Name: Ubik
ISBN: 9780006482871

Ubik

Named one of Time's 100 Best Books, Ubik is a mind-bending, classic novel about the perception of reality from Philip K. Dick, the Hugo Award-winning author of The Man in the High Castle. “From the stuff of space opera, Dick spins a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you’ll never be sure you’ve woken up from.”—Lev Grossman, Time Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business — deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in “half-life,” a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter’s face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time. As consumables deteriorate and technology gets ever more primitive, the group needs to find out what is causing the shifts and what a mysterious product called Ubik has to do with it all. “More brilliant than similar experiments conducted by Pynchon or DeLillo.”—Roberto Bolaño

What Hacker News says

johncoltraneOct 2026

J.R.R. Tolkien: The lord of the Rings (lost count)

Philip K. Dick: Ubik, Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, A Scanner Darkly, etc. too many to count (many more than twice)

William Gibson: everything at least twice

Neal Stephenson: Snow crash (three times, I think)

Clifford D. Simak: City

H. P. Lovecraft: everything at least twice. There is a French compilation of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Silver Key, and Through the Gates of the Silver Key that I've read countless times. I've used two editions and I'm at my third.

Maurice G. Dantec: Babylon Babies (three times)

Possibly many others.

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wise_bloodSep 2026

20 years ago I read a The Guardian article about the "top geek novels". I immediately read a bunch of those.

Recently I managed to find the list again, and it's been endless pleasure:

- American Gods -- Neil Gaiman

- Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley

- The Colour of Magic -- Terry Pratchett

- Consider Phlebas -- Iain M Banks

- Cryptonomicon -- Neal Stephenson

- Cloud Atlas -- David Mitchell

- The Diamond Age -- Neal Stephenson

- The Dispossessed -- Ursula K Le Guin

- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip Dick

- Dune -- Frank Herbert

- Foundation -- Isaac Asimov

- Giles Goat-Boy -- John Barth

- Gravity's Rainbow -- Thomas Pynchon

- The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams

- I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov

- The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

- The Left Hand of Darkness -- Ursula K Le Guin

- The Man in the High Castle -- Philip K Dick

- Microserfs -- Douglas Coupland

- Neuromancer -- William Gibson

- Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell

- Orlando -- Virgina Woolf

- The Shockwave Rider -- John Brunner

- Snow Crash -- Neal Stephenson

- Stand on Zanzibar -- John Brunner

- Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein

- Trouble with lichen - John Wyndham

- UBIK -- Philip Dick

- Watchmen -- Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

- Woman on the Edge of Time -- Marge Piercy

(I am creatively interpreting "The Colour of Magic" as "all Discworld", "Dune" as "the six Dune books", etc.)

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johncoltraneMay 2026

A bunch of William Gibsons.

Philip K. Dick's Ubik, A Scanner Darkly, and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.

Clifford D. Simak's City.

Classics.

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randrusMar 2025

Philip K Dick includes this as a side bit in Ubik - iirc there’s a great scene where the main character is broke and trying to get the front door to let him in to his apartment.

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djaouenJan 2025

It's funny, man. I was on 4chan and reading Dostoyevsky waaaay back in 2008. Really wish we had a /lit/ back then :(

Edit: In case any newfriends are listening, I would also like to suggest the books of Philip K. Dick, including but not limited to A Scanner Darkly, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik, and the VALIS trilogy.

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felixyzDec 2024

Excellent! This scenario has a precursor in Philip K. Dick's "Ubik" (1969). It's just a sub-plot there, but the parallels are striking.

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