About this title: Glen Runciter is dead. Or is he? Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages from their boss. And the world around them is warping and regressing in ways which suggest that their own time is running out. If it hasn't already.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780679736646ISBN:0679736646
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. OUR IMAGE OF OUR ACTUALLY OWNED COPY OF THIS BOOK. Downright minty fresh copy offered MERELY as Fine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 224 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Light chipping top/bottom of spine. Wraps and pages are clean and bright. No reader's creases in flat, tight spine. 212 p. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books
Date Published: 1977
ISBN-13:9780553104028ISBN:0553104020
Description: Good. Free, automatic1st class upgrade for books under 14 ounces. Free Priority upgrade to all domestic orders over $20.00. Satisfaction guaranteed. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Dell Publishing Co, Inc., New York
Date Published: 1970
Description: Good. 208 Pages. First Dell Printing May 1970. Cover edge wear and light creases. Very light age-tanning to some pages and a slight spine cock. A well read book but with complete covers and text. What plucked Joe Chip from the year 1992, and put him in a 1939 Willys-Knight riding toward a funeral in Des Moines, Iowa, in a world that had never heard of psis and. inerts and precogs and anti-precogs and icy half-life? How could Joe's former boss, the late, great Gene Runciter, Luna-slain chief of ... read more
Edition: reprint
Binding: paperback
Publisher: Panther, London
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780586037164ISBN:0586037160
Description: Very Good. 12mo. 191pp. Sci-Fi novel of time travel, telepathy, and bizarre imagination; this copy has one black felt-pen mark to front endpaper, text block tanned, o.w. Very Good. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books
Date Published: 1991-12-01
ISBN-13:9780679736646ISBN:0679736646
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780679736646. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Grafton
Date Published: 1973
ISBN-13:9780586037164ISBN:0586037160
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780679736646ISBN:0679736646
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY
Date Published: 1969
Description: Good. No dust jacket. Good for its age-these is one blotch of some kind on inside cover sheet-also some smudging on edges of pages. 202 p. Gray cover with pink lettering on spine. Good reading copy read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY
Date Published: 1969
Description: Good. No dust jacket. Good for its age-these is one blotch of some kind on inside cover sheet-also some smudging on edges of pages. 202 p. Gray cover with pink lettering on spine. Good reading copy read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York, 1991.
ISBN-13:9780679736646ISBN:0679736646
Description: First Vintage Books edition. Uncorrected proof. Blue, printed wraps, 8 x 5 1/8 inches, 216 pp. Near fine (slight edge wear; subtle sunning of spine). ISBN 0679736646 (3214016) read more
Edition: Book Club Edition.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y.
Date Published: 1969
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Bumping to lower, right corner of back board. Dj has some rubbing. Bottom corner clipped from front flap. 202 p. 22 cm. Doubleday science fiction.. read more
Edition: First Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: London: Panther / Granada, 1973, 1st Printing
ISBN-13:9780586037164ISBN:0586037160
Description: Tony Roberts cover Art. Very Good. ------------paperback, a Very Good copy, a scarce edition, spine creases, cover wear, any image directly beside this listing is the actual book and not a generic photo. read more
I've been a fan of Dick's for a long time (ever since a university professor of mine used him to explain what Gnosticism is), and it seems like this short novel manages to sum up all of Dick's attitudes toward religion and spirituality in one nice little 200-page package. It's as much a parable of Gnosticism as it is anything else, but there's some nice visuals along the way as well. Time keeps regressing for our main character Joe Chip - he starts off in the futuristic world of 1992, but after surviving an explosion on the lunar colony, he finds himself and the world around him gradually sliding back in time to 1939. As he's traveling, however, two additional mysteries present themselves - Joe has to discover why his friend and colleague Runciter, who dies in the lunar explosion, is sending him messages, and also the secret of Ubik, a substance that seems to have been around since forever but which no one seems to understand.
Throughout the book, Dick breaks some of what are considered basic rules for how a novel should be structured, but he does it in such an artful way that it leaves you feeling unsettled, rather than disappointed.
Highly recommended for anyone who enjoyed the Matrix films (or their spiritual predecessor, Morrison's Invisibles series)."
"I don't know why but I always get a huge kick out of reading an older sci-fi story that was set in the near future, but it's a date I've lived through. In 2001, I'd just randomly shout, "Kubrick and Clarke were wrong,! We don't have bases on the moon! Those fools!" This is another one where Phil didn't exactly nail 1992 writing in 1969, but it's still a pretty good story.
In this 1992, there are people with psionic powers like telepathy or precognition that are used for industrial sabotage, and rival firms are hired to stop it. Small appliances charge tokens to work even in your house. The dead can be kept in a half-life state and can have limited communication with the living.
Joe Chip is a tester for Glen Runcitor's anti-psi security firm, and when a job with a team of Runcitor employees goes horribly wrong, Joe finds reality shifting around him and is soon unable to distinguish past from present and what's real from what isn't. The only constant thing are ads telling him to try the wonderful product Ubik.
This is Philip K. doing his usual mind-bending thing, but this time instead of just questioning identity or memory, he's questioning the nature of reality itself. A little dated, but pretty good stuff with a lot of dark humor, which is something there isn't enough of in sci-fi."
"Time and time again, I'm amazed by how "cutting-edge" sci fi from the mid 20th century seems. The ideas are there, long before they've become the conceits that they are today. It's true: Just about any science fiction written today is a rehash--peppered and tobasco'd--of the sci fi from the past. Take out the 1960s vision of what "high tech" devices would exist in 1992, and Ubik accomplishes everything "The Matrix," "Ghost in the Shell," "Neuromancer" and every other cyberpunk and metaphysical exploration does. Well, almost everything. Still, this book amazed me; Phillip K. Dick is, and always will be, a master.
I was disappointed by the very, very end, however. It was kind of cheesy, the final couple pages. I almost wish I hadn't read them, because I got "end-of-book-chills" when I read the prologue to the last chapter, where Ubik gives its "God speech": I have always been. I spin the planets. &c... &c... I would've loved it if the book ended right there. The whole bit about Runciter POSSIBLY being in half-life, or whatever, smacked me as a kind of "...and then I woke up" ending. Meh. Still an awesome, awesome book.
Oh! I also read a different edition than what's pictured on goodreads; I have the Vintage Books edition from 1991. The cover art is pretty striking, and I especially like the blurb from Ursula K. LeGuin (one of my all-time favorite authors), BUT there are a few typos that I couldn't help correcting in the margins of my book. I'm no copy editor, but I have done a lot of proofreading in school, and this just disappoints me. Such a brilliant book, and I found three typos without even trying. Oh well, great book. I definitely recommend it to any sci-fi fan who wants to read some of the "classics." This is the third book of my whirlwind "50 books a year" tour through the annals of science fiction, and so far, the best."
"Life turns upside-down for Joe Chip and 11 of his coworkers when they escape the aftermath of a bomb blast with the corpse of their employer. Various temporal and paranormal phenomena begin manifesting themselves, the cause of which is a mystery - and their lives may depend on solving that mystery.
Ubik is rather confusing, but in this case, to say that is actually to pay it a compliment. It's one of Dick's best novels, a highly enjoyable tale of distorted reality and bizarre metaphysics, by the end of which, Dick clears up the confusion and brings the story to a satisfying conclusion - until, that is, he throws another curveball in the final chapter."
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