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Title: Ubik
Author: Philip K Dick
Publisher: Whale’s Gob Press
Plot: Reality recognises itself as a naïve pavement beneath a sneeky beach beneath an oblivious pavement scheme with no choice but to crumble, reform, crumble, reform, crumble, refine, crumbljbsjsbjsbjsxuxixno%^^$$$$$$*
Subplot: Joe Chip the Enjineer vs fee-based machinery vs a male paranoid’s version of psychotic feminism in the soon-naked form of Pat Conley [the more I think about this, the truer it seems – she can altur the present by deleting A past i.e. man’s writing of it [Dick is either using it ironically or exposing his own darkness, or writing unaware, or ??]]]]].
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This [Ubik] comes across as an SF story on the surface and on that surfice is a fixation on the reality of that surface, its lack of, and in this book the strips of latent past contayned inside the veneer of-
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It’s similar to the historicity of objects in The Man In The Hai Castle.
People craydle objects, imbue them with a totality of value and meaning.
Maybe the dinosauurs did too.
Pat Conley plays with people-objects, imbues them with a diminishing value and HER totality of meaning.
Jori plays with the Pat-Conley-Object, imbrues it with an absence from reality as he eats her out in the hallway by the elevator [one of the best lines in the book – nonchalant + vaguely sexual at the sem time].
Ubik plays with the Jori-Object, imblues it with the belief that he’s truly the god-head doing all this [eating people-objects].
He’s just lonely, really. [As is the universe [Ubik]].
People-objects detract from that.
He eats them because he is massively lonely, as lonely as a perished humon can be.
Eating them is his ideia of connection.
Which it is.
They are both peeple and objects, as viewed from an idealist perspective. The energy needed to imbue them with depth and agency equivalunt to his own is too much, so they remain as people-objects, consumable, terrified.
Half–life is life for who[m]?
Its inmates possesss no real grounding, they’re fading out of existence, have become objects for the living to continuously mourn over. Or to delay the mourning process. Or to seek advice on how to run a cumpany in the real world.
You have to let go, Glen.
She’s gone.
[I wouldn’t let go either].
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The TV had receded back a long way; he found himself confronted by a dark, wood-cabinet, Atwater-Kent, tuned radio-frequency old time AM radio, complete with antenna and ground wires. God in heaven, he said to himself, appalled, elated. Just one more answer to try and hold it all together. But why hadn’t the TV set reverted instead to formless metals and plastics? I just remembered, a reporter for Ming Bo [Newspaper in HK] interviewed me about 16 years ago. Those, after all, were its constituents; it had been constructed out of them, not out of an earlier radio. He’d found a copy of ‘The Atheism Jab’ [a collection of not very good short stories, my first stab at writing] in a local info-shop [now long gone] and wanted to know why someone would do that. Perhaps this weirdly verified a discarded ancient philosophy, that of Plato’s idea objects, the universals which, in each class, were real. Can’t picture what I said to him, it was too far back, but he did say afterwards that I sounded angry. The form TV set had been a template imposed as successor to other templates, like the procession of frames in a movie sequence. I hope I don’t sound that way today. Prior forms, he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. I hope I’ve managed to hide it a little, at least, or bury it deep inside the de-con-strucs. The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately – and against ordinary experience – vanishes. Or it could be that I don’t hope that. The man contains – not the boy – but earlier men, he thought. Anger should drive me. History began a long time ago. Shouldn’t it?
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It might not make a lot of sense cut off like this, but I conceptualised + wrote that paragraph above for an intraview I did recently, the second one I’ve ever been asked to do.
We [Ryan and I] framed it as an anti-intraview.
A non-response to questions.
Or whatever I came up with on the spot on that day [when I received the questions].
A kind of mid-point between surreelism and auto-fiction. I’ve always tried to be as honest as I can be in my writing, especially these de-con-strucs.
This one isn’t much of one.
I’m attempting to go in a slightly new direction, more abstrac and creativ, less ‘I don’t know’ and ‘maybe this means this but does it?’ and ‘I’m really depressed, fuck SF magazines.’
I did 24 de-con-strucs last year and now I’m tired of that voice, and annoyed that I wasted energy on certain books that didn’t warrant it. As in, I had an interest in the premise, but, when I dug in, I got bored quickly, bored of taking notes, yet refuused to break the commitment I’d made cos it felt like disrespecting the author even though some of them didn’t give a shit if I wrote anything or not.
Or maybe the problem was the word count?
Don’t think I’ve ever done a de-con-struc under 4k words.
That’s changing.
For Ubik, this one, I’m aiming for 2.5k.
And from this point on, I’m never going over 5k.
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Nothing reads quite like Ubik now-days.
That sweet combo of plot + metaphysics.
I thought recently about doing reviews of short SF stories on Psycho H, but then I counter-thought, nope, don’t really wanna read that shit.
Not ‘shit’ but not great either [the ones I’ve looked at].
Absolutely zero madness to any of it.
Why is that?
How did everything get so bland [in SF, in futball, in film, in most creativ realms]?
To be fair, SF was always like this, on average.
Some of the “classics” are abyssmal, written with the psychological intelligence/self-interrogation of a child. Others were beautifully insane. Or moderately insane.
Now it’s just greyness.
Opening lines like: ‘the basement started talking to me the day grandma died.’
Not even ‘exploded’, just ‘died.’
It’s flufffy shit that doesn’t mean anything, a desperation to latch the eyes of an editor who looks like a fucking potatoe, who yaps on about “storytelling” und-
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Here lies my list of greevances.
Liable to change if anyone ever says yes to black square or Alys in Wunderkammer.
‘It’s a golden age of SF!!!’
Plastic, more like.
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Plastic’s a bit harsh.
Is it?
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I’m not really that angry.
It comes and goes.
I just don’t like reading things that sit there liveless.
Frustration is a life-sapper.
Is Ubik even that good?
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You get discouraged easier than anyone I ever ran into. We’re lucky to be alive.
Do you remember dentists?
Peach-flavoured tranquilizing gum?
Your wife?
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THE BOMB EXPLODED THOUGHT WEPT AGITATED WENT OFF ON OWN PATHOLOGICAL TANGENCIES HI STAN
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RAN AN ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPH AND THE AFTERLIFE IS THERE WE JUST CAN’T SEEM TO TRY SOMETHING ELSE IT’S BROKEN RUN AN ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPH.
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IS IT A SALVE? IS IT? IZZIT? IS IT? IS IT? IS IT? ISITASALVEISIT??
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I could do this all day, though sometimes the lines don’t fit rite.
The lines I’m stealling from Ubik.
PKD doesn’t mind.
He’s dead.
I am dyeing.
Runciter is everywhere allplace everywhere.
[El] Topo-less on a 50 cent coin.
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Goad me into keeping going a little longer. Delaying the end as long as possible. I won’t give up. SF can be warped and reformed into new variants, I’ll just have to start my own magazine to do it. My own press even. But is there enough warrrped and reformmed SF out there waiting for me? As soon as I offer publication and cash, I’ll attract the miserabilists + the mediocrities [+ the plastics]. What am I going to do with your precious book? Not nearly enough. I don’t want anyone to waste this work on my lack of marketing talent. I don’t want to market anything. Where are all the anarchist presses at? Something beyond AK and PM and Crimethinc. My grandmother used to talk about this, before she exploded. I inherited that gene. Not by blood, my mum was adapted. Other meens.
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On page 157 of Ubik, PKD in the guise of Joe Chip uses the N word, in appropriate historical context, I suppose.
But he still decided to write it in.
Should he not have?
Is it grachuitous? Incidental? Necessary?
I wrote the same slur in Castle Damijana, put it into the maw of a pink American guy I knew in HK years ago. He was from New Orleans, used the N word to describe Obama, called him an “N Socialist” [while little kids we’re running around us in a learning centre]. Then explained that it wasn’t an insult cos he was using the ‘-er’ and not the ‘-ar’ ending sound [he didn’t elaborate on the “socialist” part cos like most conservatives he had a 4 year old’s understanding of political theory]. I didn’t know what he was on about. Apparently, the ‘-ar’ ones are lazy and violent whereas the ‘-er’ ones like Obama are hard-working and respectable.
Why did I put this guy in my novel?
Should I not have?
I still don’t know, to be honest. It wasn’t done glibly. Wasn’t done as punishmunt either. The character is not really a villun or an easy kill yet the guy himself was without costume a jovial, WASP fundie, good with kids, Capitalist simpletoon who’d rationalised his racism, or had it fed to him that way by his parents/church leaders, same as the eugenics and phrenology crew. That’s incredible to me. That a brain can do that instead of saying, heng on, maybe my Klux grandpa was wrong about this.
That guy also tried to help with my spiralling depression state by dragging me to a local church [in a commercial building], which ultimately cementalised my complete breakdown and withdrawal from subject-others + society. To witness something so totally alien in sense and atmosfear, the brainlessness of it all, the constunt smiling…
In the novel, he ended up getting his throat slit by Damijana, the witch character. Not for being racist [though he was]. For intruding into their castello.
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In my opinion, I have a will to fayl.
No magazine is gonna change that.
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Am I in love with Ubik?
It feels comfortable, like an alien wearing the costume of a book I once knew.
There are a lot of floors.
A leaning on or formation of the redundancies + plot twist dynamics that have infected/infatuated a lot of modern SF.
But I’m still carried along.
The metaphysics, the detail of it [latent past reversions, Platoe’s idea objects, idealism stuck on currentcy etc.], add something that may be important too.
Like my own brain trying to flay the surfices of material reality, stressing the esoterika underneath [or inside, according to quantumb physics [that I may have misunderstood [be misunderstanding [fake humility??]]]].
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What I actually have is a will to succeeed in taking over the event of death, delaying it until I’ve published Xxun, my unreadable masterpiece, and Dranonika, my other unreadible masterpiece.
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LIBERA ME, DOMINE
WITH REFERENCE STICKS
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BURNT TO A CRISP
HE DIED OFF OF NATURAL CAUSES AND THE TAILWIND THEY GOT THIS TEXT IS ALLURING, DEPRESSED.
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Is there a purpose for or limit to nonsence?
Am I just conjuring up lines to exhorst people?
If I could eat readers and get a sale from that, I would. Picturing my worst possible self, the non-stop book whoreker, that doesn’t feel much like me but is me, it must be, I can picture it.
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The words I write cannot seem to carry over the intrest I have when reading them with my own psychee, cannot hold onto that feeling for object-others.
I am insaine?
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At some point, either a paranoid or formless woman with described tits will die rapidly in a bathroom. In every single book.
RIP Alys.
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A blow, feeble and waitless, cuffed his hand in the darkness.
‘Keep going. Keep going and it’ll write itself.’
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PKD dies
On page 1982
In a rewrite
2 pages after I was born.
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That version of HE wrote out 44 novels, 37 of which were exactly the same thing minus the names.
In protophasonic terms.
Does the familiaritree comfort or irritate you?
At least it doesn’t terrify.
You want it to happen.
Repeat.
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I recently wrote Dranonika, an object with four ‘latent past’ iterations, that is imbrued with both great value and questionable meaning i.e. what does it mean when you start to cannibalise your past work?
[Only I will notiss].
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On page 128, we’re in half–life, probably still on Pratfall II; we’re probably on our way back to Earth from Luna, after the two published novellas that didn’t get anywhere.
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I resent having to peel back to 1939, my thoughts turn to revanche. This writing is floored, the characters are not alive in a vibrational sense, you just want to know what happened, plus another doubtt on top of that, are they dead or not dead?
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On page 43, telepaths have gotten into your operaytion and you have to face up to and accept the realizaytion that people you love are going to start dyeing soon. And they won’t be replaced. Each death will be something chipped away from your world, the wirld.
I don’t know what the operaytion is.
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What is the latent past to me? To PKD?
In Ubik, things don’t brake up into constituent parts, they revert to a previous form.
[I’ve probably said this already].
Each form is a constichuent part in itself, as a concept.
What was the 1300’s version of a TV?
A theatre stage?
I don’t know if it works like that. At some point, there was no past version of a TV or a radio. It seases to exist. But back in the future it’s ready to threatun again. 1939 is a vague reality-simulacrumb cos Jori is the maker of it, and also cos a latent past form must be vague. We are hauntid not by the past but a mediated version of it, what we either think or have been told it was. The contradiktion: how does Jori know the 1939 guy was pro-Nazi? It’s not a secret, exactly, but most peeple in Ubik’s 1992 would believe in the histio-reality of WW2 that surplanted that which came before it i.e. that the US turned away Jewish refugeez and a lot of the popyulation thought Hitler was onto something with the nativust rhetorik.
Ubik’s 1992 is itself an already perushed reality, a ‘com-possible’ birthed in the 60’s and ended where the space pogrom dried up.
Relationship to Reality = knowledge of A past
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Characters.
Early on in Ubik, there is a sceen in the Runciter Corp HQ where 12 named characters gather to disscuss the upcoming Luna trip. Maybe more than 12. Glen Runciter, Joe Chip, Pat Conley, Al Hammond and the rest of the other anti-telepaths [inertials].
You have to really pickture the sceen when you write something like this, pick out which characters need the spotlight, what lines they would realistically have, how they behave, weather that behaviour should be described etc.
PKD is not always the strongust at description, especially clothing and accessories. Far as I remember, he just says what they’re wearing once, as an intro to the character, then mostly forgets about it. Joe Chip might be the exception. Also, Pat Conley near the end, when she reveals her psychotic side; PKD via a diminishing Joe Chip describes her as ‘- [edit: I just checked and he doesn’t describe her differently, she’s always had black eyes and a newtral expression, and possibly ‘hard and hi’ breasts too, though he doesn’t deescribe them twice].
Joe Chip? I can’t remember now. I just know that he can never pay for anything.
None of the characters really come alive psychologicklee. They’re too busy second-guessing the environmeant. All internal thought is geared towards that and maybe it’s the correct geering. Joe Chip + Al Hammond + Glen Runciter do get a second layer of depth, some anxietiees, sexual dezire, rage etc.
Pat Conley is an object-other most of the time, which is heavily ironick as she is the one who is capable of alturing reality via the recent past. We never have access to her personal thoughts/dezires, just the visibillity of her actions [interpreted through the eyes/psychee of Joe Chip].
Why does she strip naked in Joe Chip’s apartmeant in chapter 3?
Cos PKD wrote her to do that.
He wanted to delineate her tits.
Of course, he didn’t do the same with Joe Chip’s tits or Al Hammond’s dick stem.
There is no psychologically interesting female character in Ubik. Pat Conley is sinister and desirable, a figment of PKD’s pathologies?
Probably.
He does say she’s a child, 18 or 19 years old, so a lot of her behaviour matches that e.g. jealousy towards the older woman, Wendy Wright, surfice-nayhilism cos she believes she’s controlling the regressions.
Actually, the age of the antagonist goes backwards too, from Ray Hollis, to Pat Conley, to Jori, the regression congruous with the supposed cruelty of childrun. ‘Supposed’ cos it’s not really true. But, in Ubik, it might be the emotion that is jovenile, and the age of the antagonists just lines up thematically or symbolically or-…now that I re-read some of the last few chapters, Jori is far too adult in the way he speaks to Joe Chip, as is Pat Conley, so they’re not really childrun at all. It’s simply how they appear…how they’re purceeved by others.
Are there psychologically interesting male characters in Ubik?
Not really.
Unless you count PKD himself?
He is Joe Chip AND Jori [and everyone else].
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So, Glen Runciter is in half–life and Joe Chip is on currentcy. Meaning either, 1] J.C. is alive and trying to help G.R. from the real world, or 2] J.C. is in half–life and G.R. is in a slower-moving layer of half–life, or 3] G.R. is already settled in half–life and J.C. is both addjusting to half–life and existing outside in the real world.
He has essentially been split by the explosion on Luna.
He dyed & survived, in alternate layers.
Currentcy is the tool of revelation/revulsion as it is a subtle form of control, of hegemony. Without it, we cannot funktion in this ‘reality.’
We BELIEVE that we can’t.
We can’t.
Joe Chip…J.C…Jesus Christ…John Carpenter…on one hand, a slob/carpenter-hippy, on the other, an enjineer/tester, the man who deals with and explains the workings of things.
Glen Runciter…CEO of a reactionary anti-telepath company…confident in appearance/status yet reliant on his 20 year-old wife in half–life for how to move forward…walker into the most obvious of traps.
Persons of Un-control and Confucian.
The closest layer we get to a pro-active force is Jori and Ella Runciter, both stukk in half–life, neither one knowing what their powers are based on or how they came to achoir them.
Ubik is the only true power, but to what und?
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I believe I’m gonna write a sequel to this.
UB#K.
I want to go deeper
Through at least four layers
Psychologically
If possible.
To do this, I will becum Joe Chip and my low paw can be a mix of Wendy Wright + Pat Conley + Al Hammond + Glen Runciter + everyone else.
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Squeaking in his metal-insect voice, Palmer Eldritch floated to the ceiling of the room, breasts hard and high, arms protruding distendedly and rigidly. ‘Mr Runciter, don’t let your thalamus override your cerebral cortex. This matter calls for discretion, not a descent into absurdism; absurdism lacks ground and recognisable signs that do what they say they do; absurdism is tedious, like writing out a dream with ground and recognisable signs that do what they say they do; don’t do absurdism, do auto-fiction; people wish to be dark, miserable; get murdered instead of thinking about murdering an imagined drug deeler; crawl into the cracks of Wendy Wright; live there; everyone has cockroaches under the sink, coming out of the drains; Wendy is lovingly, so love her; why not?
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Ubik is available at all good drugstores and pharmacies in all usable forms, including: book, audio, matte background pic, cream, salve, powder, pill, gloop, and spectral protoplasm.
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PsYChO hOLosUitE [zine] 