Book Review Number 7: UBIK

Book Review
Phillip Dick
UBIK
OK....so in my obession with Jonathan Lethem I am starting to read authors that he is obsessed about. This cannot be healthy for me and there should likely be some kind of intervention. In his essay book Lethem waxes poetically about Dick and how his he would obsessively search for his out of print books and how some were very average and others were world stoppingly brilliant and he would go to book clubs and debate his genius with non believers.

I had no familiarity with his body of work and it is a body but I had at least heard of the book UBIK. Dick died in 1982. I read a little science fiction when I was younger. Primarily sword and sorcery type stuff. Sadly I knew Conan the Barbarian not through Arnold Schwartzenegger or even through his comic book but from a series of really dark books written by a guy named Robert E. Howard. About as sci-fi as i ever got was some of Kurt Vonneguts trippier stuff. But...Lethem said Phillip Dick was cool which is roughly the same as hearing Neil Young say that Sonic Youth really rocks. If you love one then of course you must obsess over the other...right?

Well...UBIK...it is weird. It is clearly an old book. Dick is looking forward into the 1990’s (it was written back in 1969) as a time when space travel is routine. The big things in the book are that they have perfected something called “half life” where after you die they keep you in something a lot like a mortuary where you can be communicated with by loved ones until you slowly fade away over a period...a long period evidently of years. There are also people who can forsee the future and people do not neccesarily want these people around so there are people who “block” them.


According to Wikipedia, “Foreshadowing the cyberpunk sub-genre, Philip K. Dick brought the anomic world of California to many of his works, exploring sociological and political themes in novels which were often dominated by monopolistic corporations and authoritarian governments. In his later works, Dick addressed the nature of drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, religious experience and theology, drawing upon his own life experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.” From this book I can see a lot of it.
The main protagonist in the book works for a company that blocks them. He finds a particular new talent in a comely young woman who can rewind the past at any time and then see how her actions effect it going forward...anyway...she turns out to be bad news but not the worst bad news as our hero and all his gang have a bomb explode while they are on the moon which sets time...at least for them quickly moving backwards. You suspect all along that it is the bad news girl’s doing. I like the play of sexual tension between the girl and...just about everyone she meets but once her character is established it is not developed that well. The end... well... I still do not really get the end. There is a vague quality of of the Dallas “Who Shot J.R.”, it was all a dream type sequence. I don’t know. I am going to give another one or two of his books a try and we will see. Indeed...we will see.
***
Engineered Support's Shanahans are sued by SEC
By Tim Barker
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Tim Barker got the by line on this story but it has been developing over months with allegations followed by guilty pleas followed by civil suits and now indictment. Recently the founder and former majority shareholder of Engineered Support Systems got indicted along with his son. Michael Shanahan and his son are St. Louisans of note and he has been a major force locally in his purchase and resale of the Blues and in numerous civic projects. Anyone who meant the guy socially would tell you that he was and is a good guy, from a nice family...good people.
From messing with the U.S. Attorney’s office on behalf of various clients over the years I have come to view them with a certain amount of respect, awe, appreciation and...well..fear. They weild awesome power... sometimes troubling power but one thing for sure is that they do NOT like to lose and they rarely do. There have been inumerable backdating cases which have been prosecuted and there is a reason for that in that they are difficult cases to prosecute. But they have brought criminal charges here, not just civil charges and that makes this a nightmare.
ALLEGATIONS The U.S. attorney cites examples of alleged backdating by Gary Gerhardt, Michael F. Shanahan Sr. and Michael F. Shanahan Jr. at Engineered Support Systems. In at least three instances, stock options were backdated then changed after the price fell.

According to the indictment: On July 16, 2002, Shanahan Jr. instructed Gerhardt to issue options backdated to June 14, 2002, when the Engineered Support stock traded at $44.75 per share.
Once the U.S. government charges someone... those people tend to get convicted of... something. If they do not get them for the alleged crime itself they get them for something they did once they realized that they had a problem like trying to color or shade things so that the “investigation” went no further or making mis statements under oath to investigators ala Scooter Libby. In the U.S. Government you have an adversary that has unlimited resources and when they sick the IRS, the Postal Inspectors and their own people on you... they find out all kinds of things and some you do not even know were problems.
What is particularly troubling about this for me is that I see how it could happen... to me. I am majority shareholder and running a company that is making (for lack of a better term) a shitload of money. Gobs of money.... unconscionable sums of money. While I might have some issues with how they made their money (profiting off of the U.S. war machine) the fact is they made it and a lot of shareholders got rich. When doing this and in this type of situation it would be very easy for me to go along and get along and add a little bit or a lot more to my compensation...expecially when i knew that there would not be any need to get particular shareholder or board approval of my increased compensation. I don’t know.
Be careful to judge this man
According to Wikipedia, “Foreshadowing the cyberpunk sub-genre, Philip K. Dick brought the anomic world of California to many of his works, exploring sociological and political themes in novels which were often dominated by monopolistic corporations and authoritarian governments. In his later works, Dick addressed the nature of drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, religious experience and theology, drawing upon his own life experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.” From this book I can see a lot of it.

The main protagonist in the book works for a company that blocks them. He finds a particular new talent in a comely young woman who can rewind the past at any time and then see how her actions effect it going forward...anyway...she turns out to be bad news but not the worst bad news as our hero and all his gang have a bomb explode while they are on the moon which sets time...at least for them quickly moving backwards. You suspect all along that it is the bad news girl’s doing. I like the play of sexual tension between the girl and...just about everyone she meets but once her character is established it is not developed that well. The end... well... I still do not really get the end. There is a vague quality of of the Dallas “Who Shot J.R.”, it was all a dream type sequence. I don’t know. I am going to give another one or two of his books a try and we will see. Indeed...we will see.
***
Engineered Support's Shanahans are sued by SEC
By Tim Barker
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Tim Barker got the by line on this story but it has been developing over months with allegations followed by guilty pleas followed by civil suits and now indictment. Recently the founder and former majority shareholder of Engineered Support Systems got indicted along with his son. Michael Shanahan and his son are St. Louisans of note and he has been a major force locally in his purchase and resale of the Blues and in numerous civic projects. Anyone who meant the guy socially would tell you that he was and is a good guy, from a nice family...good people.

From messing with the U.S. Attorney’s office on behalf of various clients over the years I have come to view them with a certain amount of respect, awe, appreciation and...well..fear. They weild awesome power... sometimes troubling power but one thing for sure is that they do NOT like to lose and they rarely do. There have been inumerable backdating cases which have been prosecuted and there is a reason for that in that they are difficult cases to prosecute. But they have brought criminal charges here, not just civil charges and that makes this a nightmare.

ALLEGATIONS The U.S. attorney cites examples of alleged backdating by Gary Gerhardt, Michael F. Shanahan Sr. and Michael F. Shanahan Jr. at Engineered Support Systems. In at least three instances, stock options were backdated then changed after the price fell.

According to the indictment: On July 16, 2002, Shanahan Jr. instructed Gerhardt to issue options backdated to June 14, 2002, when the Engineered Support stock traded at $44.75 per share.
Once the U.S. government charges someone... those people tend to get convicted of... something. If they do not get them for the alleged crime itself they get them for something they did once they realized that they had a problem like trying to color or shade things so that the “investigation” went no further or making mis statements under oath to investigators ala Scooter Libby. In the U.S. Government you have an adversary that has unlimited resources and when they sick the IRS, the Postal Inspectors and their own people on you... they find out all kinds of things and some you do not even know were problems.

What is particularly troubling about this for me is that I see how it could happen... to me. I am majority shareholder and running a company that is making (for lack of a better term) a shitload of money. Gobs of money.... unconscionable sums of money. While I might have some issues with how they made their money (profiting off of the U.S. war machine) the fact is they made it and a lot of shareholders got rich. When doing this and in this type of situation it would be very easy for me to go along and get along and add a little bit or a lot more to my compensation...expecially when i knew that there would not be any need to get particular shareholder or board approval of my increased compensation. I don’t know.
Be careful to judge this man