Customer Reviews
An intense page turner - By: S. Heseltine, 17 Aug 2006 
The adventure of Joe Chipin this frenzied escapade make me wonder what exactly Dick was on when he wrote Ubik.
A must read for anyone with a brain.
For a more modern madness try Chasm City by Alistair Reynolds.
A great place to start - By: Matt Gibson, 21 Mar 2006 This was the second book of Philip K. Dick's I read & one of the few that I regularly return to. Ignore its cheesy cover (which seems to be going for the single male market, since it has nothing to do with the story) & just absorb all the weird concepts & twists & turns PKD has to offer. It's a superb thriller, where you can't take anything for granted, & shot through with his superb humour. What other author would envision a corporate world where you have to pay a toll to use doors, & where psychic powers are so commonplace that those with telepathy are treated like common neighbourhood pests?
Above all, Ubik is very very accessible. It's not cluttered with the messed-up amphetamine-fuelled oddness of his later novels, & there's less techno babble than usual. Even if you're not into science fiction, it's well worth a look if only to show you that just because a novel is setin the future, doesn't mean it has to be full of ridiculous overblown theatrics & weird aliens.
Ubik Ubik Ubik!!! 5 stars!!! - By: Christoph Strizik, 11 May 2004 This book is fantastic! I have to admit that Ubik was the first Philip K. Dick book I read & I was thrilled by his concepts. I loved this book from the very first page on because it is…abnormal. In the meantime I have also read a couple of other Philip K. Dick books but Ubik is the one which is above all them. The kind of ideas he throws at you are just stunning. Objects are morphing back into earlier technologies (a fancy high speed elevator transforms into an old cable operated thing), a talking doors threatens to prosecute one of the main characters, messages from a dead guy, the picture of the same dead guy turns up on money coins, & last but not least the all important question: are we dead or is everybody else dead? The book has only 200 pages & not a single word is wasted. The story is superbly & plottedin a complex way & takes countless unexpected turns. Every single time when you start to believe what this is all about, it just changesin such a drastic way that you have to put your thoughts together from scratch. Philip K. Dick is a masterin his own genre & I don't think anybody else dares to enter his realms. The only sad thing which is currently happening to his brilliant stories is the way Hollywood turns them into cheap blockbusters such as Pay check. I can understand that the complexity of his stories can not be easily turned into movies but using 10% of his genius ideas & 90% action crap is not good
Enough!
An absolute mind-screw of a book.... - By: Mr. A. J. Whiteway, 18 Feb 2004 If you've never read a Dick book before, read 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' because it's a lot mroe accessible as a piece of fiction.
This on the other hand is something entirely different, a glorious combination of strange SF paradies & the genuine paranoia that seems to flow through most all of Dick's work. The hero of the book, Joe Chip, is well, anything but a Hero,in keeping with Dicks desire to reprsent the lesser man. As we follow Joe's world we see it is one filled with paraonia, created by people's new found ability to use ESP (ie telepathy) to a variety of means. Joe works for Glen Runciter, head of a company that isin charge of trying to combat & cancel out the effects these people are having. Add to this the fact that Glen Runciter often visits his dead wife, who is stuck somewhere between heaven & hell & you have so many realities for Dick to play with that boy does he have some fun.
The trademark Dick humour is herein abundance, like the reviewer says, the scene with the door & Joe is hilarious, plus there are many other moments that I won't spoil. The ending is a masterstroke - though you'll probably love or hate it, there's no denying it leaves all sorts of questions & late nights spent scratching your head. And if that isn't the definition of a good Sci-Fi novel, I'll eat my hat.....
Puzzling and strange - By: Johnny London, 31 Dec 2003 
For me, this is Philip K Dick as his most strange. The book covers the usual territory of peoples perceptions, what is reality, strange extra perceptory messages etc.. Butin Dick's usual inventive & humorous way. I have to say it is not his most entertaining work, but at the same time it is one of his most original. I would have to say that 'A scanner darkly' covers the same territory a lot better. Having said that, this is still a good SF book, but not as accessible as some of his other work.
