Saturday, 12 May 2018 04:58 pm
Book Review: Ubik
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deckardcanineI'm not about to dig for my old reviews of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Penultimate Truth. Just know that in my experience, Philip K. Dick tends to get off to a good start, but when it's not a short story, he seems to lose interest by the third act. He also has a tendency toward sci-fi so soft that you might as well call it fantasy, at least by, again, the third act.
Fortunately, Ubik wastes little time revealing its strangest premises. Written in 1969 and set in 1992 (heh, less than halfway to the present), it presents a fair number of people with one psionic ability or another, some of which cancel out others. We never learn where they got these powers; maybe it's just a chance mass mutation, like X-Men with less variety. In such a world, there is a strong demand for specialists called "inertials" to prevent telepaths and, yes, "precogs" (13 years after publication of "The Minority Report") from misusing their powers. Enter Runciter Associates, a company designed to provide that service. Alas, the gang of one Ray Hollis will stop at nothing to nullify these forces.
The other major premise is "cold-pac," in which people who are generally called dead are stored, kept in dreamlike mental activity, and occasionally made alive enough to converse for a while. Geriatric CEO Glen Runciter keeps his wife there, consulting her on important company matters, but he fears that her "half-life" will end very soon. When Hollis leads Runciter and a bunch of his employees into a death trap (early enough that the back cover says almost as much), they struggle to get him to cold-pac on time. It appears to be too late, but then they start witnessing signs that he can still reach them in some ways...among other events that don't smell right....
Toward the beginning, we get a few other made-up pieces of language. I had to look up "teep" later; it means "telepath." And the first time someone asked, "Anti-what?", when the previous sentences didn't mention anti-anything, I was left scratching my head. The idea is that anyone coming to Runciter Associates has to have an anti-something power. Don't worry; you won't have to deal with much of this. Pretty soon, Dick has his hands full with too much other weirdness for distraction.
Perspective shifts now and then, but there is a clear main focal character: Joe Chip, a tech whom Runciter trusts as a judge of prospective inertials. With Runciter out of commission, Joe is the de facto new leader of the company, or at least of the group that had fallen for the trap. He would not enjoy much confidence as a CEO, because he never holds onto money for long. This is especially bad in a world where you have to spend a nickel just to open your front door -- from the inside. If he didn't have visitors, he might have starved to death. I might call this the scariest aspect of Ubik, but there is definite competition.
With Joe is a new recruit and semi-girlfriend, Pat, who has an especially rare power of adjusting the past without time-traveling per se. Joe fears her potential but can't deny how useful it might be under the right conditions. Of course, when things go horribly wrong, she's one of the first people blamed. Her limits, tho definitely existent, remain unclear.
Oh, the title? Each chapter starts with a script from a commercial for a product called Ubik, and each time, it's something different. We don't actually see any of these products come into play, nor is Joe or any other focal character evidently aware of them. What they do know is that Ubik has existed in many forms and that at least one form, in a spray can, helps counteract the many things going wrong around them.
I'd read that Dick had a history of recreational drug use. Never has it been more obvious to me, when about two-thirds of the book takes place down a rabbit hole. I can't say it comes across as brainy so much as escapist, albeit not to a world I'd like to visit.
As it happens, the last movie I reviewed was Jacob's Ladder. I see definite similarities: Someone comes out of a deadly attack and then finds himself in a bizarre nightmare, trying to make sense of it all. But only in Ubik do we know for sure that Joe's not the only one experiencing it. And in a world of psychics, there are multiple conceivable (if half-logical) explanations to choose from. I actually had to revise my understanding on the very last page.
No, the ending isn't exactly happy or just. But then, none of the possibilities to come to my mind held much promise for the future of Runciter Associates.
I can see why Michel Gondry took interest, but I think I'll avoid reading Dick from now on. For something completely different, I've taken my mom's suggestion of Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Effect. Having liked the first volume, I'm counting on it.
Fortunately, Ubik wastes little time revealing its strangest premises. Written in 1969 and set in 1992 (heh, less than halfway to the present), it presents a fair number of people with one psionic ability or another, some of which cancel out others. We never learn where they got these powers; maybe it's just a chance mass mutation, like X-Men with less variety. In such a world, there is a strong demand for specialists called "inertials" to prevent telepaths and, yes, "precogs" (13 years after publication of "The Minority Report") from misusing their powers. Enter Runciter Associates, a company designed to provide that service. Alas, the gang of one Ray Hollis will stop at nothing to nullify these forces.
The other major premise is "cold-pac," in which people who are generally called dead are stored, kept in dreamlike mental activity, and occasionally made alive enough to converse for a while. Geriatric CEO Glen Runciter keeps his wife there, consulting her on important company matters, but he fears that her "half-life" will end very soon. When Hollis leads Runciter and a bunch of his employees into a death trap (early enough that the back cover says almost as much), they struggle to get him to cold-pac on time. It appears to be too late, but then they start witnessing signs that he can still reach them in some ways...among other events that don't smell right....
Toward the beginning, we get a few other made-up pieces of language. I had to look up "teep" later; it means "telepath." And the first time someone asked, "Anti-what?", when the previous sentences didn't mention anti-anything, I was left scratching my head. The idea is that anyone coming to Runciter Associates has to have an anti-something power. Don't worry; you won't have to deal with much of this. Pretty soon, Dick has his hands full with too much other weirdness for distraction.
Perspective shifts now and then, but there is a clear main focal character: Joe Chip, a tech whom Runciter trusts as a judge of prospective inertials. With Runciter out of commission, Joe is the de facto new leader of the company, or at least of the group that had fallen for the trap. He would not enjoy much confidence as a CEO, because he never holds onto money for long. This is especially bad in a world where you have to spend a nickel just to open your front door -- from the inside. If he didn't have visitors, he might have starved to death. I might call this the scariest aspect of Ubik, but there is definite competition.
With Joe is a new recruit and semi-girlfriend, Pat, who has an especially rare power of adjusting the past without time-traveling per se. Joe fears her potential but can't deny how useful it might be under the right conditions. Of course, when things go horribly wrong, she's one of the first people blamed. Her limits, tho definitely existent, remain unclear.
Oh, the title? Each chapter starts with a script from a commercial for a product called Ubik, and each time, it's something different. We don't actually see any of these products come into play, nor is Joe or any other focal character evidently aware of them. What they do know is that Ubik has existed in many forms and that at least one form, in a spray can, helps counteract the many things going wrong around them.
I'd read that Dick had a history of recreational drug use. Never has it been more obvious to me, when about two-thirds of the book takes place down a rabbit hole. I can't say it comes across as brainy so much as escapist, albeit not to a world I'd like to visit.
As it happens, the last movie I reviewed was Jacob's Ladder. I see definite similarities: Someone comes out of a deadly attack and then finds himself in a bizarre nightmare, trying to make sense of it all. But only in Ubik do we know for sure that Joe's not the only one experiencing it. And in a world of psychics, there are multiple conceivable (if half-logical) explanations to choose from. I actually had to revise my understanding on the very last page.
No, the ending isn't exactly happy or just. But then, none of the possibilities to come to my mind held much promise for the future of Runciter Associates.
I can see why Michel Gondry took interest, but I think I'll avoid reading Dick from now on. For something completely different, I've taken my mom's suggestion of Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Effect. Having liked the first volume, I'm counting on it.