Science Fiction

13729 readers

262 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

[Unpopular Question] Why is Ubik so popular ? (jlai.lu)

submitted 1 month ago by ElCanut@jlai.lu to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So there's a question I've been having for a while now: Why is Ubki, from Philip K Dick so popular ? I've read it, and was pretty disappointed. The scenario starts pretty well, but becomes very obvious amongst the rest of the book, there's little no to connection between the scenes, everything seems to have no relation, the final characters (Ella and Joe) are barely introduced, the resolution (Ubki's provenance) is barely explained, ...

Overall, I feel like I've read a really good scenario idea from a great author, but it feels like a missed opportunity; I’m left feeling unsatisfied.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ElCanut@jlai.lu 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I get that taste has a lot to do with it, but usually when I read one of the SF "classic", even though I don't like it I can see what other people like in it. Ubik is really one of the first where I didn't understand this. I just read an article saying that what I consider a lack of connections between the different part of the story is in fact a writing effect, to make readers have a "dreamy feeling" while reading the book. I hadn't considered it that way, and was looking to analysis like this, I'm not trying to tell people my taste is better, just wanted to have their input on the book

[–] sxan@midwest.social 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

And it's pretty typical of Dick. He often wrote surreal stuff.

I get what you were asking; I just don't know how to answer the question. Mind-bending, byzantine stories are a matter of taste, just as gritty grimdark is.

The first time I read Ubik, I was younger and the plot device hadn't yet been endlessly copied in other books; it wasn't obvious to me what was going on, and I enjoyed the voyage of discovery, and the novelty of the style. It sounds like you figured it out early, and that reduced your enjoyment of it. You can only experience that once, though, and now when I re-read it knowing how it ends, and what's happening, I can still recall how great it was the first time, and that makes up for the spoiler effect.

[–] ElCanut@jlai.lu 4 points 1 month ago

I think I understand a bit better now, thanks for your interesting comments !