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. ( )

This is one of those books that has had a whole lot said about it, so I'm not going to go too deep right now. Maybe I'll have more thoughts later. Suffice to say, I bloody loved it.

In the far flung future of 1992 capitalism has reached the point where you have to pay your front door door to be able to get in or out and corporate espionage teams are made up by all groups with various psychic and anti-psychic powers. When a mission on the moon blows up in his face Joe Chip is hurled into the past and and must try to work out what the hell is going on as time decays around him.

Essentially, this is a murder mystery with a phenomenal sci-fi framing device using denaturing time and instability of objects that echo the confusion and degrading sanity of the protagonist and reader. This doesn't do it justice though. It also has some fun and pithy adverts.

There's commentary on capitalism, consumerism, death, letting go, and more, which is hardly surprising for a Philip K. Dick novel, but there is something truly fascinating about how he goes about all of this, even when compared to his vast and bizarre library. I can see why this was his favourite.

This book is incredible. I literally said, "what the fuck?!" moments before it ended and then, "motherfucker!!!" much louder when it finished. I'm not saying I haven't ended a few books that way before, but it is rate that they are accompanied by positive feelings towards said book. ( )

Great, I've just read my first book by Philip K Dick. (Don't ask. So many books, so little time, that's why.)
I really liked the atmosphere, the sense of claustrophobia, of paranoia, of not being certain what "reality" is. The writing twisted and turned. The plot is interesting - it also dissolves in the weirdness after a time, which is fine with me.
Of course, the characters are all rather flat. But this is a world-driven and not a character-driven book, so the reader can look past that. A very enjoyable and engrossing read. ( )

Wooh, this is full-on Philip K. Dick. Nowhere near as accessible and relateable as The Man In The High Castle or Do Androids Dream... It's as paranoid as A Scanner Darkly, though even more out there.

It's set in a near future for Dick (a recent past now) where people with psionic abilities have emerged; we follow a firm of 'inertials' - people who are paid to dampen the abilities of the 'psionics'. A mission goes wrong, and frankly after that no-one is really sure what is real. Which isn't to say it's difficult to follow - you just don't know whose perceptions and ideas to trust.

It's a great read, if you're into that kind of thing, although if you don't find the sound of this appealing then I doubt you'd derive much value in it. ( )