I had never read anything by Philip K. Dick prior to this work, and it isn’t even actually a novel. In any case, Mr. Dick was a major force in the science fiction field prior to his death in 1982; several of his novels have been made into major motion pictures. These include Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and Total Recall, as well as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which most of us know as Blade Runner. Apparently a lot of his stuff is strange, and one reason for that was his experiences with drugs and his fascination with metaphysics and the paranormal. Above all, though, he was a storyteller; he won several awards for his writing, including the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. This screenplay was first published twenty years ago; Subterranean Press will be releasing a new edition in August of this year.

This screenplay was based on his 1969 novel of the same title. It concerns a man named Joe Chip, who is employed by a man named Glen Runciter. Runciter’s corporation uses people with peculiar psionic talents that mostly block the invasive talents as a security system for big companies. For example, the people from Runciter’s company can block telepaths from stealing company secrets. Joe works the machines to make sure that the employees of the company are actually accomplishing something. However, something awful happens, and there’s an explosion. Glen Runciter dies, and then Joe’s world starts falling apart — literally. The cigarettes are all stale; the cream is rancid and moldy; parts are falling off of things. Then the objects start regressing — cars turn into older versions; televisions turn into radios. What on earth is going on? And what is this Ubik product?

I spent the first three-quarters of this screenplay feeling really stupid, like I’d completely missed something. Fortunately, I hadn’t really; the characters also spent the first three-quarters of the book not knowing anything and trying desperately to figure it out. I thought maybe I was also having trouble since it’s a screenplay, and perhaps details that might make it easier for me were left out in adaptation, but most likely not. It’s a 180-page screenplay; just a bit too long, if I’m not mistaken, which might explain why it hasn’t been made. I would say it hasn’t been made into a movie due to its bleak outlook on life, but Blade Runner wasn’t exactly puppies and sunshine either.

One thing that’s always amused me is how wrong people predicting the near future have been. The book was written in 1969; it’s set in 1992. Well, sorry, Mr. Dick: in 1992, we didn’t have psionic corporations. Appliances are mostly chrome these days, but we don’t have to use loose change to use any of them. We also haven’t colonized the moon. America still exists as a country; we haven’t been taken over by Wal-Mart quite yet. I guess I could excuse this by saying that he’s predicting an alternate 1992; one where psionic powers exist. I should also let him off easy, as he’s been deceased since a few months before I was born. However, I remember when I watched Blade Runner a few months back and said, “Wow. Why did no one predict the cell phone properly?”

I don’t know that I actually liked any of the characters. There were two major women in the novel: one was extremely evil, and the other was nearly an angel. I couldn’t exactly identify with either of them. The males ranged from Joe, who was deeply flawed, extremely human, and not altogether pleasant, to Glen Runciter, who was almost all-powerful and actually functioned a lot more as a hero in the novel than Joe did, for me. There were a few other characters who came across as too stupid to live (and in some cases they didn’t). I don’t think I ever really want to re-enter this world that they live in, a world of death put off by a weird half-life frozen procedure.

There’s a lot of symbolism in the book, and the biggest symbol is Ubik, itself, whatever it is. I won’t go into what it actually is, since it sort of gives away significant parts of the novel. There are other symbols, of course, and some of them are not exactly subtle. However, there’s a deeper theme in the book, and I have to admit I couldn’t actually articulate what the main idea was until I read the afterword (by Tad Williams). I’d recommend it to hardcore PK Dick fans; I haven’t read the novel, so I can’t compare it, but it’s definitely more concise and, from what the foreword says, has a good deal of nice additions. They include more descriptions of some of the characters and his idea for the soundtrack (it’s primarily Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Again, bleak, but definitely thought-provoking, and I know the Sub Press edition will be beautiful. 4.5/5 stars.