Philip K. Dick successfully uses a comic voice in relating Ubik’s tale of the potentially fatal disconnect between human perception and what there is.
The relationship between Glenn Runciter, owner of a “prudence” organization designed to prevent pre-cogs and telepaths from reading one’s thoughts to gain the upper hand in business, and his bumbling underpaid employee, Joe Chip, is reminiscent of George Jetson vs. Mr. Spacely, and provides a slapstick anchor for the novel, which calls into question the nature of reality and life and death. Some Terrans are "alive". Others have died and been placed in a “cold-pac”, to preserve their spirits. Those in cold-pac can communicate with the living as well as other deceased people in the facility. Is it possible that we continue to exist in multiple forms after death? Is the same true during life? How can we tell our lives aren’t really just cold-pac dreams, or death, or reincarnation? All these questions are faced by the characters of this story of internal apocalypse.
This book was written by PKD at a time when everything in his life was falling apart, and was considered by him as a sort of stopgap or knock-off, but got him the reputation as a seer and prophet in France, years before the VALIS trilogy, detailing his unusual experiences with God and Time, did it for him in the US.
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