Just Finished Reading Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Back in 2009-10 I got into reading famous American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick's novels...I went through ten of them, and then drifted away.  The other day, though, I picked up his 1969 novel Ubik, which received a lot of recognition back then as one of his best works.  It deals with alternate reality and the slippery philosophical concept of solipsism and is in places pretty danged confusing. The setting is 1992, 23 years into the future as society is run by rampant consumerism while corporations hire telepaths and precogs (predicters of the future) to spy on each other and engage in sabotage.  To thwart them a consultation company provides "inertials" who detect and dampen the telepaths' presence...whoa, I see a direct, prescient analogy to today's computer hackers and viruses, and those who combat them.  Joe Chip, the protagonist, works for such a company and is sent to the moon to clean a company based there of telepathic subversion...and there the story explodes into deep mystery as to what is real and what isn't.  Chip's boss is widowed, but his wife is only "half-dead", her body deep in "cold pack" and it is possible for him to still communicate with her still-active mind...this idea of partial death is central to the story's progression and resolution.  If you've seen The Matrix you might find yourself treated to a similar confusion as to what is real and what is only illusion.  So, what exactly is Ubik?  Ah...guess you'll have to read it yourself to find out.  As for my reaction to the story, I recognize that once an author inserts paranormal abilities and time travel into his or her narrative, then it's easy to come up with all sorts of speculative mysteries and paradoxes.  Ubik is full of them, but after it was all over I couldn't help but feel that this all was an allegorical exercise in philosophical solipsism...I'd be interested in reading your own reactions.  One humorous aside: Philip K. Dick, apparently harassed by coin-operated toilets and the like in his own life, decided to include and expand the feature in his future world to coin-operated doors, with the story's hero often finding himself stuck in his own room...

Here are links to reviews I've written about other Philip K. Dick novels.  When reading them it will become clear that Dick didn't just write science fiction but also delved into more general fiction with society and relationships often his chief focus...

Voices from the Street (1952)

The Cosmic Puppets (1953)

The World Jones Made (1954)

Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)

Time Out of Joint (1958)

In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)

Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)

The Man in the High Castle (1961)

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)