Play Book Tag discussion

Ubik by Philip K. Dick - 4* - My Review

Published in 1969 and set in 1992, Ubik presents a future populated with telepaths who can read minds and precogs who predict what a person will do next. Of course, businesses employ them to spy on individuals for financial gain. As a countermeasure, anti-psychic “prudence companies” employ anti-telepaths and anti-precogs (rather like anti-spyware). Glen Runciter is a co-owner of a prudence company. While on an assignment on the moon, the team is bombed. There is reason to question whether the primary target is truly dead, since the latest cryo-technology allows the recently deceased to maintain brain activity and exist in “half-life” in cold storage. Joe Chip, one of the team members, takes over running the company, at least temporarily.

This book is a wild ride, involving time regression, disappearing currency, mysterious messages seemingly “from beyond,” and a strange product (or set of products) called Ubik. It starts out as a mystery involving shady corporations and evolves into an exploration of the nature of reality, consciousness, and death. It is a gripping story that becomes increasingly unsettling. It suffers from the occasional objectification of women often found in 1960s SciFi, but setting this issue aside, it is a very thought-provoking and creative novel.

It provides a vision of a world where the boundaries between authentic and artificial experience have become so blurred that the distinction loses meaning. The book remains relevant not so much as something we will encounter in the future, but a present reality, with the blending of the online virtual world with “real life,” which we navigate daily without fully acknowledging its implications. I also find it interesting that Dick could envision a world of surveillance capitalism but not one where people rarely smoke cigarettes!

I think this is one of the best choices from PKD catalogue. I read it as a sort of futuristic neo-noir, and I loved how much the author can pack into such a tight package. He doesn't need 600 pages to get the point across.

I like the way you put it: "futuristic neo-noir!"