The strange appeal of dualism and non-agency: Ubik, by Philip K. Dick

 I am going to do something that generally irritates me.  I am going to give an intentional mis-reading of an author's work, updated and twisted, based on my own whims, because I feel like making a point, even if I am relatively certain it was not the author's point.  And who's gonna stop me?  Appropriately enough for the theme of this weekend's novel, let's regress back in time, to one of the rare novels by the great Philip K. Dick.  Ubik.  I have been thinking a lot about dualism and dualistic views of morality lately, and Ubik gives us an opportunity to critique such views in a twisted way, even though it is almost certainly not what Dick had in mind.  I don't care.

Dick published Ubik in 1969, and as is so often the case with near-future science fiction, the dates just do not work.  The story takes place in a futuristic 1992, in which people with psionic abilities are around and for hire, and when you die, your body can be put into cold-pac, wired up, and for some period of time, you are in "half-life," with enough stimulated brain activity to allow you to communicate with friends and loved ones.  Also, space colonies, remarkably fast rocket ships and stuff like that, but computers are still running on punch cards and it would be the biggest scandal ever if a woman spent a night in a man's hotel room, and they're not married.

You know, the future!

Anyway, here's the deal.  Runciter Associates is a "prudence" company.  If you think that someone is hiring a psychic spy to fuck with you, you hire Glen Runciter to have his people counteract the telepaths and precogs that are fucking with you.  Corporate espionage and counter-espionage, psionic-style.  Runciter's main business opposition-- the guy with the top telepaths and precogs-- sets up Runciter and his best people by putting a double agent in his ranks-- Pat Conley.  She makes sure they show up at the right/wrong time on a lunar colony to get all blown to smithereens.  At first, it looks like Runciter gets it and the rest survive, but... no.

Your main POV character is Runciter's second, Joe Chip, who is basically a bit dense, and you wonder why Joe is there.  He doesn't seem to have a clue, and Al Hammond is much smarter, but he's there as the black guy who dies first because this book was published in 1969, but maybe give credit to Dick for writing the black guy as the smartest guy in the book, OK?  Anywho, Runciter's people get back from the moon thinking they lived and he died, but that's backwards.  Runciter lived, and they all died.  They're in cold-pac, in half-life, wired up to each other, in a pre-Gibson matrix.  (Yes, the use of the word, "matrix" for a computer simulation was William Gibson in Neuromancer, which was published in 1984.)

So Joe and the rest find a bunch of glitches in half-life as time regresses from 1992 gradually back to 1939, and they die off one by one.

What's going on?  Joe is clueless, and once you have it confirmed that they're in half-life, the too-obvious answer is that the two opposing forces are Runciter as the good guy, and Pat as the villain.  Once that gets knocked down, it is very easy to figure out who the opposing forces are.  Runciter's wife, Ella, had been in cold-pac for a long time, and there was a kid named Jory who kept fucking with her.  Once you rule out Glen and Pat, you know it is Ella and Jory.  In a deus ex machina resolution, Ella saves Joe by providing him with "Ubik," which is a magical cure-all in half-life that immunizes you from degradation and Jory's attacks.  She then goes off to die fully, and be reincarnated somehow (there are multiple references to the Tibetan Book of the Dead) leaving Joe to be the counter to Jory.

Yeah, like that'll work.  Problem being that Joe is a useless schmuck.  You should have saved Al.  He was the smart one.  Whatever.

So let's think about this stuff.  As I said, Joe Chip is useless.  There is a style of writing, colloquially called "competence porn," in which you marvel at the brilliance of the main character.  Think Sherlock Holmes.  In modern science fiction, the most famous would be Andy Weir.  You read to enjoy the process of smart people dealing with difficult problems.  On the opposite end, there are bumblers and bunglers.  Most people are closer to the bumbler/bungler, which is exactly why it is so much fun to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Andy Weir or anyone in between.  There is such a thing as a well written story about a bumbler, but generally speaking, it won't be a plot-driven story because the only way to resolve a plot-driven plot about a bungler is a deus ex machina.  Her name is Ella, and I'm getting to that.

Of course, Philip K. Dick was never a plot guy.  He was the idea guy, the world guy, the concept guy.  That was why he was the undisputed king of the short story.  Novels?  Some of his novels were pretty cool, but he has to stretch an idea.  Truthfully, there are some pretty cool ideas in Ubik, but the plot is not among them, nor are the characters.  Why?  Dick, Philip K.

Stepping back, though, a lot of Ubik can be read as allegory, much of which is directly referenced, including the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Yet beyond that, there is a dualism present in many religions (less so, Buddhism), going back to Zoroastrianism.  Half-life is one with little agency.  One is acted upon by the two opposing forces of Ella and Jory.  Ella, the good, Jory, the evil.  They are not in balance, and one can pick apart the plot and ask how any of this works when it looks like Jory is so much stronger (he appears to take over Ella completely when she tries to communicate with Glen), but the basic structure of the world of the after-world is one without agency.  One is simply acted upon amid the conflict between the two greater forces.  Dualism, and lack of agency.

The dualism is more than merely the entities of Ella and Jory, but their respective moralities.  The concept of dualistic religion and the concept of dualistic morality are intertwined.  They both tell you that you don't have to look from another's perspective, hence the appeal.  The appeal of simplicity.  Of laziness.

Similarly, if you have no agency, you have no work to do.  If it's all just up to Ella to give you Ubik or not, your decisions and actions are irrelevant.  This is a broader problem with any philosophy that denies agency.  If you have no agency, then you have an excuse to do nothing.  Consider the most perverse interpretation of Calvinism.  Either you are predestined for salvation, or you are not.  So do whatever, it doesn't matter!  Gee... what could possibly go wrong?!

The perverse lunacy (see what I did there?) of this combined set of beliefs just leaves you lazy and screwed.  Or perhaps not, but since it is out of your hands, oh, who cares?  Just leave everything to that useless dipshit, Joe Chip, who is such a fuckup that he has defaulted on every debt, throws away everything, and no one can count on him for anything.  Yeah, sure, he's your guy.

I guess because it was 1969 and Al Hammond was black.

And here's the kicker.  How do you know you're dead/in half-life?  You see money with the wrong face on it, like Glen Runciter's face, or perhaps Joe Chip's face.

I occasionally see some goddamned shiba inu on fake money!  Damn it, I don't remember visiting a lunar colony!

That sounded like a grumble, but honestly, there are a lot of cool ideas in Ubik, but I used it as a platform to grumble about dualism and non-agency.  I remain frustrated by those [pointed cough-cough] who make violent threats rather than learning to listen, not just at the level of national politics, but at the more personal level, and the belief in one's non-agency is intrinsically toxic.  Also, kind of a plot-killer.

Doug Wamble, "Freezer Burn."  The studio cut is on his self-titled album.