35 pages • 1 hour read
Philip K. DickUbik
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1969A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The year is 1992, 25 years in the future from the date of the book’s publication. Glen Runciter is the head of Runciter Industries, a New York-based organization that employs “inertials” who possess the ability to block telepaths engaging in corporate espionage. One night, a technician contacts Runciter to tell him that S. Dole Melipone, the city’s top telepath, is missing. Melipone, who has the ability to change his physiognomy, has repeatedly blocked Runciter’s team’s efforts to read his mind and locate him. Runciter decides that he needs the help of his dead wife for the problem.
Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang runs a moratorium where dead relatives remain stored in “half-life.” Half-life is a system that stores the dead’s consciousness and allows others to interact with it until the half-life runs out. This is the new standard for handling the dead. “Burial is barbaric,” Herbert says, a “remnant of the primitive origins of our culture” (6).
Runciter demands a private room for he and his wife, Ella Runciter. Herbert knows Mr. Runciter as the famous executive for one of the anti-psi organizations known collectively as “Prudence Organizations,” There is also no way for Herbert to tell how old Runciter is, as he possesses numerous “artiforg” implants, artificial organs that make him appear younger.
Chapter 2 Summary
Ella sits upright in her coffin facing Runciter. Each time she is resuscitated, her energy is diminished. Nevertheless, she wishes to be awoken whenever a big decision must be made at Runciter Associates. Runciter wonders if this constant resuscitation is really better: “Is this better than the old way, the direct road from full-life to the grave?” (12). Runciter tells Ella about Melipone along with the disappearance of numerous other psis, but she cannot focus on that issue. Their conversation stops abruptly when Jory, another half-lifer, takes over Ella’s frequency. Herbert explains that Jory’s “cephalic activity is particularly good,” while Runciter’s wife’s is not (17). He adds that she still exists in half-life but cannot contact Runciter unless she is moved into isolation where she will be all alone with her thoughts. Runciter orders this done.
Chapter 3 Summary
Joe Chip, a debt-ridden tester for Runciter Associates, sits in his apartment after a night of drug use. He receives a visit from G. G. Ashwood who claims he has an anti-psi woman who will “give new life to the firm, which it badly needs” (21). She is an attractive young woman named Pat Conley who claims to be a powerful inertial. Her parents are “precogs” who work for Ray Hollis, whose psychic enterprise is Runciter’s chief adversary. Joe and Pat reflect together on the need for inertials. “The anti-psi factor is a natural restoration of ecological balance” Chip claims, suggesting that her kind of talent is necessary to the human race (26).
Pat adds that she is able to move into the past to affect the present, without anyone knowing about it—similar to time travel. Because precogs see multiple strands of a possible future and select the most luminous one, Pat can fool them into believing their predictions are sound, when in fact she has already determined the outcome for them. Pat gives an example of a vase that she broke as a little girl. She wished again and again that she had never broken the vase until, she says, “one morning when I got up—I even dreamed about it at night—there it stood” (29).
After Joe agrees to test Pat’s abilities, she begins to undress. She explains that in another present, Chip graded her abilities poorly when she refused to undress. She hands him a slip of paper reflecting the poor grade as proof. Joe writes her a new slip of paper. This one, he claims, tells Runciter to hire her. However, Joe codes the message so that Runciter will know Pat is potentially dangerous. Pat continues to undress. and announces her intention to move in with him.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The author establishes two major themes in these opening chapters. The first is the idea of customs and the judgment of those customs by civilizations that claim to be advanced. The half-life machines have become the norm for society in the “Sol system” or solar system. These machines are said to hold on to individuals’ inner essences, or souls, so that their loved ones can communicate with them for a number of years after they’ve died. It is unclear, however, to many of those involved just where the person’s essence is, and there are numerous problems with another person’s stronger energy taking over, as when Jory overpowers Ella. Runciter even wonders whether people were better off before, when they simply went straight to the grave (12).
Counter to this idea, is Herbert’s notion of the barbarism of earlier society, who used to bury their dead. Here, the novel critiques the idea of “advanced” civilizations, a consistent theme across Dick’s body of work. These critiques are almost always presented by examining the damaging and unpredictable effects of speculative technology. The technology at issue in Ubik–the half-life machine—leads to particularly perverse consequences, given that it involves the unnatural extension of human lives. While civilizations tend to champion efforts to extend lifespans in fields like medicine, the half-life model is far more uncomfortable to characters like Runciter, who laments the psychological effects of Ella’s altered and diminished state of consciousness.
The second theme established in the novel is the notion of privacy—both the loss of it and the profits of those claiming to protect it. Herbert worries that the “Prudence Organizations” lied to him about there being a telepath in his offices. He has no way of knowing for sure, of course, but must protect the privacy of his clients and the half-lifers. Here, Dick highlights the powerlessness that arises when people fear a loss of privacy. Others are stuck in the vicious cycle that Joe Chip mentions to Pat, of telepath versus non-telepath and inertial versus telepath. The only defenseless people in that cycle are the humans with no powers. With that in mind, Ubik in many ways predicts the inequities found concerning privacy in the Information Age of the 21st Century. Those with extraordinary knowledge of computer systems and networks—or those with the means to hire such individuals—are far better-equipped to protect their privacy than laypeople. Even more troublingly, some of these computer experts act maliciously to breach the security defenses of enterprises, individuals, and governments, causing extraordinary financial and reputational harm.
It’s important to note, too, that the novel contains elements of the noir and detective genres of fiction. The language is stylized and often shortened to lend a noir-like feel to the futuristic setting. Joe Chip stands in for the detective, who may have found himself caught in a dangerous mystery. It’s also worth pointing out Dick’s frequent use of unfamiliar jargon like “psi,” “inertial,” and “papapot,” a term associated with drug use. This is yet another literary technique employed across the author’s body of work. Given that slang terms evolve over time, the use of invented jargon serves to ground the reader in Dick’s futuristic milieu. Moreover, the author rarely explains these terms explicitly, forcing the reader to discern their meaning through contextual clues. The effect is akin to having been dropped into an unfamiliar culture or community, and thus the book demands a significant measure of engagement from readers as they navigate a confusing and somewhat forbidding world.
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