What hallucinating narcotic stimulants had PKD been on while writing this wicked metaphysical novel shall remain an obscure affair like most of the enigmatic events occurring in this mind-fucking piece of genius i.e Ubik. One can only conjecture that he was getting some good shit. Maybe something like those drugs in Limitless or Lucy. How cynical of me? The guy had genuine amazing talent for which I should be admiring him. Ubik with its compound chills & thrills is one hell of a ride. Welcome to the vague reality of 1992 where evolution has lead human consciousness to undergo bewildering mystic modifications enabling PSI's/bad guys to telepathically infiltrate into minds, change the future, change the past & what not, adding to human hubris. Human pursuit to elude death has lead to the invention of Half life where the mind of the deceased can be kept alive for some time. Their are inertials/good guys who suffuse anti psi-conic vibrations neutralizing the PSI's. Keeping guard the myriads privacy. A prodigious happening prompted by the PSI's changes the world around a group of these inertials making them struggle through delirium & ambivalence about the reality of their reality. Is what we believe we see or what we see we believe? There are infinite universes with infinite possibilities so maybe this alternate reality created by PKD is in itself a manifestation of real happenings somewhere. Maybe every story that is written has taken place in reality in some parallel universe. Does the world abstractly appear same to everyone? Fuck! Thinking about how we perceive reality makes me feel schizophrenic. *spoilers* As Joe Chip reminiscences these events: GG brought in Pat with her special talent the daughter of those precogs so probably she was in this with Hollis changing the past & getting in the team of 11 to get to Luna why would I take the risk of putting her in the team even the idea of her being my wife seems so real but then that humanoid bomb killed Runciter & we got him in cold pack but too late we were it had never mattered though but then why did we see him dying why would Hollis torture us killing all of us except Runciter how did Runciter got out alive? he just couldn't put 10 of us in one cold-pack in the ship we all can't be saved if we were at Luna for real he did counsel precogs so he knew this was coming so we shouldn't have gone to Luna our organization was breaking down he couldn't keep us on a pay roll anymore so he wanted to get rid of us too far fetched that devil Jory he regressed everything to 1939 trying to feed on the meager brain activity we had left why couldn't Runciter just put us in a different moratorium? how did Ubik work? how did Ella create it? Jory can always regress it Jory was too young & cannot create a world of 1939 but Runciter can but he's on the outside or is he? maybe its Ella maybe there is no Jory & only Ella those messages in a world created by Jory could not have manifested but maybe that is how half life works why didn't they gave us the Ubik when the rest could still be saved it wasn't clinically approved that would be a lame excuse he did not wanted to pay to keep the rest of them alive or half alive maybe I'm the only one in this dream that is why I am the only one who has survived it is my own dream as I lay in a half-dead state in solitude & the group is just my imagination half life is a torture then is it how everyone has it? is it just my sub-conscious that's too fucked up I should kill myself here if I'm in a dream I might wake up like I saw it in that DiCaprio movie which should have won the Oscar for best picture. As Glen Runciter reminiscences these events:Holy Fuck! Did that just happened? How can their be Chip's profile on my notes in fact all my money am I day dreaming this can't be possible I was their on his money & now he's on mine that's what Ella told me she finally passed into the red tunnel but I'm in the real world where things like that don't happen this moratorium is real Ella's right there sitting like a vegetable & has been like that for the last 30 years I am alive not in some god damn half life its just too much I've gone through lately all this stuff & Hollis on my ass is making me paranoid I better calm down take some sleep.
Se il buongiorno si vede dal mattino, questo 2012 si presenta ottimamente con una lettura scoppiettante.Dopo essermi cimentato con Un oscuro scrutare, Le tre stimmate di Palmer Eldritch, La svastica sul sole, è arrivato il momento di affrontare uno dei capisaldi della narrativa dickiana: Ubik.A detta di molti è il capolavoro di Dick. Onestamente ho preferito "Le tre stimmate di Palmer Eldritch". Ma usare il verbo preferire è ingiusto, visto che stiamo parlando di due capolavori che hanno diversi punti di contatto.Per quanto riguarda la mia esperienza personale con Dick, trovo sferzante la constanza con il quale questo autore riesce a riproporre temi a lui cari usando angolazioni e punti di vista diversi. Temi che si tramutano in veri e propri topoi, tra i quali la parte da leone la fa l'immanenza della realtà che viviamo quotidianamente.E' reale quello che ci circonda? E se si, cosa si intende per reale? Queste sono le domande che il lettore porta a farsi leggendo i romanzi di Dick ed in particolare Ubik. L'autore rielabora questo concetto usando diversi viatici: in un "Oscuro scrutare" è l'uso della droga che fa dubitare il protagonista della veridicità di ciò che vede, tocca e sente; ne "Le tre stimmate di Palmer Eldritch" è sempre la droga il viatico creando una realtà parallela; ne "La svastica sul sole" Dick gioca con calchi imperfetti di dimensioni contigue. Tutte realtà tangibili ma effimere.In questo caso le dimensioni-realtà viaggiano sui binari della vita e della morte (o meglio della semi-vita). Durante le peripezie del protagonista svilupperemo una certa empatia nei suoi confronti, chiedendoci dove finisca la vita ed inizi la semi-vita.Ovviamente il finale è aperto, come in ogni romanzo letto finora. E come in ogni romanzo, tutti i vari espedienti dimensionali, temporali e via dicendo sono sempre utili per una critica della immanente società contemporanea. Dick disse che nemmeno lui sapeva bene quale fosse il significato in timo di questo libro. Non è però impossibile leggerci una critica alla società consumistica, alle cosmogonie religiose o un'allegoria della fantascienza stessa, come suggerito da Pagetti nella prefazione (che ovviamente mi son letto come postfazione per farmi influenzare da eventuali interpretazioni).Se non avete mai letto Dick, Ubik è perfetto per iniziarne la lettura.Se avete già letto altro di Dick, non potete ritardarne la lettura.Se non avete intenzione di leggerlo, fate un errore madornale.
Completely absurd yet simultaneously existentially terrifying, this deals very well with one of Dick's foremost recurring themes: the instability, or indefiniteness, or just fundamental inaccuracy of assumptions about reality. Not that I've actually seen it, but in some ways this seems to be a predecessor of what I understand to be the plot of Jacob's Ladder: a group of people whose time seems to be running out in a disquieting manner with deep implications towards their actual state of existence. This sets up a gripping horror story system, then rams it through an even gripping-er series of deformations and distortions, right up to and through the last page.I used to have the issue with Dick that his writing skills were often superseded by his ideas. I don't really have a problem with this so much anymore, as it makes for basically the most fascinating pulp writing ever. So while there's unarguably some unevenness and unconvincing characterization going here, would the much longer book that would be required to give everyone and everything due development actually be preferable to this sheer conceptual rollercoaster? I'm not so sure it would, ultimately. And hence will continue to devour PKD-as-given, as messy and bizarre as he needs to be to shoot his ideas across at his several-books-a-year rate.
—Nate D
Friends, this wild review is 100% PKD approved. Ubik the review is only seconds away! Ubik the review is easy-to-read, easy-to-understand, nonflammable, and avoids directly mentioning those aspects of your existence that might make you squirm. Safe when read as directed. Avoid prolonged viewing. Beware grammatical and typographical errors.____________________________Dick, like Pynchon, has a THING for entropy and he perfected this theme in Ubik. While not a direct part of Dick's Gnostic God trilogy (VALIS, The Divine Invasion, & The Transmigration of Timothy Archer), Ubik still manages to be one of Dick's minor God novels (if the Valis trilogy:Dick's trinity :: Ubik:Dick's Demiurge). Dick seems more than willing to bend entire universes to create a world where he can ask some really BIG questions in ways that give you two more levels of uncertainty. What? WHAT? My first introduction to Dick was age 19. In a SLC airport I bought a copy of Valis (cover looked cool) and figured it would be a fun book to read on a plane. Hours later the plane landed and 20+ years later, I don't think the Earth I landed on was the same as the one the plane left prior to me cracking open Valis. Every time I read another of PKD's novels it is the exact same thing. Something breaks. Time freaks out or at least flips a bit. Something in my brain gets frozen, something else in my head gets lost, and a memory gets replaced. Each Dick novel should come with its own Ubik-type of warning: this novel will alter your reality, even when read as directed._______________- Robert Farwell / Edward Jones library / Mesa, AZ 2014
—Darwin8u
Philip K. Dick'in 1969 yılında yazmış olduğu Ubik isimli kitabı sanırım okuduğum en ilginç kitaplardan birisi oldu. Bilimkurgunun nasıl, çok ufak bir etkiyle bir hikayenin içine girebileceğini gösteriyor. Hikaye bilim kurgu özelliklerinin yanında aslında bir gerilim-korku kitabı olarak ilerliyor.Gerek konusu, gerek eğlendirmesi açısından son derece güzel bir kitap.Konusu çok basit olarak çeşitli medyum yeteneklerine sahip insanların bir organizasyonda çalışması ve aydaki bir görevlendirmede beklenmedik bir patlama sonucunda içinde bulundukları durumu çözümlemeye çalışmalarıyla ilgili.Kitabı okurken filminin niye olmadığını düşünüyor ve incelediğinizde birkaç denemenin yapılmış olduğu ve sonuncusunun 2014 yılında tekrar rafa kaldırıldığını görmekteyiz.Reviewed on October 21, 2014Plot 10/10Characterization 8/10Style 9/10Setting 8/10Entertainment 10/10Overall: 4.5/5.0
—Ugur
