ABSTRACT
I am Ubik, before the universe was I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit: I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the brand name and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be. Philip K.Dick (the German edition in which the phrase ‘I am the word’ is mistranslated as ‘I am the brand name’)
The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself. Heraclitus (Fragment 54)
The problem is simply this: What does a science fiction writer know about? On what topic is he an authority? Philip K.Dick
When Dick was alive, he lived in Santa Ana, California just a few miles from Disneyland. In fact he lived so close that when he was alive, he would sometimes describe himself in lectures and interviews as a spokesperson for Disneyland. One day he went there to meet his friend and fellow SF writer, Norman Spinrad. The two men talked about Watergate on the deck of Captain Hook’s pirate ship. The same day Dick discussed the rise of fascism with Spinrad as they were spun round inside a giant teacup. (Elizabeth Entebi headed the crew that filmed these exchanges for Paris TV.) Dick used to think a lot about simulation then. He could never forget the fact that he knew how to get from his apartment to Disneyland and that Disneyland was in some strange way the home of the obsessions that drove him on to write. He used to worry a lot in those days about how to draw the line between reality and fiction, copies and originals, the authentic and the inauthentic:
Well, I will tell you what interests me, what I consider important. (Dick once wrote) ‘I can’t claim to be an authority on anything, but I can honestly say that certain matters absolutely fascinate me, and that I write about them all the time. The two basic topics that fascinate me are ‘What is reality?’ and ‘What constitutes the authentic human being?’
