<UBIK> by Philip.K.Dick

alberty111 | Oct. 8, 2024, 8:07 p.m.

Have read UBIK these 2 weeks. I got to know Philip. K. Dick firstly by a very interesting movie called "A Scanner Darkly" which stared with Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, and Winona Ryder. Famous sci-fi movie like "Minority report", "Blade runner" are also adopted from P.K.D's novels.

UBIK tells a story in a near-future world where telepaths and "precogs" (people who can predict the future) are employed by corporate organizations, and advanced technology allows the recently deceased to exist in a "half-life" state—a form of suspended consciousness where they can communicate with the living.

The story follows Joe Chip, an employee of Runciter Associates, a company that specializes in protecting people from psychic espionage. The company is led by Glen Runciter, who consults with his deceased wife Ella, held in half-life, to help run the business. When Runciter assembles a team of anti-telepaths, including Joe Chip, for a mission on the moon, the team is ambushed in an explosion that seems to kill Runciter. However, after the incident, reality starts to unravel for Joe and the others.

As the fabric of reality begins to deteriorate, objects regress to older forms, and time appears to flow backward. Runciter, who was thought to be dead, starts communicating with the team through cryptic messages that appear on money, signs, and everyday objects. The members of the group begin to die one by one in strange ways, and Joe becomes increasingly paranoid about what is real and what is illusion.

By the end of the novel, Joe Chip, the protagonist, discovers that much of what he and the other characters have experienced since the explosion on the moon was not real in the conventional sense. Instead, they were in a half-life state—a limbo between life and death where reality is unstable and controlled by powerful mental forces. Runciter, who was thought to have died in the explosion, is actually alive in the "real" world, while Joe and his team are the ones trapped in half-life.

As reality continues to break down, Joe learns that Jory Miller, a young boy also in half-life, has been feeding off the lifeforce of the others to prolong his own existence, causing their reality to regress. Jory is essentially a parasitic figure, manipulating the half-life world for his own benefit.

The novel ends with a scene where Glen Runciter, in the "real" world, discovers strange coins with Joe Chip's face on them—similar to the earlier scenes where Joe saw Runciter's face on coins while in half-life. This moment suggests that Runciter himself might also be in half-life, or that the distinction between life and half-life isn't as clear-cut as it seems.

For the ending, I think actually Runciter is also dead and in half-life. And the half-life is dominated by Jory and Joe begans to learn to control the half-life like Mrs. Runciter did for many years.

But overall, UBIK is a very interesting novel which leaves readers questioning the nature of life, death, and reality itself. The novel doesn't provide clear answers, but rather invites the reader to reflect on the fluidity of existence

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