Ubik

Philip K. Dick
Mariner Books (Apr 17, 2012)
$11.99 (240pp)
978-0547572291

First published in 1969, Philip K. Dick’s novel Ubik was selected by critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo as one of 100 best English-language novels published since 1923—the beginning of TIME. In his review, Grossman wrote:

An accident has occurred. Joe Chip and his colleagues—all but one of them—have narrowly escaped an explosion at a moon base. Or is it the other way round? Did Joe and the others die, and did the one fatality, Glen Runciter, actually survive? If Glen is dead and Joe alive, why does Joe keep getting weird messages from Glen? Is Joe’s experience of his post-accident life just a hallucination, played out as his flash-frozen body lies in suspended animation? Joe’s reality begins to fall apart, and a mysterious, vaguely mystical substance called Ubik—available in a handy spray can—appears to be the only thing that can stabilize it. 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.