Ubik Book

The idea of the one wonder-substance, superdrug, holy grail, dietary supplement,… to rule or enhance them all is an old one, but it needed Dicks´tendency to integrate mental illness, illusion, conspiracy, different realities and madness in the mix to make it a new one. So what to think about this?

I like this one more than „Do androids dream of electric sheep.", because the plot is so dense, the ideas wrapped around it ingeniously and probably because Dick had so many drug experiences that writing about a topic like that was simply his thing.

The interpretations could go in all directions, biochemical, religious, pharmaceutic, transcendental, whatever one prefers and I will choose the economic one by saying that we are already running on so many wonder substances like the marvelous caffeine and that tech will someday bring us something close to a real ubik. Probably including some time travel, Psi and mind uploading to that Dick´s vision can become reality.

I added, or at this moment more precisely , will add this part to my review of „Do Androids dream of electric sheep" too, because it´s appropriate and fitting for both novels.

The writing style is typical, one red line, no real subplots, the ending is quite kind of unsatisfying (looking at you, Man in the high castle.), it often gets confusing and it´s difficult to differentiate if it´s ingenuity or the authors' illumination. All of that are reasons why Dick is more controversial and not so universally acclaimed a grandmaster of Sci-Fi and I am more on the side of his critics. If one looks at the worldbuilding and complexity of all the other behemoths, Dick seems average, with the only hobbyhorse of dealing with consciousness, reality and the mentioned topics and some novels feel as if he just wrote them for the money (he needed) without real intrinsic motivation. I would call him, and I hardly ever do that because it is not nice, overrated. In this regard, he is more like the Nobel price, pseudo-intellectual, overhyped, higher literature stuff and less like pure, true, entertaining fiction. To write not understandable and confusing to seem deep and arcane is much easier than to write entertaining, suspenseful and yes, true, stereotypical following the rules of the genre. But that´s one of the key elements of why we love certain genres and tinkering around with conventions while writing 60 pages a day under the influence of LSD and amphetamines brings him in the corner of Kerouac and consorts and „first thought best thought."

Dicks´ novels don´t feel coherent, there are no satisfying resolutions, just more and more mysteries and open questions and nothing gets answered and much feels unfinished. It's no bad writing, I just wouldn´t highly recommend it, because it are no fun reads and if Dick would have been a bit soberer and invested more time in developing satisfying, believable plots, that could have been great. What annoys me the most are the great moments and ideas that are followed by unanswered questions, unreliable protagonist behavior or losing the overview of what is happening.

A direct comparison with other grandmasters of Sci-Fi and what they have revolutionized shows the flaws even clearer. Heinlein with amazing military science fiction, Asimovs´robots and some of the first space opera, Clarkes unbelievable language and subtility, Pohl with his worldbuilding, Gibson with Cyberpunk, not to name all the newer authors, and Stanislaw Lem. Especially he would have deserved the same and more attention and appreciation as Dick and should be named in a row with Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein because he wrote revolutionary brilliant at Clarkes´ level and was really funny in other novels and short stories, highly recommended literature, he is unique. All those authors were able to write entertaining, unique, tropeforming, philosophical, and with metaplots that come all together to a satisfying and logical ending, something Dick was incapable of, because he didn´t construct a universe, just fragments not fitting together and of extremely varying quality.

Of course, it may be a question of personal taste and preference, but I have read so much great Sci-Fi, hundreds of novels, that it feels inappropriate to name him in a line with those works and I felt really unsatisfied after having read any of his novels that are all closer to psychological mindf*** mystery whodunnit whatever crossover hybrid than to real Sci-Fi and with less real genre-typical elements in them. All the giants were true intellectuals and able to endlessly talk about any tiny detail or their works and its meaning and sense and it would interest me if Dick would have been able to give answers to complex questions about his work.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: