Ubik

3This discussion is based largely on the critical theories of the Tel Quel group: Tel Quel: Théorie d’ensemble (Paris 1968), in particular the critical and theoretical writings of Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Jean Ricardou and Philippe Sollers. For a critical appreciation of their work see Frederic Jameson, The Prison House of Language (Princeton 1972), pp. 172–186.

4Marx’s theory of value is set out in Part 1, Vol. I of Capital, “Commodities and Money,” In 1914 Lenin summed that theory up as follows: “A commodity is, in the first place, a thing that satisfies a human want; in the second place, it is a thing that can be exchanged for another thing. The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. Exchange value (or simply, value) is first of all the ratio, the proportion, in which a certain number of use-values of one kind can be exchanged for a certain number of use-values of another kind… Their common feature is that they are products of labour…. The production of commodities is a system of social relations in which the individual producers create diverse products (the social division of labour), and in which all these products are equated to one another in the process of exchange. Consequently, what is common to all commodities is not the concrete labour of a definite branch of production, not labour of one particular kind, but abstract human labour—human labour in general…. After making a detailed analysis of the twofold character of the labour incorporated in commodities, Marx goes on to analyse the form of value and money. Here, Marx’s main task is to study the origin of the money form of value, to study the historical process of the development of exchange, begi

The specific parallel between value and meaning is developed by J.-J. Goux, “Marx et l’inscription du travail” in Tel Quel, op. cit.: “The phonic or scriptural materials become simply signs, simple signifiers (of an exterior, transcendent meaning); but their transforming function (as a means of production) and their transformed characteristics (as a product) are denied. The fact is that any meaning is but the product of work on and the work of real signs—the result of textual production—is hidden, as is the original use (or merchandise) value of money (gold or silver whose value comes from the work invested in its extraction) in order to reduce it to an arbitrary secondary sign, only a sign” (p. 193).

5Darko Suvin, “On the Poetics of The Science Fiction Genre,” College English 34 (1972):375.

“In Lem’s Solaris, the narrator describes the theories of the Solarist Grastrom who “set out to demonstrate that the most abstract achievements of science, the most advanced theories and victories of mathematics represented nothing more than a stumbling one- or two-step progression from our rude, prehistoric, anthropomorphic understanding of the universe around us. He pointed out correspondences with the human body—the projection of our senses, the structure of our physical organization, and the physiological limitations of man—in the equations of the theory of relativity, the theorem of magnetic fields and the various unified field theories” (§11).

6The investigation of the metaphysical or ideological presuppositions of science and scientific method as well as the demystification of science’s claims for its neutrality and objectivity have been the subject of a number of interesting and very different studies in recent years, from Boris Eizykman’s important Science Fiction et capitalisme: critique de la position de désir de la science (Paris 1974) to Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers (1968) and Daniel Greenburg’s The Politics of Pure Science (1967). For a look at the interrelationships of science, Marxism and political goals and the resulting successes and failures in the Soviet Union, see Loren Graham’s very valuable Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (1972).

Ubik (1969) is one of the most important SF works of the 1960s, for it is both deconstruction and a hint at reconstruction: it lays bare the principal ways that SF is used for ideological ends, in terms of science and of fiction, while tentatively looking towards a future freed from the restraints it has exposed. In this novel, Dick has exploded and transcended the SF genre and the “representation novel” of which it is a part. Dick’s writing is not easily included within traditional academic limits, for his novels are, in appearance, badly written, with superficial characterization, confusing plots, and similar deviation from “good writing.” This apparent inattention to writing, along with an overabundance of traditional SF details and conventions, have earned him the neglect of the proponents both of high art and of the New Wave; while his sprawling, chaotic near-futures and his disregard for the traditional SF virtues of rationality and futurological plausibility have caused him to be overlooked by proponents of the more traditional extrapolative SF. This paper will analyze Ubik to show how Dick’s SF presents a model of a more subversive form of writing, undermining rather than reconfirming the repressive system in which it has been produced, and acting as a critique of the ideological presuppositions of the SF genre and the traditional novel.