UBIK by Philip Dick - ordinary, commercialism, red-herrings and plot twists

The Montrose Great Books discussion of UBIK by Philip Dick was enlightening for me. It was a confusing book for many of the 14 people who attended last night's discussion (September 3, 2009) at the Freed-Montrose Library but afterwards, I can honestly say that I was less confused. That's as good as I can say about my confusion but I also believe that the author intended for us to be confused.

Brian led the discussion with a few interesting bits of biographical information such as the author, Philip Dick considering himself a "fictionalizing philosopher". Brian then began with a question about the beginning of the book asking "how effective is the writing in the beginning?" (or something to this effect.)

Everyone who responded to Brian's initial question mentioned how the language was "ordinary". Most of us did not have a background of reading much science fiction. I say this because I wonder still if the technique of using ordinary language to write about extra-ordinary things such as telepaths, half-lives, moratoriums and talking doors isn't often used by other science fiction authors. Hopefully some day I'll be able to answer this question once I have more experience with the genre. In the meantime, I delighted in the juxtaposition of these two contrasting worlds. When I say ordinary, I mean things like the bureaucracy of the moratorium, the problem of coming up with the coins to put in the machine to get coffee, the problem of having a messy apartment (such as that belonging to Joe Chip, the chief protagonist), the problem of finding where the bathrooms are when they arrive on Luna where they've never been before.

Some of us thought the use of the ordinary language made the world described very mundane and boring. The ordinary language for me was a great prelude to the part of the story where a group of characters are standing around waiting to go to Luna on the space ship and Pat Conley after being asked to show her talent, proceeds to project everyone into the future, including Runciter as someone who has had a heart attack and has retired. This part is written so skillfully that one really feels how the author is playing with the reader's mind. It is easy to get lost before coming back and understanding what is going on. This was the point when I really started enjoying the book. Great fun, in my opinion.

As a result of more questions from Brian, we transitioned into an extensive discussion of half-lives. What is a half-life as it is used in the book? Someone suggested that it didn't coincide with a "half-life" as known in the world of chemistry. Another suggested that perhaps it was meant to be the opposite of a "full life". In any event, Runciter who was Joe Chip's boss and another major character in the book wondered on page 12 "How did it feel to be in half-life?". I was one in the group who thought this was a precursor to a major theme of the book. Does anyone understand what a half-life is? Do any of the characters OR readers? My answer is no. According to some paragraphs in the book, it is an amorphous experience where our normal concept of language is not used. This last made me think of Jung's "collective unconscious". In other paragraphs, there is an indication that battles go on in cold-pac, the place where half-lives are restricted to in order to keep vital signs of those in half-life from going completely dead. Some in our discussion thought the whole concept and how it was described was the result of nonsensical drug-induced mindlessness of the author.

It was revealed near the end of the book that as a result of the battles, some half-lives in cold-pac invented Ubik, a spray that would help in the war against the more agressive domineering half-life members. We discussed briefly how this kind of invention could be invented while in half-life. And this discussion led us further down the path of being totally confused about what half-life was like. We fairly quickly left off discussing this concept of "invention in half-life" just as we did with other topics that were about the logistics of how things existed such as inertials, precogs and Pat Conley's talent of being able to change the future which everyone who spoke agreed was a red-herring. It was concluded that she was one of several red-herrings that had us thinking she was the bad guy in a mystery about whether or not Runciter was dead or in half-life and whether or not the others of a group of 11 who experienced an explosion on Luna would be dead soon as a result of some evil force. And who or what was the evil force? (More about that later.)

It was to Brian's credit and also to the credit of the members of the discussion that we didn't get bogged down in talking about all the logistics of the story that did not make sense. Instead we chose to talk about larger issues such as "what would happen if we could talk to others after death?" as was described in the story. And "What impact would this have on our experience of grief?"

We spent a fair amount of time talking about Joe Chip who was an ordinary guy who seemed to be a pawn used by others more devious or smarter than him. Some members of our group objected to his character as very unexceptional. Others thought the depiction of him as an anti-hero and as someone who was likable, cynical, "under the radar" and who eventually showed how smart he was and how powerful he was, was well done by the author. Others suggested he was a "classic dick" and we all laughed. Someone else reminded us of the fact that he called himself "the norm". As usual, there is no rule that we have to agree so we didn't spend a lot of time disagreeing.

Someone asked what was the significance of the author giving us the viewpoint of Joe Chip only. (Actually Al Hammond's thoughts and viewpoint, another one of the eleven who went to Luna at the beginning of the story, was briefly revealed at one point but not for long.) Some observed that because we had Joe Chip's viewpoint and not the viewpoint of one of the characters with special paranormal talents, it limited us in being able to solve the mystery causing some frustration but also increasing the tension of the story, not a bad thing.

Brian asked us "what were the opposing forces" at play? We couldn't answer directly, which made this a good question, by the way. There were numerous characters in the book, Hollis was identified as a hostile force but the author didn't give us enough information to be clear that he was in fact the bad guy that needed to be destroyed or at least caught. Pat Conley also was a possibility but in my own experience, the author tried so hard to lead us in her direction as the "bad guy" that I wasn't taken in. Guess I've read too much Agatha Christie.

We talked about the product called Ubik (which is short for ubiquitous). Some thought the Ubik advertisements at the beginning of every chapter were Ella, Runciter's wife who was in half-life talking to us. Others thought it was God in the form of Ubik talking to the world in a very commercialized way because that was the only way the world could understand since it was so mundane, boring and concerned only about money. If Ubik is God, why does Ubik spray last for only about an hour? - We didn't have the answer for that.

The topic of money comes up very often in the story in the form of Joe Chip (or others) constantly needing coins to open their door, to get a newspaper out of a machine which they have in their own apartment, to get coffee from machines and also to hire a plane to fly to DesMoines for Runciter's funeral. Coins are often used in the various story lines. Some are out of date, some are totally invalid because they have Runciter's picture on them, even a coin shop is included a couple of times. We weren't sure about the significance other than to symbolize crass commercialism.

Other themes and questions we talked about included:

• Reason the group went to Luna in the first place
• Conflict between Jory and Ella
• Why is Jory bad? (some didn't think fact that he ate people bad, yikes!)
• Time regression and the World of 1992 vs world of 1939
• Theology issues in the story
• What is reality
• Moneyed sector of society - Ella can be reborn out of half-life because her family has paid for it.
• Why didn't Ella make mass quantities of Ubik?
• Where are the telepaths when the characters in the story need them?
• Who put the eleven inertials in cold-pac?
• What is significance of picture of Joe Chip on coin in Runciter's possession in the last paragraph of the book?

Most of our group enjoyed the book. As a minimum they found it entertaining. Some loved the book. Several thought it was disappointing and at least one thought it was nonsense and commented that "just because a book is published doesn't mean it's not nonsense." Several in the group as we were going around in the circle at the end evaluating and adding final comments, thought that the book had too many holes to have credibility. From having read some of the background of the author, I would agree with this last statement about the "holes". Philip Dick wrote this book along with 10 others in the space of 5 years, a time period that didn't allow for much proofreading and "dotting i's" and "crossing t's", in my opinion.

The book may not have been a Great Book (uppercase G and uppercase B) but the fact that the author didn't "spoon feed" the themes and issues of the story made it much more challenging and hence enjoyable to read in my opinion. Also, the little twists the author makes with the story playing with the reader's mind make up for a lot of flaws and added immensely to my enjoyment.

Looking forward to our next discussion of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neal Hurston on October 1st at Houston Freed-Montrose Library. Our discussion will be included in many that will be held at Houston Libraries as part of the citywide initiative called Books On The Bayou. Check out our web page at http://www.houstonbookclubs.org/Montrose/ for more info.