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Phillip K Dick's Ubik flirts with perfection. I inhaled this novel over three days when one of my kids was sick and Christmas break was ending. I started the book on the couch during a Mythbusters marathon. By page fifty I wanted to shut the door and leave my kids to forage in the refrigerator for Gatorade and string cheese. And on Sunday night, when I closed the book, I felt satisfied and excited with a novel in a way that doesn't happen much. Ubik is fun, smart, and exhilarating.

Ok, let me take a shot at the plot summary. Joe Chip works for a team that shields organizations and the general public from illegal super-psychological activity like, for example, the unethical use of precognition. I think. Anyway, Mr. Chip is down and out, almost too broke to pay the nickel necessary to operate his apartment door. He is charged by his employer (and his employer's wife, currently in “half-life�, a finite state in which the dead and living can interact) with leading a team to Luna in search of the criminals of whom they lost track. From there Ubik takes off into territory defying summarization. I'd need a chart to track all the turns and potentialities. The novel addresses Chip's attempt to separate multiple realities and discern exactly who he is, where he is, and when he is. Somewhere in there Dick batters around the I-Ching and Plato's form philosophy. Ubik's genius emerges in Dick's obsessive attention to detail. He's a remarkably disciplined writer for a guy who sounds completely messed up (more on his biography in a second). The novel never goes dry; Dick balances the esoteric, theoretical analysis with an urgent storyline. Joe Chip's inner monologue, his attempts to piece together the myriad of clues pointing to the establishment and resolution of his questions, is paranoid, desperate, and brilliant. Ubik, and PKD's work in general, is a significant element of the genre's template. This is the third PKD novel I've read, and although I don't want to snap them up in a rush, I'll hit more this year.

Oh, I should mention that I read the Library of America edition of this novel. The LOA edition (you know, those heavy black books with the nifty attached bookmark) includes three other novels, notes from Jonathan Lethem, and a detailed author timeline/biography. Holy hell, PDK lived a fucked-up life, between social anxiety, industrial strength drug use, and multiple stints in psychiatric care. That said, I love the fact this novel was published in 1969. Put Ubik in your summer of love pipe and smoke it, hippies.

I don't want to become a star-whore. Over the last year I've assigned four books five stars. Maybe I'm getting soft. The little note over the fifth star, however, reads “It was amazing�, and those three words fit Ubik, so I'm sticking with the fifth star. This novel is the poster child for the difference between workmanlike genre fiction (nothing wrong with that) and the kind that makes you want to jump and down with your hands in the air like you're a twelve year old at his first rock concert. I want to hang its poster over my bed and blow kisses to Ubik before I fall asleep.