he year of our story is that far-off future date of 1992 (Ubik first saw the light of day in 1969), a time when the elderly yet vital Glen Runciter operates an anti-psionic bureau. His human agents, "inertials," each have the power to cancel out by their presence within a certain radius one particular psionic talent, such as telepathy or precognition. In a world where psi operators are for hire as spies or saboteurs, Runciter does a smashing business. He's aided in the management of his affairs by his dead wife. Science has discovered that upon bodily death the mind remains active for a short time. If frozen immediately into "cold-pacs," the recently deceased can survive mentally for a certain stretch of "half life," years or months, depending on their final quota of vitality. Ella Runciter resides in a Zurich "moratorium," where her husband can communicate with her through a microphone and headphone arrangement. But on his most recent visit to Ella, Runciter is dismayed to find that her personality is being bled away by a nearby half-lifer, a teenager named Jory.
Meanwhile, back in the North American Confederation, Joe Chip is leading a marginal existence. Despite being one of Runciter's top employees—Joe is not an inertial, but a skilled tester of inertials—the lonely single man is poverty-stricken and harassed by the various autonomic devices in his life, including the door to his conapt, which demands payment for every usage. One morning, a Runciter talent scout brings a woman named Pat Conley to Joe for testing. Pat has a strange anti-precog talent: the ability literally to alter the past and create new timelines, thus frustrating precognition. Soon Pat is employed by Runciter, and she, Joe, Runciter and 10 other inertials are on their way to the moon, supposedly to perform a job for a millionaire named Stanton Mick. But the invitation proves to be a trap by Hollis, Runciter's nemesis. On the moon, the group is subject to an explosion. All survive save Runciter, who is rushed into a cold-pac.
Yet is this actually the case? Upon the return of the survivors to Earth, reality begins to waver and dissolve. Objects from 1992 begin to regress into antiques. Messages from the supposedly dead Runciter begin to appear in the most unlikely places: in TV ads and in printed slips inside cigarette cartons. Members of the Luna group start to die off in a curious manner, withering to weightless husks. As the de facto leader of Runciter Associates, Joe Chip has some nebulous hunches and intuitions as to what is happening to them. But can he survive long enough to prove his theories and turn the tide of entropy around? Maybe if he can get his hands on this mysterious spray can filled with the enigmatic substance known as Ubik. ...
Dick's all-consuming
social satire
This novel occupies what seems to me to be a central place in Dick's canon. It comes after the magnificence of such works as The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) and before such mature masterpieces as Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974). As a pivotal keystone, it harks both backward and forward. The whole setup of a society in which psionic talents predominate is straight out of the many early PKD novels, while the emphasis on the afterlife and theological issues augurs the preoccupations of Dick's Valis trilogy. The plotting is not as recomplicated as some of Dick's books, nor as simplistic as others. In short, this book offers a perfectly representative slice of all of Dick's virtues and very few of his vices.
We have on display Dick's capacity for social satire. The absurd outfits that pass for fashion, the existence of such institutions as "Bonds of Erotic Polymorphous Experience, a sixty-unit sub-surface structure catering to businessmen and their hookers," and the banality of a consumer culture all paint a portrait of a deracinated society that has lost all touch with essential life-roots. Of course, the consumerist madness is at the core of the book. Joe Chip's salvation lies in the attainment of the ultimate product, Ubik. Each of the 17 chapters begins with a paean to Ubik, naming it variously as a car, beer, coffee, salad dressing, medicine, shaver, laminate, a savings and loan, hair conditioner, deodorant, sleeping pill, toaster pastry, bra, plastic wrap, mouthwash and cereal. By the last chapter, Ubik has mutated into the Prime Mover, God Himself. Yet Joe does not triumph until he learns that Ubik is as much a matter of his own spirit as it is exterior salvation.
Of course, we also get to enjoy the comedy of Dick's perpetual anti-machine crusade, as the devices in Joe's life harangue him. We get to see that archetypical pairing of the evil dark-haired woman (Pat Conley) with the blond female savior (Ella Runciter) which informed so much of Dick's writing. And we get the surrealism and paradoxes he loved. No plane of reality is privileged, as the book's startling ending proves.
Surely this is the one PKD novel that most inspired Ursula Le Guin to write her PKD tribute, The Lathe of Heaven (1971). And also the creators of the Matrix trilogy must have loved the virtual-reality nature of the half-life scenes. Although it does not have as high a profile as some of Dick's novels, Ubik is indeed insidiously ubiquitous.
