Ubik
Ratings316
Average rating4
Mi spiace dirlo, ma dei libri fin qui letti di Dick questo mi sembra uno dei meno interessanti.
Intendiamoci, bella trama, bella storia, ma mancano quelle incursioni nella psicologia umana, quelle digressioni nell'io che tanto mi hanno fatto amare altri suoi classici come “Le tre stimmate...” o “ma gli androidi...”, “Scorrete lacrime...” per non parlare della “Svastica sul Sole”.
Insomma, Ubik al confronto ne esce come un bel libro di fantascienza, ma tutto li. I suoi capolavori sono, IMHO, altri.
Amen.
Set in an absolutely bonkers world where people have special powers like precognition, mind reading, etc which are corporatized in order to provide advantages in business. Thus there are also people with powers that can block these other powers which is also corporatized. Also people can exist in a state between life and death called half life and everything is coin operated, including doors and fridges. Plot wise this story is full of twists and mind bending mystery. It’s my favorite of PKD as of yet.
Contains spoilers
The Logos is now available in spray can form! Buy quickly and use as directed before the demiurge or the time-warping psychic turns it into vaseline.
Arguable PKD's most iconic work, and definitely one of his strangest. In a far future humans are colonising the Moon and developing strong psychic abilities. Companies are employing psychics to sit in a room and do industrial espionage from a distance. One company sends a team of them to the Moon for such purpose but there is an explosion and not everyone survives.
Second story strand: People who are almost dead can be put into cryo-sleep and kept alive. They can be temporarily brought out of sleep for conversations through a psychic medium. But these sessions shorten the ultimate storage time possible for the person.
Put these two strands together. Some of those sent to the moon have died and are in cryo-sleep.
Everyone tries to get on with their lives, but strange things keep happening. It seems time is running backwards and everything is inexplicably old. And then Ubik appears in advertising. It's the universal fixit. One spray and everything is good again. But what is in the can and where do you get it?
PKD puts together a narrative that has the reader questioning 'who is alive and who is in cryo-sleep?' And does it even matter? After all, PKD's ability to blend the reality of human consciousness with weird alternatives is never ending.
I… feel very confused by this book. Other than H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, I am not all that well-versed in old sci-fi. However I figured that I would be equipped to tackle this book as I am a long-time sci-fi fan. After reading it I have to come to the conclusion that I wasn’t as this book was straight-up too vague for me. Ubik feels like a book that uses its plot to ask grandiose questions without really giving a strong answer to any of them. I think this can be done well but between the writing and the odd characters and things never making sense I never felt like I had a good enough grasp on the situation at hand to think about the questions the book ponders. It throws you from one mystery to the next, giving you no time to ground yourself before another surprise shows up. And yet in spite of all of that I can’t say this book didn’t entertain me. It’s a weird ride that left me firmly befuddled but a ride I ultimately enjoyed.
Jump in the urinal and stand on your head. I'm the one that's alive. You're all dead.
Ubik
Ubik
In a future with mind-reading-espionage and anti-psychics counter-businesses, this starts out as a more typical scifi corporate thriller, in a nonetheless intriguing future where capitalism rules and simple household machines are coin-operated. But then a bomb explodes, and slowly reality seems to crumble. We're in a dream-like world, and usually I find this rather frustrating, when narrative control and in-world-physics seems to slip away together, but Dick does a good job at being as rigid and descriptive and so manages to keep you grounded. And even when it all turned out to be a "oh actually, they are all dead and living in a virtual after-life of sorts" reveal, I didn't mind, even though I usually hate these turns. I think it was setup well.Deserving of being a classic. [b:The Lathe of Heaven 59924 The Lathe of Heaven Ursula K. Le Guin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1433084322l/59924.SX50.jpg 425872] is a good spiritual cousin I'd say.
Un'allucinazione ubiqua
Ubik, così ad istinto, me lo immagino come un esperimento; probabilmente l'idea nasce da esperienze vissute in prima persona o raccontate da terzi in fatto di trip di allucinogeni. Infatti molte scene sono proprio come leggere delle persone che agiscono e cercano di razionalizzare durante un trip di acidi, il tutto su uno sfondo fantascientifico pessimista. Infatti nella sua visione del 1992, la società, consumata dal capitalismo più estremo, combatte imperterrita i limiti umani superando malattia, vecchiaia e morte (o quasi), mentre viene condizionata dal sorgere negli uomini di poteri psichici preveggenti e telepatici (principalmente).
Nonostante questa interessante premessa, l'autore mette tutto da parte per raccontare la sua storia allucinata a tratti metafisica. La mancanza di una coerenza interna mi ha provocato un fastidioso senso di smarrimento, che è durato praticamente per metà romanzo. Non si tratta dell'inspiegabile (che ci può stare), ma è proprio l'autore che ha pisciato un po' fuori dal vaso. Ho apprezzato ma con riserva, dato che è breve, concitato e dinamico.
La spiegazione finale in un certo senso "spiega" tutto quanto, ma siamo al limite della credibilità, perché si tratta di un'altra eterna battaglia tra il bene e il male, perché ogni Moratorum ha il proprio Jory e la propria Ella. Vivere anche dopo la morte, continua ad essere mangia e vieni mangiato, sarà forse questo il messaggio ultimo dell'autore? Siamo senza speranza?Insomma c'è un po' di tutto in questo libro, buona ambientazione sci-fi, misticismo, fantasy, guerra psicologica, realtà distorte, spunti per pensatori. Che cos'è Ubik? Ubik, Ubiquità, onnipresenza ovunque, facoltà di Dio senz'altro. Per combattere il capitalismo bisogna spruzzarsi un po' di particelle di Dio? Sarà mica questo il messaggio dell'autore?
Wonderful book, unsettling science fiction. My first PKD experience, excited to delve into more of his works!
Este livro foi parar as minhas mãos sem saber muito bem como, li a descrição e achei interessante, mas nunca na vida ía achar que o livro é tão bom só pela descrição. Como foi a minha primeira leitura do Philip K. Dick toda a permissa do livro surpeende-me imenso, mas sendo que já vi outros livros dele apercebi-me que a temática do “o que é real o que é na minha cabeça” é bastante comum nos livros dele.
Eu acho que é daqueles livros que não deviam ter muita coisa a dizer na sua descrição, e desse modo também não vou explicar muito. Só sei que vale imensa a pena ler este livro se gostam de fantasia e ficção científica. E especialmente quem nunca leu Phillip K. Dick.
Hm.
Well, I didn't really like it. I unexpectedly liked PKD's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? a few months ago, but this one - nah.
Stuff I liked:
- I like PKD's satirizing of American consumerism, i.e. the Ubik commercials i.e. the old Dan Aykroyd SNL commercials.
- Umm.
- Some weirdness. And my 2018 reading resolution is “MORE WEIRD”.
Stuff I didn't like:
- All the female characters were lame. They're objectified, they're all either wives/girlfriends or, ahem, “shrews”.
- The dated stereotypes of every character other than the white dude protagonist and his elder white dude boss. Actually, even the protagonist was a stereotype: the crusty, grimy private eye of PKD's cyberpunk visions. Deckard etc etc.
- Not weird enough.
I mean. The plot is the same as Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven, which was also super dated, but was much more airtight from a plot/pacing perspective, and had the same psychedelic shifting reality thing going but WITHOUT the tiresome social stuff.
This book employs a literary technique that annoys me. I believe the proper term for it is ‘unreliable witness.' It is frustrating to read a story, and eventually learn that the narrator / author has been lying to the reader about what is real. About the only redeeming part of this book, in my opinion, was the imagination shown by the author, writing in 1969 - and imagining how things would change by 1992.
Actualización 01/02/2021:
Ahora, varios libros de PKD después, puedo mantener firme mi opinión: esto sigue siendo lo mejor que he leído del autor. Es una maldita obra maestra. Ya necesitaba regresar a algo bueno para variar.
Encontré este maravilloso arte conceptual en ArtStation.com, creado por Fei Zhou:
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Ha sido una historia distinta a las que estoy acostumbrado a leer, me ha gustado mucho el tema metafísico que propone Dick en esta novela. Al terminar el libro realmente no estás seguro de nada, me he quedado con la duda de saber quién estaba muerto realmente... si es que alguien lo estuvo alguna vez.
What a fun little read. I can see why everyone enjoys Philip K. Dick, this story was imaginative, fun, and entertaining. I highly recommend it!
In a way I'm conflicted about this book.
PKD is one of my all-time favorites and I've always enjoyed his work, but I feel like there is a wide range of PKD books that can at times feel very different. But at their core, most PKD books share the same basic truths; the first portion of the book is where he establishes an interesting world, characters and sets rules. The third and final portion is where all of those rules are broken, sometimes incrementally until they've been shattered.
Sure, that doesn't account for 100% of his books, but for a large portion of them it works. For Ubik it is dead on. The problem with Ubik is that the entire second act is just kind of there. It makes sense that it is like that because there is a mystery unraveling in Ubik and the characters need to exist within the confined set of rules that have been established for this world. The problem is that the stuff that happens in there isn't that interesting.
There are definitely moments that are captivating, but by-and-large I found myself putting this book down a lot, which considering it being a rather quick read, is kind of a bummer. The beginning established such an interesting world and characters, as PKD is prone to doing, but then watching some of them lament around it wasn't nearly as fun as it seemed it would be.
That being said, the four stars is because that beginning was just so strong and the last third was enough to wash the dull middle section away almost completely. Dick likes to play with perception and concepts of isolation, alienation and existence in general. Ubik is no different in this regard and wraps itself up in the exact fashion that you'd want from Philip K. Dick.
I liked Ubik by PKD. But again, it seemed like it barely got started before it was already over. Not only that, like so many books, it gave no closure. I guess Ubik is a metaphor for God (it's everywhere and fixes everything!) but as a guy reading a book I like to see a story take full arc and come to a close.
The book starts out interestingly enough - with Joe Chip and G.G. Ashwood finding a new “intertial” - someone who can negate the effects of a “psi” with powers like they've never seen. Seems like a great start to an epic adventure! But as you progress through the book, the girl they find is mostly quiet, and instead the story turns to the characters being trapped in a fantasy world that exists because of (what I assume to be) a psi boy who was killed and put into half-life prematurely. Some super villian.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the ride while I was taking it. I was just as anxious to turn the page as I have been in any story, wondering what it all meant and what the clues would lead to next. But by the end I was disappointed in both the main antagonist and the non-closure of the storyline.
List of unresolved plot points:
- What is the “rebirth” that Ella Runciter is going through?
- Why did Pat claim to be working for Hollis? If it was Jory pretending to be Pat, why did he claim to be working for Hollis?
- How can Jory “eat” minds and further sustain his own life? A lot of WTF here - what could this mean?
- If we can forever sustain ourselves in coldpac and also continue to speak with others in coldpac, why aren't they putting live people in coldpac instead of focusing on “almost dead” people?
- Why is 1939 the “FINAL DATE” that we can go back to? If we're in 1992 and Jory is in his teens shouldnt the earliest date be sometime around 1975?
- Why is everyone on Goodreads eating up Phillip K Dick? These Dick-lovers are insatiable! I've only tried Dick one other time, but it was paired with Isaac Asimov, so I'm not sure if it was the Dick or the 'sac that I was enjoying in that hardcopy.
