By: Alfie Goodwin
Author Bio:
Alfie is a first-year student passionate about English Literature and History and their intersections. Interested primarily in poetry; the metaphysicals, modernists, and contemporary poets are particular areas of fascination. In this review, Alfie attempts to persuade us to dive into the world of science fiction by conveying the mind-bending pleasures of reading Phillip K. Dick, a luminary of the genre.
THE REVIEW:
Reading a Philip K. Dick (PKD) novel can sometimes feel like wandering through the cannabis-laced imagination of a fanciful metaphysician. Ubik is no different. It follows the protagonist Joe Chip, a technician for a futuristic agency contracted to nullify the parapsychological powers of mutants, as he is hurtled into a more-than-disorienting adventure by the bomb of a space terrorist. He regains consciousness, but not in the world he once knew. Things seem to be decaying into past forms; his coffee has soured and the coins in his pockets bear the imprint of last decade’s president. What is going on? A metaphysical detective novel then ensues, blurring generic boundaries as characters strive to ferret out the truth, not about the identity of some shady killer, but about the nature of reality itself. Bit by bit, as time moves backwards as far as the pre-WW2 period, he begins to surmise the truth. Viz., that he is preserved in a vat, and his experience is but a living dream, redeemable only by the mysterious spray-can that goes by the name of ‘Ubik’...
But Ubik isn’t merely an exercise in imagination. Nor is it exclusively an attempt to craft the most beguilingly ornate plot since Sophocles. It is also a profoundly thought-provoking novel, the product of long pondering, and explores themes as broad as the nature of reality, mind and world and their interrelations, ‘progress’, and capitalism.
First and foremost, Ubik seeks to undermine metaphysical certainties—our notions about the nature of reality. PKD was active in the ‘60s, and seemingly partook in enough LSD to make him question the reliability of his senses, and of reality itself. Hallucinations blur the boundary between mind and world, and imply that, even when sober, what we see ‘out there’ is to a large extent a result of what is going on inside our own heads. Such concerns are legible in Ubik, as half-dead characters are enclosed in ‘cold-pacs’ (reminiscent of the nascent ‘cryogenic’ technology of today) and exist in the mind-constructed dream-worlds of their own imaginings—life becomes for them, as it were, ‘but a dream within a dream,’ a brain within a vat, and the boundary between mind and world becomes utterly confused. And this fantastical situation could be more representative of our consciousness than we would like to think. One cannot help relating such themes to the ideas of another ‘60s guru, Alan Watts, who writes in The Book that, ‘in fact the whole field of vision “out there in front” is a sensation in the lower back of your head, where the optical centres of the brain are located.” If only the protagonist Joe Chip had done his research, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble.
But Ubik is not just allegory. It also contains mind-boggling elements of speculation, and considers the many fantastical beings that advanced technologies could engender. Techno-ghosts and gods, for instance—the latter of which does not seem too far-fetched in the age of ChatGPT. Consider ghosts. Consigned to oblivion by technological modernity, PKD shows how the forward march of technological progress could in fact bring ghosts, once again, back from the dead. The protagonist is constantly haunted by ghostly presences—though not of the traditional type. He calls them ‘organic ghosts’, and such ‘ghosts’ ultimately result from the intrusion of other minds into his dream-world, as well as from people in the ‘real’ world projecting themselves into his cyber dream-world via a headset-microphone device. Being ‘ghosted’, it seems, could take on even more sinister meanings in the future.
Most significantly, however, Ubik considers the possibility of (technological) deities. The titular substance, ‘Ubik’, is described as an omnipresent (‘ubiquitous’), near omnipotent, salvific, and intangible substance, which, when summoned and empowered by faith, redeems Joe Chip’s rapidly disintegrating reality. Yet it is also a heavily commercialised, advertised, and commodified product. Many readers have interpreted ‘Ubik’ as a straightforward symbol for God, in that both ‘Ubik’ and God act as the ultimate metaphysical prop for an ultimately uncertain reality. Yet ‘Ubik’ is also an illustration of the bizarre and even sublime beings that technological progress could unleash upon the world, many of which could appear more like resurrections of premodern fantasies than the contrivances of daedal futurity. And in the time of Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence—which predicts nothing less than fully fledged AI demigods in the not-so-near future, probably bearing the commodifying imprint of Apple or Microsoft—all of this seems unnervingly prescient.
But there are many more prophetic links one could draw, and one might feel compelled to discuss the Zuckerbergian ‘metaverse’ if it wasn’t such a dismal failure. Cryonics—the commercialised freezing of corpses in vats to be (hopefully) resurrected in the future—also comes to mind. As does the Cambridge biologist who grew a brain in a petri dish. All are instances of PKD’s vision of virtual realities and half-dead bodies floating in ectoplasm come true. Indeed, there is a vista of technological madness ahead, the void into which we stare and which in turn stares back… And Philip K. Dick’s Ubik certainly does not shy away from such portentous staring. Nor is it afraid to explore the more paradoxically unprogressive elements of Progress—such as getting stuck in a slowly disintegrating mind-world whilst one’s body lies in a futuristic Swiss moratorium. There are many instances of this throughout the book. Primarily, the dark side of ‘free market innovation’ still looms, and one cannot even pass through one’s apartment door without a required fee. Lust abides, a bestial burning ill-befitting the technological futurists who nonetheless pant over the ‘sensual mouth’ of a main female character, Pat. And, on a perhaps more trifling but nonetheless significant note: one cannot even get real leather anymore (only genetically-modified lab-grown stuff) and, what’s more, the virile growl of the diesel engine is completely gone, replaced only by the anaemic whir of the electric motor… That said, PKD does not sentimentalise the past excessively, and makes sure to complicate the reductive binary which pits a wonderful past against a disillusioned present by reminding us of the vile racism of the early 20th century, for example. Vintage cars may age well; vintage opinions, less so.
To conclude, then, Philip K. Dick’s Ubik is a highly fascinating novel, and a great introduction to the sci-fi master for those who would like to read science fiction but don’t know where to start. That said, Ubik is not merely some provincial triumph in some unimportant genre suburb—but, rather, it is a triumph of Literature proper, and is deservedly regarded as such. It explores profound metaphysical themes, develops remarkably relevant speculative futurism, and scrutinises the ideologies by which we live and think; and all this engagingly tied together by an ornate plot and dazzling world-building… Ubik makes for a splendid read.
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