Philip K. Dick, Ubik [Garoo]

13 may 2008

Funny thing when you read a forty- or fifty-year-old science-fiction story: it feels like it plagiarizes dozens of more recent books or movies. It’s hard to appreciate it fully under those circumstances.

Beyond that, though, it looks like Dick’s science-fiction is not exactly the geeky kind, but more of the poetic, dreamy variety that doesn’t really care about… well, the science part. In Ubik’s case, Dick writes a character who essentially has all the powers of a god, and he never addresses that, and it evidently doesn’t bother him a bit — but it bothers me a lot, and just keeps me out of the story.

And then, there are the long chapters about 1900s-technology that Dick remembers a little too fondly, which is pretty unhealthy for a scifi author.

2008/05/13 - 22:32

Want to know when I post new content to my blog? It's a simple as registering for free to an RSS aggregator (Feedly, NewsBlur, Inoreader, …) and adding www.garoo.net to your feeds (or www.garoo.net if you want to subscribe to all my topics). We don't need newsletters, and we don't need Twitter; RSS still exists.

cossaw, 6 years ago:

Actually, I guess you're not in the "right" mood to read Ubik, or PKDick's books, as they were "supposed" to be read some 50 years ago :)
Hey, PKDick was born in 1928 and died in 1982...

You know, Ubik is one of my favorite titles, I read it about 20 years ago... I really am biased !

The whole idea of de-evolution, and going backwards as far as technology go, is the very basics of this plot - the way Ubik fights the all too powerfull nemesis. That and the "I'm alive, you're dead" part, of course, not knowing who's truly living (even in the end, with the coin)... The godlike power of the dreaming half-dead forcing his will upon others, isn't that a good idea ?
Of course, we've now read and watched others schemes along that way of thinking, but that's two things about Dick you should remember : he wanted to tell the Truth from the illusion (major theme here), and he looked for things that would defy what a human really was (lesser theme here than, say, in Do Androids dream of electric sheep aka Bladerunner...)

Sorry you didn't like it that much. Many other books of Dick's will definetly seem bland to you then... try the darker stuff, the later books like Flow down my tears the policeman said or Through a Scanner Darkly (substance mort en vf)

garoo, 6 years ago:

Actually, when I mentioned godlike powers I didn't mean him, but the girl :)

I wouldn't say he wants to tell the truth from the illusion, but rather his point is that truth is just another illusion, isn't it?

Not too tempted to read other works of his. I really think he and I don't have the same idea of science fiction :)

cossaw, 6 years ago:

He really did think we lived in an illusion and that no real truth existed (except a theistic truth, but that's not the point here)

What's intersting, though, is to read from someone (you, Garoo), who doesn't kinda worship PKDick - that's refreshing !

Hum, I should have added the spoiler banner, shouldn't I ?

garoo, 6 years ago:

It's only on my side that I can mark comments as spoilers (I guess I should add a <spoilers> tag, but that would be more work).

Well, from a literary point of view, it was definitely good. It's just that I'm the kind of geek who cares too much about the details of plot consistency :)

Legal information: This blog is hosted par OVH, 2 rue Kellermann, 59100 Roubaix, France, www.ovhcloud.com.

Personal data about this blog's readers are not used nor transmitted to third-parties. Comment authors can request their deletion by e-mail.