By Philip K Dick

The Folio Society, out now

 

Introduced by Kim Stanley Robinson

Illustrated by La Boca

 

In the future world of 1992, mind reading is standard practice, and agencies exist to help protect individuals from the invasive activities of precogs and psychics. Joe Chip is a technician at Runciter Associates, and finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy where nothing is what it seems.

If anything was going to convince me to part from my battered old 80s paperback of Ubik it was a luxury edition by The Folio Society, and they perform their usual alchemy of taking a classic work of literature and making it even more must-have. Ubik is in author Philip K. Dick’s best five novels, published in 1969, the year after Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and this was surely his golden age. Popular Dickisms like paranoia, artificial life, mind bending and intrigue are present in this exciting thriller which is relentless in its rug pulls and twists.

Perhaps the greatest surprise is that a film has not yet been made of the novel – Dick himself wrote a screenplay and there are two or three recorded attempts to get a project off the ground. Perhaps it’s perceived as being just too trippy for a cinema-going audience, and in the absence of a movie we can fall back on this goregeous tome. No less an author than Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars) pens the seven-page introduction (he wrote his doctoral thesis on the novels of Dick), and as has been expressed by so many writers, Dick played a major influence on his own work.

Each chapter begins with a description of the eponymous Ubik, a time-shifting product that morphs in composition and probably is best known as an aerosol can. While there’s not an illustration for each chapter, design collective La Boca have created seven stunning colour plates which appear across the novel. Each features a certain element of digital interference or something not being quite right, but equally each is of a good enough quality that it deserves to be a cover illustration on a pulp paperback (and I mean that as the highest compliment). The package is rounded off with a lime green cover embellished with a silver geometric design, sitting inside a Barbie-pink die-cut slipcase that cleverly spells out ‘Ubik’ in its stencilling.

Verdict: In 2009, Ubik was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest novels since 1923 (no, I have no idea why 1923) and it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. While not an easy read, it rewards with the most intricate plotting and crazed ideas. Now it is dressed up in a colourful Folio Society jacket with all the neon trimmings, it’s even more vibrant and unavoidable and a must-have for that heaving fantasy bookshelf. 10/10

Nick Joy

Illustration ©2019 La Boca from The Folio Society edition of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik

The Folio Society edition of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, introduced by Kim Stanley Robinson and illustrated by La Boca, is available exclusively from www.FolioSociety.com