Ubik
1969
Science fiction
Set in a 1992 of telepaths, precognitives, and "inertials" who cancel them out, *Ubik* opens as a corporate-espionage thriller and then detonates — literally — into a metaphysical horror story. After a bomb on the moon kills (or seems to kill) the head of an "anti-psi" firm, his employees find their world running backward — cigarettes go stale, coins regress to earlier mintings, televisions devolve into radios — and the only thing arresting the decay is a mysterious aerosol product called Ubik, hawked in jingles at the start of each chapter and seemingly impossible to actually obtain. Dick juggles platonic forms, Gnostic theology, half-life suspended animation, and a paranoid hall-of-mirrors about who is really alive — and the final page yanks the rug out one more time. Often cited as his masterpiece; *Time* magazine included it in its 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923.