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“Herr Schoenheit von Vogelsang; sorry to break into your meditation, but a customer wishes you to assist in revving up his relative.��

Haha! I don’t know if PKD intended the above dialogue to be humorous but it is so bizarre and PKD-esque it made me chuckle. There is often a weird stiltedness to his dialogue that I find oddly charming.

I last read Ubik in 2012 (seven years ago as of today) I remember thinking “this is it, this is my favorite PKD��. Before this current reread I can barely remember anything about the plot, only a vague image that of a spray can of Ubik, but what is it? Ubik is set in the (then) future of 1992 where psi abilities are a given fact and are often used for industrial espionage, invasion of privacy and other psychic intrusions. The situation is like computer virus and anti-virus, so there are businesses that exist purely to counter these psychic intrusions. Somewhat related to psi abilities is the “half-life�� business run by “moratoriums�� where, for a fee, you can store your dearly departed and they facilitate a communication channel between you and your (mostly) dead loved ones. The protagonist, Joe Chip, works for Runciter Associates, a “prudence organization�� that offers anti-psi intrusion services. On an assignment to the lunar colony Joe, his boss Glen Runciter, and his team are attacked by a bomb which killed Runciter. Worse still since the bombing reality begins to bend out of shape, items begin to regress back into their dated versions until Joe finds himself in 1939.

Excellent Time magazine book reviewer and author Lev Grossman described Ubik as “a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you'll never be sure you've woken up from��. This surprised me a little, I don’t find that Ubik has a horror tone and it is not at all unsettling, but wacky and very entertaining, the tone is often quite humorous; especially the Ubik ad at the beginning of each chapter, always as a different product from the preceding chapter.

Time and time again PKD pulled the rug from under this reader, just when I thought I knew what is going on, PKD pulled another fast one and I landed on my butt. For me, his depiction of an unreliable and unstable reality is what PKD does better than anybody else. The eventual reveal of what Ubik blew my mind, but even then PKD has one more rug to pull.

If you have not read PKD before I highly recommend Ubik as the gateway into his wonderfully weird fiction. I kind of envy you.

Quotes:
“Perhaps your definition of your self-system lacks authentic boundaries. You’ve erected a precarious structure of personality on unconscious factors over which you have no control. That’s why you feel threatened by me.��

“He therefore vigorously strode to the apt door, turned the knob and pulled on the release bolt. The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.��

“Ray Hollis, whose psionically talented personnel are the object of inertial nullification and hence the target of the prudence��

“The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately--and against ordinary experience--vanished. The man contains--not the boy--but earlier men, he thought. History began a long time ago.��