by Philip K. Dick – 1969

Ubik is one of Dick’s most acclaimed novels. It was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest novels since 1923.

Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business―deploying teams of anti-psychics to protect corporations from psychics who are trying to steal trade secrets. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in “half-life,” a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter’s face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time. As consumables deteriorate and technology gets ever more primitive, the group needs to find out what is causing the shifts and what a mysterious product called Ubik has to do with it all.

Time critic Lev Grossman described it as “a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you’ll never be sure you’ve woken up from.”