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Ubik

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Ubik

By: Philip K. Dick
Narrated by: Luke Daniels
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A mind-bending, classic Philip K. Dick novel about the perception of reality.

Named as one of Time's 100 best books.

Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business - deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in "half-life," a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter's face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time. As consumables deteriorate and technology gets ever more primitive, the group needs to find out what is causing the shifts and what a mysterious product called Ubik has to do with it all.

©1969 Philip K. Dick (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Hard Science Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction Mind-Bending Emotionally Gripping Suspenseful

Critic reviews

"From the stuff of space opera, Dick spins a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you'll never be sure you've woken up from." (Lev Grossman, Time)
"More brilliant than similar experiments conducted by Pynchon or DeLillo." (Roberto Bolaño)

Featured Article: The Most Stellar Sci-Fi Authors of All Time


Science fiction is a genre as diverse as you can imagine. There are stories that take place in deep space, often depicting teams exploring or running away from something; stories that focus on life at the most cellular level, such as a pandemic tale; and stories that take place in times that feel similar to our own. Depicting themes of existentialism, philosophy, hubris, and personal and historical trauma, sci-fi has a cadre of topics and moods.

Featured Article The Most Stellar Sci Fi Authors of All Time
Mind-bending Twists • Philosophical Depth • Distinctive Character Voices • Inventive Concepts • Captivating Mystery
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Great Preformace too! Loved this one. Great ties back to Dick's Exegesis as well. A must read for PKD fans.

One of PKD's Best!

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Very unusual story. It messes with reality, time and your head. Even though written many years ago, it still works. As much as the characters don't know what's going on, the reader doesn't either. But it keeps you wanting to find out what's next.

Weird

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Decent Sci-Fi but it’s far from Phillip K. Dick’s best work, in my personal opinion anyway. It was somewhat predictable but that’s forgivable considering how many films and stories are derivative of the author’s body of work. It’s not surprising that you would draw some conceptual comparisons to the movie “Vanilla Sky”, for instance. You just have to keep in mind that many science fiction clichés originated in older novels, like this one. It’s hard to hold predictability against a book that may have originated a concept that only became a cliche due to how many others it inspired to create the more modern work you are comparing it to.

My criticism is more that the story kind of meanders a bit and I felt like too much time passes between something being set up and paying off in the story. I won’t spoil anything specific, but a good example of this is the reveal of the antagonist in a very late chapter followed by what feels like a rush to a climax. So much time had passed and the character was given so little attention that I just felt like the reveal was a big, “who cares?”. There’s no reason to feel anything positive for this character so you don’t feel shocked, but there’s also no reason to feel anything negative towards him and his motivations other than the book seems to insist that he’s obviously bad. We just don’t know anything about him one way or the other and his actions seem ultimately inconsequential, as do the protagonist’s. Maybe that’s the point? I can accept it if the book is making a point about the ultimate futility of any action in the grand scheme of things, I personally just end up not caring about what happens to the characters in that case. Why should we? We aren’t really given any reason to.

I also found the different voices and accents distracting. This is a personal preference, but I prefer when a narrator simply reads the book as opposed to trying to put on silly voices to differentiate the characters. It can be jarring when you are listening to a third person perspective that becomes a radio play every time a character other than the protagonist speaks.

It’s still worth a read (or listen) it’s just not up there with my favorites. It’s unlikely that I would feel the desire to go back to it but I was entertained enough the first time through.

Worth a read/listen but I found it just “ok”

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And pretty recognizable as something by PKD. Not sure I would call it great, but I did enjoy it a lot

Very good

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How do you get something like this in your head and then on to paper ? Amazing and interesting. I wouldn't want to shove this in to any specific genre that isn't.... I'm not sure what. I genuinely liked it and would want to revisit at a later date.

I was outside my mind.

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This book is fantastic, and the narrator is phenomenal. Reach voice is distinct, with personality and voice all it's own. Wonderful experience.

Fantastic narrator, fantastic book

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That's only my opinion, of course. This book is surreal, hallucinatory, and confusing, and that's purposeful. It doesn't delve into the characters, or the world, or ever tell you what's really going on. Still interested? Then read it.

Daniels is, as always, phenomenal.

You need to be a fan of PKD

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I found this story surprisingly modern. The authors perceptions of the future, some thirty-odd years ahead of when it was written, were not so far off in most cases, and laughable in others. The performance by Luke Daniels was outstanding! I look forward to hearing more narrations by him. Overall, I found Ubik a thoroughly entertaining read/listen.

Entertaining!

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this book is top-tier Meadow weirdness although the latter third of the book is a bit of a run around I really enjoyed it you can tell what parts of Pop Culture have aped it

Enjoy the weirdness.

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i can see why this is a top 100 books of the 20th century loved it.

i

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