I was inspired by [b:Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions|298972|Archaeologies of the Future The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions|Fredric Jameson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1373999807l/298972._SX50_.jpg|218962] to read more Philip K. Dick, as I hadn't read anything by him for at least a decade. I remember [b:VALIS|216377|VALIS|Philip K. Dick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388200579l/216377._SY75_.jpg|23607] blew my mind as a teenager. Given that [b:Ubik|315939|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1296937408l/315939._SY75_.jpg|62929] is in the SF Masterworks series, I may have read it back then and simply forgotten. In any event, I probably got more from it in 2024 than would have been the case twenty years ago. A pervasive feature of [b:Ubik|315939|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1296937408l/315939._SY75_.jpg|62929]'s 1992-from-1969 is payment for every use of home conveniences: doors, showers, fridges, TVs, and so on. Joe Chip, the protagonist, is perpetually borrowing money to pay for these. The dated element is that these micropayments are in cash; otherwise [b:Ubik|315939|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1296937408l/315939._SY75_.jpg|62929] parodies smart homes impressively well considering the book is more than fifty years old. Another detail of world-building that struck me was an off-hand comment that dentists are obsolete in 1992. In fact, there is such an acute shortage of dentists in the present day UK that one in four people in England are going without dentistry entirely.

Comparisons with the present day aside, [b:Ubik|315939|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1296937408l/315939._SY75_.jpg|62929] is concerned with a chilling destabilisation of reality. After a disastrous explosion, Joe Chip gets caught up in a dangerous regression into the past. He spends much of book unsure whether he, his colleagues, and his boss are alive, dead, or somewhere in between. Dick is excellent at conveying a sense of the uncanny, of a world that has gone horribly wrong yet advertises a product to allegedly fix things. The decay and transformation of objects, as well as the general tone, reminded me of the excellent TV series Russian Doll. I appreciated the deeply ominous atmosphere sustained throughout and the intriguing reversal at the end. As so often in mid-20th century sci-fi, female characters are mysterious creatures rather than people but Dick can get away with that better than most. I enjoyed [b:Ubik|315939|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1296937408l/315939._SY75_.jpg|62929]'s collision of the mundane and existential. The unsettling plot is executed with skill, precision, and careful control over pacing. ( )

Come è possibile che Philip K. Dick sia stato nascosto ai miei occhi fino ad oggi? E io, in che parte dell'universo ho vissuto per non aver mai letto niente di suo? Sono allibita, sono sconcertata dalla mia ignoranza. Vergogna!
Certo che per avere delle paranoie simili, tanto bene Philip non doveva stare. Perchè un conto è non sapere se si è vivi o morti e va bè uno non lo sa e continua per la sua strada, un altro è non sapere che si è morti ma sospettarlo fortemente (brividi)... Questo romanzo visionario mi sembra riduttivo incasellarlo nella semplice definizione "di fantascienza". In Ubik, Philip K. Dick crea un labirinto concentrico che frastorna il lettore, lo ipnotizza, lo fa dubitare di quello che sta leggendo, poi di se stesso e infine del mondo intero. L'unica certezza che gli rimane è solo Ubik. E di quello che Ubik potrebbe essere, credo esista un'ipotesi per ogni persona che ha letto questo libro. Una lettura destabilizzante e disorientante, ma con un ritmo adrenalinico, che costringe alla continua ricerca di punti di riferimento che semplicemente... non ci sono, perchè qui il reale e l'assurdo si mescolano al punto da perdere entrambi i propri contorni, facendo nascere un'ipotetica realtà parallela: l'inquietante futuro visto da Philip K. Dick.
L'unica pecca che ho trovato al libro è che avrò il mio bel da fare per trovare in breve tempo un'altra lettura così coinvolgente :) E ora, per festeggiare che forse sono viva, ho immediatamente bisogno di un buon Ubik. (innocuo se usato secondo le istruzioni).

Edit: alla fine ho dato 5 stelle perchè, riguardando i libri a cui ne avevo date 4, ho visto che la differenza come gradimento di lettura era troppa :) ( )

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6124272102

I kind of have no idea what I just read, but it was very readable. ( )

What a strange book. I found the first 1/3 very confusing but then the pace really picked up around the halfway point. Some really interesting ideas but the writing style is a product of its time, I think. The style reminded me of AE van Vogt. And I am not sure I would label it necessarily as SciFi. More like a Stephen King novel which can sometimes straddle genres. I think that’s what PKD does with Ubik; it straddles genres between SciFi, horror, and fantasy. It was an interesting read, I enjoyed the experience, but I have no desire to read it again. ( )

Ubik is a slow-developing mystery full of words and concepts which are only partially explained—deliberately—to frustrate the reader's understanding of both the world Philip K Dick builds and the events which take place there. It takes several chapters to grasp the nature of Glen Runciter's business—a prudence organization providing privacy services to the general population against what we would label mental hacking—and the skills his employees (known as precogs and inertials) deploy against their adversaries, the psis. Easier to grasp yet vitally important is the concept of half-life, a frozen, coma-like state which allows telepathic communication with the living.

At the heart of this story is the unanswered question: what is Ubik? The seeming answer is provided at the start of each chapter, where a variety of products—electric cars, beer, bras, to name a few—are advertised under the brand name Ubik. But Ubik is none of these items; its true nature becomes clear only as we follow a team from Runciter Associates to Luna, a near-Earth celestial body. On Luna, the assembled team falls victim to a self-destruct humanoid bomb. Runciter is killed; his team escapes back to Earth.

Or so we are led to believe. Over the course of the novel, Dick obfuscates the truth of what happened on Luna, leaving the reader as confused as Runciter's successor, Joe Chip, as he tries to unravel both who is behind the attack and why those who survived are dying through a slow, shriveling process of physical deterioration.

At times Ubik feels as though an editor could have helped tighten the writing, clarifying some of the concepts and eliminating some logical flaws within the narrative, without prematurely giving away the novel's secrets. But it is still an enjoyable read. ( )