RE: Book Review: Ubik by Phillip K. Dick (ENG-SPA)
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Phillip K. Dick...brilliant author. Subgenre? Science fiction tops the charts for me :) H.G. Wells? George Orwell? Where can you find writers who have had a greater impact on modern society? The list is long in this 'subgenre'. You are correct. These writers have captured my imagination since I was an adolescent reader.
Ubik is on my list. My son (we share this interest) sent me a copy and it is waiting. Now I'm even more eager to read it.
Great review, @janaveda
Hi, @agmoore,
I'm really happy your son sent you a copy of Ubik. I believe you'll truly enjoy reading it. I won't spoil anything, but I can tell you it has ideas I haven't seen adapted to film yet—probably because it would be a challenging project. Nolan certainly borrowed concepts from Dick for his film Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
I'm glad we share, like your son, this passion for science fiction.
Best wishes.
And certainly as teenagers, enraptured - it was the first step up for me from YA fiction. I loved John Wyndam, Heinlein, Wells, Orwell, Le Guin, Asimov - they had such an effect on me. Good to know they did on others too.
I don't know what your background was like, but I was suffocating :)) My mother was the best person in the world, but conservative Catholic. School was lower middle class and rather narrow in social and academic reach. My salvation was the library. Ideas I didn't hear about anywhere else. What a joy. Science fiction, of course, offered the most exciting, liberating ideas...
I had a great upbringing. All that sci Fi was Mums! She loved it. I was raised reading - and before the Internet and everyone telling you what to think, yep, books.
I've just listened to half the audio of Ubik today. What an absolute crazy read. Wild. I don't think I understood it as a kid but loving it now. Those sci-fi authors sure grappled with incredible ideas.
Le Guin was pretty formative for me. She enabled me to understand the process of othering, of the lens through which we see the world, our social constraints and constructions, how gender is constructed, before travel and university.
We all grow up in pretty small towns that literature expands.
I thought about this last night, and couldn't leave the discussion there. I do a great injustice to my mother by writing off her worldview by saying, 'She was orthodox Catholic'. Catholicism gave her the language to express a level of insight about life I have not yet achieved.
People hire life coaches. They travel around the world to sit at the feet of gurus. They take mind-altering drugs. All in the name of finding truth, an enlightened way forward.
My mother knew the way. There was never a kinder person. Never a person with less pretense. Charity? When we were living with a 'couch' that consisted of three folding chairs, she pledged $300 to the neighborhood church for a new roof. She visited sick people she didn't know. Most of all, she was forgiving.
All of that was boring for me. I had to travel my own path, and it's been bumpy, full of mistakes. But I think in my head my mother has always set the standard for good.
It's so sweet you came back to explain that it wasn't your mother, it was you. I totally understand - my parents set a moral benchmark and a way of life I too ran from. Life seemed bigger to me, perhaps as I had found examples of that in the pages of books. So I left in search of excitement tooi
I do envy people who feel that surety of faith and a strong life purpose because of it. I'll never believe in God, but those that feel guided by a higher purpose have something I'll never have.
🌷🌷♥️