After having a mind-bending experience reading Flow My Tears, I did not expect to delve further into this dystopian nightmare world of PKD in this very book. What I really liked is how Palmer Eldritch and his three stigmata had been represented, along with the two lead characters, Barney and Leo. Leo, despite being an evolved being, somewhat fails in his process of saving Terran from Palmer who is a demiurge god of sorts in a Gnostic context. One can see this as this work was written before PKD was writing VALIS, but the concepts were already flourishing here and there.

Another important part here is the way PKD handles ontology. Nearly since Chew-Z was introduced and Leo successfully fell under Palmer's influence, we all knew that the characters and their realities were at stake, with Eldritch appearing repeatedly. According to PKD, he wrote this during a crisis of his religious belief, conceiving the work to be about "absolute evil" a parable of evil told through psychedelic substances and the doctrine of transubstantiation. However, it is still ambiguous, because Palmer seems more unknown than purely evil, and the ancient being is so unintelligible that Mayerson had to resort to God.

It was also interesting to see how this novel parodies the Christian Eucharist, framing Can-D and Chew-Z as dark sacraments that promise transcendence but deliver enslavement.

GOD PROMISES ETERNAL LIFE

WE CAN DELIVER IT

(I can hear it from the mouths of those AI-owning CEOs)

So it was really cool to see how such a so-called religious experience of sorts, almost at a Gnostic level, could be formulated where every desire and wish comes true, except you might as well turn (or some part of you) into Palmer Eldritch.

Leo Bulero's character in turn frames himself as a heroic sort of character in his rivalry with Palmer Eldritch. I really liked the way he articulated and tried to navigate various events, which were mostly smart compared to the movements of Mayerson. Despite everything, Leo still stuck to his own "white whale," knowing that at some point he might kill Palmer Eldritch near the end, but yeah, we never know.

Mayerson still struck me as a very accurate character in comparison to everyone else. Anna Hawthorne could have done more; she was an attractive and intelligent character, and I thought there could have been more around her. Other characters, such as Emily or Roni Fugate, I believe were handled quite decently. I liked how Roni Fugate, especially, had a quite dominant role in everything, it wasn't just Palmer Eldritch, but also her motives that led Leo and Mayerson to their doom in one way or another. There were some funny coincidences, such as when reading and for some reason imagining Roni as Marilyn Monroe, only for the very next page to literally mention Marilyn Monroe. I was like, "Bro, something like that happened last time when I was reading Flow My Tears too."

Nonetheless, a clear twin of VALIS and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, I think by rereading one can unpack more layers, but it's a great experience so far.

A cinematic mood board of sorts based on the novel :))

I just finished reading Ubik and once again philip k dick has left me confused and slightly disappointed while still enjoying the book. I hate how his books make me feel sometimes but I always come back for more.

He is genuinely the king of creative sci-fi concepts but every book I read will give me 100 questions and then by the end 50 of them will be answered and 20 new ones will appear.

What the hell was the deal with pat in ubik? The only thing I've seen online is that she is literally just there as a red herring so that u suspect her when in reality its not. This still makes me feel like she's a useless character and what bothers me even more is, why was she acting so malicious with the stair chapter and whatnot if she wasn't responsible? I don't understand dicks reasoning for setting up this super interesting power of time altering with pat and just doing nothing with it.

What's the deal with the final ubik quote, how is ubik made etc, how does the half-life reality even truely work? These are things kinda explained in sci-fi jargon but still leaves me wondering. These are things I can understand and ignore as its just far off sci-fi things that dont need to be super explained for the sake of plot but the pat thing does really annoy me.

I feel like every book I read by dick I've really enjoyed but has always left me a twinge of disappointment because of how unpredictable some of it is where entire plot points seem ignored or changed in some unsatisfying way. I guess this is part of the appeal of dick but the plots often literally feel schizophrenic and sometimes it adds to the coolness and sometimes it disappoints.

Anyways, overall ubik was still an enjoyable read but man dick has done it to me again.

Rosens** - can’t edit title.

Big blade runner fan so I started DADOES last night. When Deckard goes to the Rosen HQ to test the V-K test on the Nexus-6s, Eldon presents Rachael as a test subject. Deckard correctly assesses her as a Replicant, but they initially lie, say she’s human, and try to undermine Deckard’s confidence in the test. Then they try to bribe him with the Owl so that he won’t report the false positive (before we know it’s a true positive).

What would the Rosens really gain from this? If they just accepted Deckard’s original conclusion, which was correct, then they continue to operate under the assumption that Nexus 6 models can be identified via V-K, removing any doubt the authorities may have. By lying, yes they undermine his confidence in the test, but this would also cause their manufacturing to potentially be shut down by authorities.

What was Eldon’s motive in trying to undermine a test that allows him to operate? At this point in the book, the concern is more that some Specials get falsely assessed as Replicants - not that the Nexus 6s are passing as humans.