Ubik: The Screenplay

"An accident has occurred. Joe Chip and his colleagues--all but one of them--have narrowly escaped an explosion at a moon base. Or is it the other way round? Did Joe and the others die, and did the one fatality, Glen Runciter, actually survive? . . . From the stuff of space opera, Dick spins a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you'll never be sure you've woken up from."--Lev Grossman, Time

In 1974, Philip K. Dick was commissioned to write a screenplay based on his novel Ubik. The film was eventually scrapped, but the screenplay was saved and later published in 1985. Featuring scenes that are not in the book and a surreal playfulness--the style of the writing goes back in time just like the technology in the book's dreamworld--this screenplay is the only one Dick wrote and features his signature mix of paranoia, humor, and big-idea philosophy.