S.G. Browne

U is for Ubik

From everything I’ve heard and from the lists of the Greatest Novels of All Time I’ve read, U should be for Ulysses by James Joyce. But since that book still remains on my TBR list (and on my To Get A Copy To Be Read list), then that leaves me with just two novels I’ve read that begin with the letter U. And although I thought Usher’s Passing by Robert McCammon was okay, I wouldn’t put it in my top three McCammon novels, so it’s not making this list.

That leaves me with only one title that starts with U worth recommending as one of my favorite reads:

The Cheese Stands Alone
Ubik, Philip K. Dick
Joe Chip works for Glen Runciter, who has just died in an explosion that was deliberately set by Runciter’s business competitors. Except Joe and the other agents who survived the explosion keep getting messages from their dead employer on the television. If that’s not weird enough, other survivors of the explosion keep turning up dead.

Reality gets a makeover in this dark, twisted, existential comedy filled with telepaths, precogs, suspended animation, reincarnation, time travel, and an aerosol spray that offers salvation.

Ubik was named one of the 100 Best English Language Novels by TIME magazine.

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Filed under: Movies and Books — Tags: , — S.G. Browne @ 1:07 pm