Ubik, written in 1966 and published in 1969, is one of Philip K. Dick's masterpieces (The Three Stigmata of Plamer Eldritch is another one). Ubik is the first novel to introduce spiritual elements that will culminate in his last novels VALIS, the Divine Invasion and the Transmigration of Timothy Archer. According to movie industry rumor Ubik could be the next big PKD movie project. Philip K. Dick himself wrote a screenplay for Ubik in 1974 but it was never made into a movie. PKD was hoping that it would by sending "the novel to the agent of Victoria Principal- whom he revered - in hope that she'd wind up reading it."(Tim Powers in the introduction to Ubik: The Screenplay). Ubik was expanded and adapted from the short story "What the Dead Men Say" published in Worlds of Tomorrow in 1964. Ubik is one of the most published books of Philip …
Ubik, written in 1966 and published in 1969, is one of Philip K. Dick's masterpieces (The Three Stigmata of Plamer Eldritch is another one). Ubik is the first novel to introduce spiritual elements that will culminate in his last novels VALIS, the Divine Invasion and the Transmigration of Timothy Archer. According to movie industry rumor Ubik could be the next big PKD movie project. Philip K. Dick himself wrote a screenplay for Ubik in 1974 but it was never made into a movie. PKD was hoping that it would by sending "the novel to the agent of Victoria Principal- whom he revered - in hope that she'd wind up reading it."(Tim Powers in the introduction to Ubik: The Screenplay). Ubik was expanded and adapted from the short story "What the Dead Men Say" published in Worlds of Tomorrow in 1964. Ubik is one of the most published books of Philip K Dick in the world.
...having said that you probably need to be a PKD fan to get into it at first. I am willing to bet more than a few people met this book first and noped out of PKD forever, which is a shame. Not the most accessible story, takes a bit of stamina, imo, but the payoff is well well worth it.
I've never read a book that more convincingly took a dreamlike premise and made it work so powerfully. If there was a book which encapsulated the experience of being in a nightmare you can't wake up from, this would be it. Very, very good.
Sharp satire about hubris and business and PKD's mind-bending doubts about what is real and what is in your mind quite explicit here, aged better than most things of this era... and I ultimately didn't care much about where the story went.
