Valis: SF Masterworks

Philip K Dick experienced something profound in 1974 after a long battle with drug addiction, depression, and paranoia . . . what that experience was can best be described as a hallucinatory encounter with God. This book may be fiction as it's labeled, but more likely it's as close to autobiography as Dick could remember of his life from 1974 to 1978. Many people consider this to be an unreadable volume because of its surreal journey through the mind of one with some sort of severe psychosis, and of its wild switches from first to third person, not to mention the confusion with which Dick puts himself in the plot as both the protagonist and narrator, but those being two different people. Add to that a heavy dose of gnostic gospel and widely varied obscure theological elements from many cultures, and you have a book few can even understand in the first reading. That said, I loved it. Why? Because its actually a journey of awareness through a universe where time doesn't really exist, chaos reigns because the creator is insane, and Philip K Dick has trouble keeping it together yet manages to birth an entire religious awakening at the same time. Before reading it, please familiarize yourself with Taoism, Buddhism, Gnosticism and even Jungian Psychoanalysis as well as various creation mythologies - perhaps a little light reading in the Joseph Campbell library - then dive in and see what can happen when this is all revealed to one man in a beam of light. - CV Rick

Best read after Dick's other phenomenological novels (such as Eye in the Sky, Three Stigmata, and Ubik) because of its complexity, Valis is destined to remain Dick's most controversial book. Here the author steps outside the conventions of fiction to inform the reader that he, Philip K. Dick, has had visionary experiences, information beamed directly into his brain from a godlike extraterrestrial entity named VALIS. But he does so in such a way as to distance himself from the revelation. His dreaming, visionary alter ego, Horselover Fat, is another side of the character Phil Dick's psychotically split personality. Fat keeps a journal, the "Exegesis" (as Dick did in real life), in which he theorizes that we are all parts of a cosmic brain; everything, including ourselves, is information in this brain. He believes that the universe is an illusion but that God (or VALIS) is giving him glimpses of reality in the form of holograms produced by a beam of pink light aimed at his brain. When, late in the novel, as autobiography changes to science fiction and Fat is healed by the divine child Sophia, he "remembers" his true identity as Phil Dick, and Fat is incorporated and reintegrated in Phil's personality. You can call this a metafiction, but it transcends even that category, for the author neither tries to subvert the novel form nor to convert the reader to his fractured vision. Rather, it stands on the literary landscape a self-existent monolith, like those in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. More than any of Dick's other novels, it stretches fictional conventions to give the reader a virtually inexhaustible text that will simulataneously support and deny any interpretation.

I love works of art that divide people into two groups like some kind of Zoroastrian razor. A lot has been said about this book in the reviews. I think this is mind-altering writing. Really. You cannot read this book *and enjoy it* without having your attitude shifted.Dick writes in such a way that there is always an elliptical dialectic between what is "real" in the context of the fictional reality and what is not real. In the end none of it is real, because it's just a science fiction book, or is it? The book's overtly autobiographical theme (the two main characters are "Phil" a science fiction writer and "Horselover Fat", which is a pseudonym which literally denotes the meaning of the names "Philip" and "Dick") adds a rather usettling third element to the dynamic. I find it dizzying to think that Dick's obsession with secret codes and subliminal messages and secret signs and societies may have led him to conceive of this book as a calling to an imagined elect out there who would read this book and have "anamnesis" triggered in their minds in much the same way Fat's was triggered by a fish sign on a prescription delivery woman's necklace. The tractate at the end of the book lies there like some kind of chunk of radioactive matter, somehow totally separate from any sense of fiction one could have had from the story itself. As if Dick really did write his own personal exegesis that he had wanted published but could not unless he made it into sci fi. One of my private little delights is how Dick uses names in his stories....Eric Lampton? Ha Ha! Its so obvious and stupid but still its great. I keep imagining this book as a film; some kind of cross-breed between The Man Who Fell To Earth (I recall this movie specifically in the way I imagine the film Valis from the book to have been presented) and The Dead Zone, which unfortunately in terms of comparison were based on books very much unlike VALIS. Maybe Stanley Kubric could have handled it very well, with access to the kind of significant budget that a film like that would take to do with success. Stanley Kubric is dead, alas.Some movies kind of daze you for a while afterwords, and reality kind of feels a little different. Valis is one of those books that have that same effect, if you end up enjoying it. *Its also crushingly depressing, as any suicidal rumination will tend to be.

This is perhaps the densest, hardest to penetrate book I've ever read. And I've read a lot. Essentially autobiographical, sprinkled with fictional elements to create a small semblance of "plot", Valis is Philip K. Dick trying, through writing, to find out what the hell happened to him in the 70's. It can be nearly impossible to follow at times. And reading the Tracate sprinkled throughout the book (and in an appendix at the end of the novel) one truly has to wonder if the man was insane. But if you dig below the surface, and see what Dick's really getting at here, you will find that the book is worth the trouble it takes to read it. No doubt you'll never understand all of it. That's not the point. I would not recommend this book for everyone, it's dense and hard at times to follow and not at all written in a conventional style (not that much PDK is.) However, if you are tired of mainstream literature and long for something more, or perhaps answers to the BIG questions, then this book is for you. Also, an absolute must-read for Dick fans, personal and wonderful as it is. If Valis turns you off at first, don't worry, stick with it, it's worth the rollercoaster ride it takes you on.

"The twisted part of Valis is that it makes more and more sense as the book goes on, drawing the reader into this insane way of thinking." I've only read about 5 of Dick's books, but all have been masterpieces. This one tops all the rest. It's companion pieces are excellant books too, but if you read and understand this book I defy you to remain completly the same. Dick's ideas on theology, cosmology and morality might be insane, or they might the only sane ones we have. In any case the book is an incredibly difficult, rewarding piece of literature. I find that the beginning draws you in and doesn't let go, but others have been unable to keep reading after page 5 or so. Stick through it to the end and the rewards are great. Dick also performs some amazing writing stunts here; the adventures of Horselover Fat, Phil Dick, an accusing dead cat and God make for compelling reading. There is, however, virtually no plot; this is almost a treatise on religion, not a novel. Still fascinating.