Philip K. Dick is one author who features prominently. Partly because he seems to have written ten times as many books as pretty much anyone else, and partly because the majority of said books are considered classics in their own right and essential reading for any sci fi fan. But personally I had yet to even graze the surface of his back catalogue, having only got through Time Out of Joint (excellent, a lesson in how to drip-feed the reader with information at the same rate as the characters understand it) and a collection of his short stories (quite hit and miss, but Beyond Lies the Wub is a masterpiece of the genre).
And so to Ubik. This novel is from Dick's golden era spanning the 60s and 70s, and is generally considered one of his very best, lying right in the middle of the likes of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, A Scanner Darkly and Valis. Published in 1969 and set in the distant future of 1992, it is one of a number of Dick's works to deal with themes of psychic powers, potential future divisions in humanity, and wider philosophical and religious themes. I chose it because of its relatively short length and the fact that it predates his mental breakdown and the truly bizarre work that followed - after all, I am getting to the tail end here.
Dick's speciality is to drop the reader right into the world of his novel and then have them catch up with its rules as they go along, and this is no exception. Having established that mind-reading is commonplace in this future, and introducing the characters in a flurry of encounters, the plot then hinges on a group of agents who specialise in negating the powers of psychics being dispatched to investigate a rival organisation, but instead being ambushed by a terrorist bomb. The action proceeds to unfold in an unravelling manner similar to that of Time Out of Joint, as the protagonist Joe Chip tries to make sense of what has actually happened to his team, who begin to find themselves seemingly drifting back in time.
His conclusion - saved until the final pages of the book and then turned on its head again even after that - is a tragic one, and it allows Dick to delve into the concepts of our perception of life, death and the afterlife. I'm not sure I understood all of what he was trying to say, and nor did I expect to on the first read through - this is high concept science fiction, using its action to reflect on human thought and experience in a way that only the very best works of the genre can do.
What I also found interesting, and which ultimately left me appreciating the universal application of Dick's philosophy all the more, was the author's vision of the future. Ubik's world is one where business trips to the moon, personal rocket ships and the ability to preserve the dead at the moment of death and then communicate with their minds are routine. Yet the characters still complete their various transactions with small change - indeed Joe Chip is prevented from leaving his apartment because he can't find a nickel to put in a slot in his door - and their daily news is provided by a mechanical device that reads newspaper articles out loud. Chip's boss tracks his employees by getting their location from a psychic and then sticking pins in a paper map. It's a strange effect that dates the book hugely, and made me realise just how much the planet has changed in less than fifty years.
4.5/5
Dick's influence on other forms of culture has been substantial. I was initially going to claim that no other author I have read this year has had their work turned into an opera, but it actually turns out that Micromegas and one of the Tintin books both were. Anyway, here's some weird avant-garde futurist-minimalist electro-opera about a Philip K. Dick book that isn't this one. I quite like it.
