It took me way too long, but I finally picked up and finished PKD's
Ubik. It was every bit as great as I was expecting. What is everyone's
take on the last couple of paragraphs though?
When I first finished it last night, I assumed it meant that Runciter
had died as well (or was dead all along), and was now about to go
through the same process that the rest of them had. When he was in the
hotel room with Joe Chip he was struggling as much as the rest of them
to come up with an explanation. Every time Joe shot down one of
Runciter's theories, it seemed Runciter had a tough time dealing with
it, which made me think that maybe Runciter was struggling to come to
grips with his own death.
But after thinking about it a little more this morning, could it mean
that Jory's power was crossing over to the real world? My problem with
that theory is that Jory appeared to be growing weaker by the end of
the novel, though maybe with the rest of the inerts out of the way,
his power was coming back to him.
Then there is the Ubik "advert" that goes with the final chapter. This
points to Ubik being a lot more than a paragraph of babble about ions
and neutrons in a can created by other half-lifers. Is Ubik a bigger
part of the equation than I'm giving it credit for? It is featured in
every chapter, after all, and is the title of the damn book too, I
guess. ;-)
-DD-
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