Ubik
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Ubik
| Author | Philip K. Dick |
|---|---|
| Published | 1969 |
| Pages | 224 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Philip K. Dick’s 1969 novel of a 1992 where psychic talent is a corporate-espionage input and the dead are held in cryonic half-life — after a sabotaged job, reality starts regressing around the technician Joe Chip, patched only by a spray-can product called Ubik. A book about a substrate failing underneath the people living on top of it. |
Ubik
Where I heard about it
- The a16z infrastructure team — on the a16z Infra Reading List, in the Sci-fi — Must reads section (S tier), under Philip K. Dick’s selected works.
About this edition
Dick’s most formally inventive novel, and the one that makes his central preoccupation explicit — the world as a rendering that can degrade. Ubik arrives advertised in a different form in every chapter heading.
Connections
- a16z Infra Reading List — the list this came from.
- a16z — the firm whose infrastructure team curates it.
- Philip K. Dick — the author.
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch — the earlier novel with the same product-as-reality structure.
- The Man in the High Castle — the other Dick novel here where the real world is one of several on offer.
- Historical Futurism — the research lens.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.