"'I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I
made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them
here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word
and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik but
that is not my name. I am. I shall always be. ‘“
In “Ubik” by Philip K. Dick
This would feel like a meaningless read indeed if it wasn't, in
fact, a very FUNNY one, full of a dry humor. In Ubik the characters are taken
in such a subjective maze of crumbling reality, unexpected time-travelling and
personal doubts, that it becomes a materialization of the absurdity of the
human condition, in the form of an exhilarating fiction. If you are not into
the humor of Kafka and Borges, it makes perfectly sense that you are not
sensible to Dick's one. What makes Ubik a wonderful read still today? Dick
didn't nail everything too tightly to the plot. The result may seem a potpourri
but his worlds live and breathe. If he were writing now this book would make
him a rebel and, given what he was like, would give most editors / publishers gray-hairs.
It also begs the question (of others in the genre): Can you really do that?
I think the current fascination with Dick seems tied to the fact
that most of his most popular books have dystopian or control themes. The other
worldliness, or just around the corner-ness, of his stories, make it seem
fictional, therefore enjoyable, yet also real and possible. I had been seeing a
resurgence in sales of his books a couple of decades ago. This is just a
speculative thought, but I wonder: If we had really been reading him for a
spooky window into the future, then that means that the "seeds of the
future dystopia" already started back then. Nixon had been around in
Dick's time, but Reagan and the Republican nasties was their second coming. AI
was only just poking its nose into things. 2000 was around the corner. Was Dick
one of our clues to the future?
What nobody ever mentions when they write so earnestly about Philip
K Dick is just how funny a lot of his stories and books are. None of his jokes
have made it too small or big screen because they rely on wordplay. So how can one
square that with the assertion he was a crap artist unless you have never read
his books?
One of the joys of his stuff, and Ubik in particular, is that
despite lots of functional detail, there's usually very little decorative
embellishment in Dick's writing. Reading it first lets you paint your own
pictures which are sometimes, but not always, much richer (and weirder) than
what ends up on screen, and I’m just re-reading Phil Dick for the umpteenth
time...
Phil Dick is like in a Goldilocks position for tapping into the
creative world of the subconscious. He is not so straightforward and
representative that you feel like a detail of his prediction being wrong or
outdated invalidates the work (Asimov), but he is not so deep into the world of
the subconscious that the makes no narrative sense and creates works that
cannot be interpreted by many (Burroughs). Interestingly Asimov is more
inspirational to people involved with "innovation" in organizations
while Burroughs is more inspirational to musicians. Dick also taps into Gnostic
Christianity which makes him a distinctive voice like William Blake who worked
with similar themes. A lot of people are still Christian so they find something
to latch onto him as opposed to the cold technocratic atheism or nihilism of
some other fiction.
I’ve read this novel at least 10 times; questions left unresolved:
1 - Ubik- what is it?
According to the body of the novel it's a substance that reverses
the disintegration, or reversion to earlier forms, of matter, and a
prophylactic against energy vampires like Jory. But according to the comic
advertisements at the beginning of every chapter, it's a universal panacea, a
solution to pretty much every problem. What are we to make of those ubiquitous
adverts? Are they in the 'real world' or in half-life? In our world the
solution to almost every problem is digital. Maybe in Runciter's world, the
solution to every problem is Ubik, and he just applies it, or uses the name,
for a new purpose.
2 - Runciter's body
If Runciter is alive, (and I think we have to assume he is, and all
the others are in half-life- that's left pretty unambiguous) what is his corpse
doing in a moratorium in the half-life world? His corpse behaves in the same
way as the other corpses of the half-lifers, but Runciter's situation is
totally different. Is his corpse just a construct created by Jory, like so much
else? I think it must be.
3 - Pat Conley- what's her role in the 'betrayal'?
We know that she has a special talent- her ability to rewrite the
recent past and thereby reshape the present- and she demonstrates them early
on, before the ill-fated trip to Luna. We also know- this becomes clear from
the conversation between Joe and Runciter near the end, that Pat is in
half-life like the others, that her 'gifts' do not work there, though she
thinks they do, and that although she believes that she is in control, actually
she has no more power than the others and Jory is the one who is draining the
half-lifers of their remaining life, one by one. But it's also clear that she
betrayed them all, was involved in the ambush on Luna, and was herself a victim
of the explosion. What did her betrayal consist of and did it involve her
special talent? My view is as follows: however dangerous her talent was to
Runciter et al, her powerful (and unique) anti-precog talent is more dangerous
to Hollis and his spies. They therefore lured her, their greatest threat, to
Luna with the others. Like so many double-agents, she was double-crossed by the
more unscrupulous of her two employers. Let us pity her- she is more a victim
than a betrayer.
4 - Joe Chip- what are we to make of the final chapter?
Well, I think the final chapter, short as it is, is a master stroke.
It reaffirms the ubiquity and all-powerful nature of the enigmatic Ubik. It
brings the novel back to its starting place- the Zurich moratorium. And, like
the ending to Gillam's film "Brazil", it introduces a moment of
existential doubt, or ambiguity, just in case we thought we had a happy ending.
My view is that Runciter here is still alive, he's become a regular visitor to
the moratorium. Up to now artifacts from the "real" world have
appeared in half-life world: Runciter money, the television commercials, the
graffiti, and most importantly, Ubik. But the reverse communication is more
limited: the only way half-lifers can affect the "real" world is by speaking
through the moratorium's telephone equipment. Up to now. When he sees the Joe
Chip money, Runciter realises that this is the beginning of something new.
Look at Joe Chip's initials. J.C. The initials of Jesus Christ- in
Christian tradition the first man to die, descend into Hell, do an important
job there, and come back (albeit briefly) to the "real" world, having
changed the status quo for the rest of us mortals. Michael Moorcock used the
same initials for his "Eternal Champion". Is it too much to see Joe
Chip as the first person who is able to break free from the prison of half-life
and infiltrate the "real" world. Considering how hopeless he is with
money, it's kind of satisfying that the first manifestation of his power is his
infiltration of Runciter-world currency.
5 - Ambiguity- flaw or strength
I think all these ambiguities make the novel stronger. If it was a
detective novel, they might be flaws. But uncertainty, paradox, and concepts
that give you a headache if you think about them too hard, are crucial to
Dick's world view. Actually, the plot of Ubik is, on the whole, despite some of
the obscurantism on this thread, pretty clear. If Dick leaves a few loose ends
untied, I see that as reflecting the essential “unknowability” at the heart of
life, rather than any oversight on the part of the writer.
As a footnote, I have been puzzling over why objects regress at
different rates, e.g., the bottle of Ubik inside the car, and can't quite
figure out why that would be. I wondered if it had something to do with
Einstein's theory of Relativity but can't quite work it out. I'm also wondering
if Phil was using the idea that consciousness of a dying person recedes in a
nonlinear manner and so the time regression acts similarly. If you think of a
person with dementia as well where the access to memory and the capacity make
new memories fluctuates over time. There may be a further corollary in terms of
how such a person is perceptually on occasion going back in time with kinds of
distressing thoughts for example of for example of an 85 year old wanting to
leave a nursing home in order to not be late home for the meal that her mother
has prepared. Objectively unreal to all around her, this event has all the
emotional impact of its veracity and immediacy to her.
Phil Dick had some interesting ideas about time and the evolution of
man. He appears to believe that human beings will ultimately reach an
enlightened stage where time becomes irrelevant and we gain awareness of all
past lives, a bit like Buddha. Don't ask me how that is all supposed to work,
but Pat, indeed, all the paranormal people in Ubik, may be intended to represent
a stepping stone in that process.
I can't help coming to the conclusion that Phil Dick's beliefs might
not be necessarily understandable, based as they on a rehash of fragments from
religious texts and the ideas of many philosophers and psychologists throughout
history. The resulting mix emanating from Phil Dick's far from ordinary mind is
very complex and contains some elements that seem to be mutually incompatible.
I think that probably goes a long way to explaining why his novels are so
difficult to unravel in terms of plot and symbolism.
Bottom-line 1: For me, Ubik works as a theophany, an expression of the will and power of an
omnipresent sentient being from outside our reality, and also a way of merging
man with god, creating a saviour figure in the form of Joe Chip/JC. For me, the
biggest question in Ubik is possibly, who is Dr Sonderbar, the founder? Ella
and Jory may be the end of the chain of entities, representing as they do the
forces of good and evil, rational and irrational. Then again, maybe not. For Phil
Dick, reality seems to be like the layers of an onion. There are a lot of eye
watering bits to peel away before you get to the middle, if you ever do.
Bottom-line 2: The writing is somewhat pedestrian, the characters are not fully
developed and it is blatantly sexist. However, I don't agree that the novel
should be dismissed purely on those grounds, even though in the vast majority
of cases any one of those would be considered a terminal flaw. I've always
thought that the envelope of human understanding is not expanded by those of us
with average minds, sitting safely tucked in the middle. On the contrary, it's
the people struggling on the boundaries of genetic diversity that enable
change. They can connect the dots of existing knowledge in new patterns, and
sometimes they make sense and sometimes they don't, but it is a skill the vast
majority of people do not possess. The more I read of Phil Dick's work, the
more I realise he had one of those rare, extraordinary minds. As my Granny used to say, don't throw the baby out with the bath
water.
NB: And where's the film of Ubik??? Of all the Phil Dick books that
have been adapted I'm surprised no one has had a go at making Ubik in to a film
or mini-series as I think it would be great even though the plot is complex. He
was a master of world-building and fantastic technological concepts, which is
why his stories translate so well to Hollywood. They can hack and slash the characters
and plot as much as they like, and it doesn't matter. The worlds and MacGuffins
endure and give the breathtaking element.
2 comentários:
After reading ubik I'll get back on my thoughts on the book. Great review!
Thanks Luis.
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