Philip Dick - Ubik

Ubik (1969) is one of the most important SF works of the 1960s, for it is both deconstruction and a hint at reconstruction: it lays bare the principal ways that SF is used for ideological ends, in terms of science and of fiction, while tentatively looking towards a future freed from the restraints it has exposed. In this novel, Dick has exploded and transcended the SF genre and the “representation novel” of which it is a part. Dick’s writing is not easily included within traditional academic limits, for his novels are, in appearance, badly written, with superficial characterization, confusing plots, and similar deviation from “good writing.” This apparent inattention to writing, along with an overabundance of traditional SF details and conventions, have earned him the neglect of the proponents both of high art and of the New Wave; while his sprawling, chaotic near-futures and his disregard for the traditional SF virtues of rationality and futurological plausibility have caused him to be overlooked by proponents of the more traditional extrapolative SF. This paper will analyze Ubik to show how Dick’s SF presents a model of a more subversive form of writing, undermining rather than reconfirming the repressive system in which it has been produced, and acting as a critique of the ideological presuppositions of the SF genre and the traditional novel.