27
10/08
08:09
UBIK (Philip K. Dick)
We wanted to give you a shave like no other you ever had. We said, It’s about time a man’s face got a little loving. We said, With Ubik’s self-winding Swiss chromium never-ending blade, the days of scrape-scrape are over. So try Ubik. And be loved. Warning: use only as directed. And with caution.
HI, the sentence opening this post correspond to one of the most strange, delirious and provocative novels I ever read: UBIK by Philip K. Dick. It is enough to say that I was severed influence by this author during my university years.
Regression and restoration
UBIK (lat: ubique) makes us to think about the nature of reality and how we perceive it, a recursive theme in Dick’s work. Besides aspects related to limits between live and death (half-life); in UBIK Dick explores one interesting aspect: the obsession with consumerism and the influence of technology and advertisement in this game. Coloured with control mind exerted by psychics who influence our desire for a certain product.
In UBIK there is a group of people with psychic powers which suffered an attack while working for Rucinter’s organisation. As a consequence every consumable seems to rotten faster and reality to suffer a regressive state, the only wait to scape or delay this process: a magic all-mighty and ubiquitous product: UBIK. It has reminded me briefly a series of post my friend Cesar has dedicated to talk about publicity and design and the forces in both practices towards making something desirable and the standardisation of consumption. Dick used a SF metaphor to explore the smoke-walls of our society and in doing so UBIK appears as a complex and delirious book but on the other hand Dick points to the deeply rooted believe that consumption is a magic wand to solve all matters and consequently the ones with power over that image are the ones that rule. Something my good friend Cesar is overlooking.
If you have not read that book do not worry soon the factory-of-dreams is going to produce a film about UBIK.