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I love PKD, I can't get enough, but I feel like you only get to qualify a prediction as prescient once it comes to pass.
by oldmanjay 11y ago
I love PKD, I can't get enough, but I feel like you only get to qualify a prediction as prescient once it comes to pass.
- deepnet 11y agoUbik reverses cultural causality: a product, UBIK, travels back in time affecting the aesthetics of the present by altering the past. Or rather, advertising makes you feel it has always been this way. Ubik is a Madison Avenue version of Orwell's 1984, rebranding the past. In this everyday dystopia, we've never had it so good despite having so little. But Dick was not just prescient, he was writing what it was like where he was, when he was. All the dystopian elements of his Sci-Fi were his contemporary struggles. Paraphrasing Gibson: Dystopia is already here, it just hasn't hit home yet. Dick's protagonist argues with his fridge, he wants the milk but the fridge is demanding money it claims he owes the refrigeration company.