There's also the 'half life' concept, which the novel opens with, where people are caught in a kind of limbo, not quite dead, but their consciousness slowly fading. The author would have been fascinated by the new concept of cryogenics, wondering whether frozen people dreamed. Is dreaming a sign of life? In Ubik, the half life people could think and communicate, but time moves differently for them. You're never really sure whether the characters are in half life or in reality.

In my current reading of VALIS (another book where Dick has truly gone off the deep end) - He plays on the death of the consciousness, or will being separate from the death of the husk.

Even now, as I explore these writings for the first time, I can identify and define the ramblings of a man who had a mind like an anvil, and a way with words that probably peaked in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

He revisits the same themes again and again. Runciter is everywhere in his work. It's Ubik. Its in Valis. Runciter (and the various entities) are even referenced in the various short films that make up the Electric Dreams series.

It is going to be an absolutely wild ride going through his work over the next few little bits (will likely take me a year or so, I think) - but when I emerge from this phase of Dick, I think I'll be finally ready for LeGuin.

I promise that to you, now.

I only hope that it is a promise I can keep.

I absolutely adored the little bits at the start of each chapter about Ubik. They were at first confusing and out of place, a little meta-novel, but the way in which reality is described in the book, it... leaves me partly obssessed with Dick's brilliance throughout his writing career.

I'm not intimidated by his back catalog, I am seeing it as a summit to climb.