[The following excerpt was first published as "Back to the Cactus" in SF Commentary, November, 1970.]

I have always enjoyed Dick's work on the superficial level of entertainment and yet have been aware of dissatisfaction on deeper levels. After a year without him, Ubik crystallises the dissatisfaction; my day as a Dick fan is nearly over.

Here is the book of a man who shudders between the real and the unreal, who sees alternatives as realities and realities as a transient phase among alternatives. Alternatives and realities co-exist, and even influence each other (Ubik, Now Wait For Last Year, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch) and through this incredibly complex universe Dick tries to trace a path. It can't be done. The human brain cannot reduce an infinite number of possibilities to a story pattern simply by selecting what appeals, particularly when one realises that effects can initiate their own...