In fact,this idea is already evident in Baudrillard’s early semiotic analysis of the consumer society.Baudrillard argues that the consumer society is a system of signs withhyperreal characteristics,and consumer activity is a process in which objects are givensign value and“consumers’consumption of objects evolves into the possession of signs”(Wang Dening 51).In other words,in the consumer society that pursues the sign value,signs become the subject and control everything.
The extreme abundance of consumer goods characterizes the hyperreal consumersociety described in Ubik.
There is all around us today a kind of fantastic conspicuousness ofconsumption and abundance,constituted by the multiplication of objects,services and material goods,and this represents something of a fundamentalmutation in the ecology of the human species.Strictly speaking,the humansof the age of affluence are surrounded not so much by other human beings,asthey were in all previous ages,but by objects(Baudrillard,The ConsumerSociety 25).
CONCLUSION
Philip Dick,one of the representatives of the American New Wave science fictionwriters,has written 44 full-length novels and 121 short stories throughout his life.Hisworks convey profound connotations and provoking thoughts.Although Dick won theHugo Award and John Campbell Memorial Award,it wasn’t until after Dick’s death thatDick became famous with the release of Blade Runner,which is a hit science fiction filmadapted from Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?During his lifetime,Dick lives in hardship and turmoil.The extreme uncertainty of life makes Dick turn thefocus of his life to literary creation,in which he pursues the truth of the world.
In 1977,Philip Dick delivered a speech entitled“If you find this world bad,youshould see some of others”at the Metz International Science Fiction Festival.In thespeech,he mentioned the parallel universe,the matrix world,and multiple realities,claiming that people were living in a computer-programmed reality.This statementcoincides with the core of Baudrillard’s simulacra theory.Baudrillard believes that thehistorical development process of capitalist society has gone through a development ofcounterfeit,production,and simulation.The third order of simulacra,simulation,is astage where codes and models are generation principles.Technology and media,thesimulated machines,construct a hyperreal world by creating a large number of simulacra,as well as control human beings in a highly hidden way,encroaching on humansubjectivity.
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