Ubik has been on my want to read list for a while now, as I’ve heard it is quite the experience. Frankly, anything by Philip K. Dick has been on my radar for a while now. I’ve been keeping my eye out at the local used book store for several years now but couldn’t find Dick. Eventually I decided to buy new. I ordered the entire Library of America collection of his novels. The collection consists of 3 hardcover books that contain what is considered his best 13 novels out of his full 44 novel bibliography. At $80 for the collection that squares out to about $6 a novel.
This is the second time I’ve encountered a Library of America publication. I picked up the complete novels of Hammett for $1 at a used book sale several years back. One of the criticisms of this issue in the Amazon comments section was that the pages were thin. This made me hesitate when making my purchase decision. I don’t know the techical terms of what type of paper is used, how many grams it weighs, etc, but my best description of the paper is that is similar to bible or dictionary paper. Is it lesser quality? I don’t know, but it has a pleasant side-effect. It makes each volume thinner and lighter. This makes the reading experience more enjoyable as you are not struggling with a big heavy book. The first of the three hard covers is over 800 pages (4 novels) and only about an inch thick.
Now I want to read Ubik so why have I read “The Man in the High Castle”? Well I like to read an author’s novels in the order they were published, when possible, to see their natural progression as a writer. I hope to get to Ubik by the end of the year.
You may or may not be aware that “The Man in the High Castle” is a four season series on Amazon Prime. Before starting this book I had watched some of that series (I made it half way through season two). Watching this much of the series did not spoil the book in the slightest. The divergences from the original source material are so great that they almost feel like two different stories that occur in the same world. In the TV series there is no book but a series of secret video tapes. I can see why they did this, as a book in a book makes sense. When the medium changes to video it makes sense to make the distributed medium also video. In both the TV series and novel the effect is the same, although it felt more effective in the novel. You are reading a book about an alternate history. The characters in the book are reading a book about an alternate history similar to your history. This amplifies your empathy and puts your mind more in the alternate history being depicted.