Ubik

By the year 1992, humanity has colonized the Moon and psychic powers are common. The protagonist, Joe Chip, is a debt-ridden technician working for Runciter Associates, a "prudence organization" employing "inertials"—people with the ability to negate the powers of telepaths and "precogs"—to enforce the privacy of clients. The company is run by Glen Runciter, assisted by his deceased wife Ella who is kept in a state of "half-life", a form of cryonic suspension that allows the deceased limited consciousness and ability to communicate. While consulting with Ella, Runciter discovers that her consciousness is being invaded by another half-lifer named Jory Miller.

When business magnate Stanton Mick hires Runciter Associates to secure his lunar facilities from alleged psychic intrusion, Runciter assembles a team of 11 of his best inertials, including recent hire Pat Conley, a mysterious girl with the unique psychic ability to undo events by changing the past. Runciter and Chip travel with the group to Stanton Mick's Moon base, where they discover that the assignment is a trap, presumably set by the company's main adversary, Ray Hollis, who leads an organization of psychics. A bomb blast apparently kills Runciter without significantly harming the others. They rush back to Earth to place him into half-life, but they cannot establish contact with him so his body is set to be buried.

From the moment of the explosion, the group begins to experience shifts in reality. Many objects they come into contact with (especially cigarettes) are much older than they should be, some being older types of the same object, and are rapidly deteriorating. They gradually find themselves moving into the past, eventually anchoring in 1939. At the same time, they find themselves surrounded by "manifestations" of Runciter; for example, his face appears on their money. As the novel progresses, members of the group one by one begin to feel tired and cold, then suddenly shrivel and die. Joe Chip attempts to make sense of what is happening and discovers two contradictory messages from Runciter, one stating that he is alive and they are dead, and another claiming to have been recorded by him while he was still alive. The latter message advertises Ubik, a store-bought product which can be used to temporarily reverse deterioration and which often appears as a can of aerosol spray. Chip deduces that they may have all died in the blast and are now linked together in half-life, and unsuccessfully tries to get hold of Ubik.

After receiving another message and travelling to Runciter's hometown, Joe Chip accuses Pat Conley of working for Hollis and causing the deterioration with her ability, and while he himself is withering away, she confirms this. As she leaves him to die, he is saved by Runciter, who sprays him with Ubik and tells him that the group is indeed in half-life and he himself is alive and trying to help them, although he does not know where Ubik comes from. As Runciter disappears, Jory Miller reveals himself to Chip, telling him that he, not Conley, has now killed off the entire group (including Conley), as he "eats" half-lifers to sustain himself, and that the entire reality they are experiencing is created and maintained by him. However, Chip is temporarily protected from being consumed through the effect of Ubik, and leaves Jory. As he at last begins to deteriorate again, he meets Ella, who saves him by granting him a life-long supply of Ubik, and instructs him to stay half-alive to assist Runciter after she herself reincarnates. It is implied that Jory has allies in the real world who help him find other half-lifers to consume in order to prolong his own half-life. Ubik is claimed to have been developed by Ella and several other half-lifers as a defense against Jory.

Each chapter is introduced by a commercial advertising Ubik as a different product serving a specific use. The last chapter is introduced by Ubik claiming that it has created and directed the universe, and that its real name is unknown and unspoken. In this short chapter, Runciter, who is in the "living" world mourning the loss of his best employees, discovers coins showing Chip's face, and feels that this is "just the beginning".

Dick's former wife Tessa remarked

Ubik is a metaphor for God. Ubik is all-powerful and all-knowing, and Ubik is everywhere. The spray can is only a form that Ubik takes to make it easy for people to understand it and use it. It is not the substance inside the can that helps them, but rather their faith in the promise that it will help them.[3]

She also interpreted the ending by writing

Many readers have puzzled over the ending of Ubik, when Glen Runciter finds a Joe Chip coin in his pocket. What does it mean? Is Runciter dead? Are Joe Chip and the others alive? Actually, this is meant to tell you that we can't be sure of anything in the world that we call 'reality.' It is possible that they are all dead and in cold pac or that the half-life world can affect the full-life world. It is also possible that they are all alive and dreaming.[3]

Peter Fitting sees parallels between the God-Devil/Life-Death relationship of Ubik and the antagonist's consumptive abilities within half-life, and the commercialized industry between psychics and psychic-inhibiting "inertials" which occupies the novel's "reality". Fitting also notes Dick's effort to desacralize and commercialize Ubik through the ironic advertising messages which begin each chapter.[4]

• Open Your Eyes
• Simulated reality
• "What the Dead Men Say"

• Braver, Lee, (2015) "Coin-Operated Doors and God: A Gnostic Reading of Philip K. Dick's Ubik", Extrapolation 56.1, pp. 83–110. https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2015.6
• Fitting, Peter, (1975) "Ubik and the Deconstruction of Bourgeois SF", Science-Fiction Studies # 5, 2:1, pp. 47–54.
• Lem, Stanislaw, (1975) "Science and Reality in Philip K. Dick's Ubik", A Multitude of Visions, ed. Cy Chauvin, Baltimore; T-K Graphics, pp. 35–9.
• Pagetti, Carlo, (2003) "Ubik uno e trino" [afterword], Philip K. Dick, Ubik, Roma: Fanucci, pp. 253–66. (in Italian)
• Proietti, Salvatore, (2006) "Vuoti di potere e resistenza umana: Dick, Ubik e l'epica americana", Trasmigrazioni: I mondi di Philip K. Dick, eds. Valerio Massimo De Angelis and Umberto Rossi, Firenze: Le Monnier, pp. 204–16. (in Italian)

• Ubik title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database