Ubik

十三章正面描述Joe Chip身体腐朽的过程，极其恐怖，把两种力量中倒退、腐朽的一方渲染到了极致。还有一方是Ubik代表的更新的力量，无所不在的Ubik到底是什么？每一章的开头Ubik都出现在广告中，好像Ubik就是资本主义。但最后一章开头： 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 word 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.Ubik上升到了创始者的高度，愈发疑惑了。

"Five cents, please," his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, anyhow,hadn't changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably it would hold out after everything else. After everything except it had long since reverted, perhaps in the whole city... if not the whole world.PKD有关投币机器的想象是有关资本主义社会的幽默展现，其中最印象深刻的是Joe Chip家里的门，不投币就不能出门。这扇门执拗得可爱，它非常尽忠职守，拒绝返祖

The TV set had receded back a long way; he found himself confronted by a dark, woodcabinet, Atwater-Kent tuned radio-frequency oldtime AM radio, complete with antenna and ground wires. God in heaven, he said to himself, appalled.But why hadn't the TV set reverted instead to formless metals and plastics? Those, after all, were its constituents; it had been constructed out of them, not out of an earlier radio. Perhaps this weirdly verified a discarded ancient philosophy, that of Plato's ideal objects, the universals which, in each class, were real. The form TV set had been a template imposed as a successor to other templates, like the procession of frames in a movie sequence. Prior forms, he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately - and against ordinary experience - vanished. The man contains - not the boy - but earlier men, he thought. History began a long time ago.The dehydrated remnants of Wendy. The procession of forms that normally takes place -that procession ceased. And the last form wore off, with nothing subsequent: no newer form, no next stage of what we see as growth, to take its place. This must be what we experience as old age; from this absence comes degeneration and senility. Only in this instance it happened abruptly - in a matter of hours.But this old theory - didn't Plato think that something survived the decline, something inner not able to decay? The ancient dualism: body separated from soul. The body ending as Wendy did, and the soul - out of its nest the bird, flown elsewhere. Maybe so, he thought. To be reborn again, as the Tibetan Book of the Dead says. It really is true. Christ, I hope so. Because in that case we all can meet again. In, as in Winnie-the-Pooh, another part of the forest, where a boy and his bear will always be playing... a category, he thought, imperishable. Like all of us. We will all wind up with Pooh, in a clearer, more durable new place.天马行空的想法，套用了柏拉图的理念论来解释物体的返祖现象