false 22590 29 Nobody but Philip K. Dick could so successfully combine SF comedy with the unease of reality gone wrong, shifting underfoot like quicksand. Besides grisly ideas like funeral parlors where you swap gossip for the advice of the frozen dead, <I>Ubik</I> (1969) offers such deadpan farce as a moneyless character's attack on the robot apartment door that demands a five-cent toll:<p> <blockquote>"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.<p> Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."</blockquote><p> Chip works for Glen Runciter's anti-psi security agency, which hires out its talents to block telepathic snooping and paranormal dirty tricks. When its special team tackles a big job on the Moon, something goes terribly wrong. Runciter is killed, it seems--but messages from him now appear on toilet walls, traffic tickets, or product labels. Meanwhile, fragments of reality are timeslipping into past versions: Joe Chip's beloved stereo system reverts to a hand-cranked 78 player with bamboo needles. Why does Runciter's face appear on U.S. coins? Why the repeated ads for a hard-to-find universal panacea called Ubik ("safe when taken as directed")?<p> The true, chilling state of affairs slowly becomes clear, though the villain isn't who Joe Chip thinks. And this is Dick country, where final truths are never quite final and--with the help of Ubik--the reality/illusion balance can still be tilted the other way. <I>--David Langford, Amazon.co.uk</I> 62929 book 1969 Ubik total:2834|5:1021|4:1084|3:609|2:112|1:8| 2834 11500 4001 245 5 4 false false Tue Feb 19 13:04:24 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 25 23:34:14 -0800 2008
UBIQUITOUSLY, HERTZAN CHIMERA
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Still once things get metaphysical it becomes a flat out masterpiece. Rarely has Dick's vision of the apocalyp...more...]]> 5 4 false false Tue Mar 25 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 17 17:31:50 -0700 2008 Sun Mar 30 08:49:29 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Mar 11 18:21:58 -0700 2008 Tue Mar 11 18:29:52 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 2 false true Sat Mar 07 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 07 18:57:11 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 15 13:14:14 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false true Thu Mar 05 07:56:02 -0800 2009 Thu Mar 05 08:15:17 -0800 2009
i think it is the most grueling book i have ever read. i can't believe i used to think it was so much fun. i used to see it as a funny horror novel; now it just seems like a franti...more...]]> 3 1 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 08 17:03:54 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 08 17:12:33 -0700 2007 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep but less than A Scanner Darkly; but the fact that I like Scanner better than Androids is probably an indication that I am not among the majori...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Wed Aug 15 11:08:34 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 15 11:24:52 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue May 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Sep 05 09:38:49 -0700 2007 Tue May 27 12:15:38 -0700 2008
Spoilers below

Glen runciter is the head of runc...more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Mar 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 28 15:40:41 -0700 2008 Tue Mar 10 13:33:12 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false true Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Mar 18 09:38:54 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 18 09:39:58 -0700 2009 Ubik -- and while I thoroughly enjoyed it, I’m probably going to echo a few comments already made. I agree with Brian’s comment on how wonderfully PKD’s books are like a screwdriver poking around in the circuitry of your brain.
I learned after finis...more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Feb 24 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 23 14:45:17 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 23 14:50:24 -0800 2009
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If you're new to Philip K. Dick, then I can't recommend UBIK as a place to get to know him. Start with one of his inventive SciFi operas (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch), his psychological conundrums (Confessions of a Crap Ar...more...]]> 4 3 false false Sun Sep 06 06:34:04 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 07:06:16 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Oct 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 04 09:05:13 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 10 07:47:03 -0700 2009
I've been a fan of Dick's for a long time (ever since a university professor of mine used him to explain what Gnosticism is), and it seems like this short novel manages to sum up all of Dick's attitudes toward religion and spirituality in one nice little 200-page package. It's ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Nov 21 08:04:21 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 29 09:15:55 -0800 2008 He did get some good twists in there that I didn't see coming, I thought I had this all fi...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Feb 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 09:26:26 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 08 07:23:19 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Oct 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 04 18:58:50 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 25 19:19:19 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed May 13 00:45:20 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 18:04:50 -0700 2009 more...]]>