This is an e-text (version 1.1) of Philip K. Dick's novel Ubik, one of the most celebrated works in the science fiction canon. The novel opens on the night of June 5, 1992, when the top telepath in the Sol System disappears from the offices of Runciter Associates in New York City, triggering a crisis for Glen Runciter's organization of "inertials" who counteract the powers of telepaths and precogs.
Each chapter is prefaced by an advertising slogan for the mysterious product "Ubik," the nature of which shifts throughout the novel from a mundane consumer product to something of cosmic significance. The opening chapter introduces the central corporate espionage conflict between Runciter Associates and the Hollis organization, establishing a near-future world where psychic abilities are commercialized and corporate entities employ telepaths and their countermeasures as competitive weapons.
Ubik is widely regarded as one of Dick's finest achievements, exploring themes of entropy, the degradation of reality, half-life states of consciousness, and the nature of time itself. The novel's exploration of a world that progressively regresses to earlier historical periods while its characters struggle to determine what is real has made it a touchstone for discussions of simulation, virtual reality, and the constructed nature of experience. It was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 greatest English-language novels published since 1923.