Ubik

by Philip K. Dick

First published 2012

Glen Runciter runs a company that protects clients from telepathic spies. When he dies during a mission, his workers expect grief and reorganization. Instead, they find messages from their dead boss appearing on cigarette packs, bathroom walls, and TV commercials. The messages warn them about danger, but danger from what? As Runciter's communications multiply, his employees watch their world shift around them. Technology regresses decades in moments. Objects decay rapidly, then restore themselves. Time moves backward and forward without pattern. Joe Chip and his coworkers struggle to understand whether they inhabit reality or something else entirely. The dead may not be dead, and the living may not be alive. Runciter holds answers, but his cryptic warnings arrive too late and too scattered to save anyone. In a world where death offers no certainty and life provides no comfort, survival depends on distinguishing truth from illusion.

Genres: science-fiction, dystopia, mystery, thriller

Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking

Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator

227 pages · Paperback · Mariner Books

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