Okay, here goes, my first reaction paper. I'm not quite sure what a reaction paper is, but I suppose that it should in some way describe my reactions to the book that I read. In this case, the name of the book is Ubik.

Ubik was written by the legendary science fiction writer, Philip K. Dick. I chose to read his books during this course, because I've heard things about these books, things that made me believe there's something in them that I like. I rarely read novels without some extra reason to do so. This literature course gives me such a reason, so I can find out for myself if Dick really did write books that appeal to me.

Now to Ubik itself. All the main characters died before the book was halfway through. There. That should sound surprising to someone who hasn't read the book. What's more, it wasn't immediately obvious that it had happened, but became more so towards the end of the book.

Now, these people couldn't be fully dead, of course, otherwise the supporting cast would probably have become the main characters of the rest of the book. No, they were only half dead, or rather half alive, as such a condition was known as half-life in the book.

Joe Chip is the character who is most closely followed in Ubik. He is a young, resourceful guy who works for Runciter Associates, an anti-psi organization, as tester. His job was to evaluate new employee candidates. Such candidates would naturally have some kind of an anti-psi power.

Something at times seeming like time travelling, quite a few years into the past, took place in Ubik. I've never been much into time travelling into the past in science fiction stories. Of course it is easier for the writer, though, than handling time travelling into the future. The book was written, or at least published, in 1969, and the events took place in 1992. The writer already had to imagine what the world might be like in 1992; to also include the following two hundred years would have been an added burden. Now history books provided the necessary setting. In any case, there is less fiction in the past than there is in the future.

Ubik can also function as a detective story, because the menace was mentioned early on. However, to figure out what is going on one has to resort to guessing, because there really aren't that many clues in the book. There are some false leads as well. Even one of the characters thought she was the one responsible for the deaths of some of the lead characters, although she wasn't. Even if she had been, those deaths wouldn't really have been deaths, but rather half-deaths, as the characters were already only half-alive at that point, although not everyone believed so.

Although Ubik may seem a bit insane at times, it all does become quite sensible once one knows the whole plot. The book is in some ways quite realistic; it isn't a Hollywood movie where the heroes can take almost any kind of abuse and survive. When there is an explosion in a small room, people of course get killed.

As for what Ubik itself is, well, it is... something from the minds of the writer and Ella Runciter.

A good book. I look forward to reading the next Dick.