This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel Ubik

It focuses specifically on one main theme of the novel, which is the characters noticing a pattern of objects at first being spoiled or worn out, then reverting to earlier obsolete forms, eventually affecting not just individual objects or even rooms but entire settings in which they find themselves. The examples focused upon include cigarettes, coffee and cream, coins and bills, a tape-recorder, appliances, an elevator, vehicles, and even Ubik itself. This mystery gets a resolution late in the novel when we discover that they are a result of Jory's inability to maintain a consistent phatasmagoric reality for his soon-to-be victims in half-life.

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Philip Dick, Ubik - Reversion, Obsolescence, and Spoiling - Sadler's Lectures

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