Ubik

SUMMARY: Philip K. Dick's searing metaphysical comedy of death and salvation is a tour de force of panoramic menace and unfettered slapstick, in which the departed give business advice, shop for their next incarnation, and run the continual risk of dying yet again. Science-Fiction Named one of Time's 100 Best Books, Ubik is a mind-bending, classic novel about the perception of reality from Philip K. Dick, the Hugo Award-winning author of The Man in the High Castle. “From the stuff of space opera, Dick spins a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you’ll never be sure you’ve woken up from.”—Lev Grossman, Time Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business — deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in “half-life,” a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter’s face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time. As consumables deteriorate and technology gets ever more primitive, the group needs to find out what is causing the shifts and what a mysterious product called Ubik has to do with it all. “More brilliant than similar experiments conducted by Pynchon or DeLillo.”—Roberto Bolaño Glen Runciter Is Dead; Killed In An Explosion Orchestrated By His Business Rivals. However, His Employees Are Receiving Bewildering Messages From Him. In The Meantime The World Is Warping And Regressing, Suggesting That Their Own Time Is Running Out Or Already Gone. Philip K. Dick ; [cover Design By Heidi North]. Originally Published: Doubleday & Co : New York, 1969. At three-thirty A.M. on the night of June 5, 1992, the top telepath in the Sol System fell off the map in the offices of Runciter Associates in New York City.