepaths are not desirable elements as they are an affront to human privacy and hope as they can feel your thoughts and predict your future.

The story: Runciter Associates, a firm providing anti-force services, is run by Mr. Runciter who is alive and Ella Runciter, his wife (in half-life). In matters of business, Mr. Runciter trusts the sharp business acumen of his wife even in half-life, but Ella is slowly dying, but despite this Runciter must revive her now and them for matters of business. The plot gets darker when the firm gets retained for very lucrative deal, the site of work being Luna. The other main character is Joe Chip who is the right hand man of Runciter. He is the group tester upon whom falls the responsibility of testing out the recruits when new talent is brought in by the bounty and to see if they are worthy enough to be recruited as part of the firm. Things don't go as planned on Luna and we are in for a very unnerving experience as PKD decides to confuse us as to what is real and what is an illusion. I won't spill out too much cause that would be an insult to PKD. The kernel ideas in this book are so central to the surprise element in the story that saying much may diminish the enjoyment impact of the book.

In a basic sense, PKD as in all his novels tries to make sense of what is real and what is unreal. Are we alive and if so what makes us think we are alive, what if actually we are all dead and someone else is alive and what we see and perceive as the real world is just an imaginary illusion. What if we are in the MATRIX, so to speak. What is actually that what we call real time, should it always move forward ?. What if real time is actually spiral time, time flowing backwards and what if this is the way it is actually and that we when alive perceive it as the real real time in reverse chronology, which for us, then falsely implies forward going time. The ideas and concepts are skillfully brought to the fore in this dynamite of a novel. At 200 pages odd, it's explosive and inventive shrapnel. You'll get hit by it, before you know what happened. So you want to know what is UBIK...obviously, it's the title and of the novel and you want to know what it means, rite...well,... What If I told you, UBIK is nothing and at the same time everything. That it is present everywhere and at the same time nowhere...doesn't make sense, does it? . Read the book, you will not regret it. THIS BOOK ROCKS !!!!

Lately I am doing a lot of PKD reading. By the time you are probably reading this, I would have reviewed a good many PKD books.I have stocked up on 7 novels of his, which I will be reviewing as I finish with them. I have come to the conclusion that the matrix movie has got to be a PKD idea, as I found out PKD talks about the MATRIX- programmer-reprogrammer and parallel multiple universe concepts in his speech "If you find this world bad, you should see some of the others". This speech is present in the compilation "The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick : Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings": edited by Lawrence Sutin. I highly recommend this to any die-hard PKD fan, although casual readers will also find many of his speeches on relality and perception very interesting indeed. I would have reviewed this too by the time you are reading this. You can find these reviews by clicking on "see all my reviews". I wish I have the best half-life yet !!!....or am I in half-life already...beats me !!!...but if I am in half-life, I hope I am getting into the best wombs to start with :) or do I say to start over with..:). As PKD says in his speech "This may not the best of all universes, but it's not the worst either"


Vikram


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: 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.