“A question we had to learn to deal with during the dope decade was, How do you break the news to someone that his brains are fried?” So says the first-person narrator in VALIS, Philip K. Dick’s autobiographical novel of spiritual odyssey, a novel where the narrator begins by laying out the major issues he must deal with as he attempts to gain a measure of sanity along with a sense of purpose and the meaning of life: drugs, a desire to help others, the pull of insanity, suicide and death, time a...

Update 5/13/17:I had to dive back into VALIS because certain tales continue to resonate with me... and this one is still one of the very most important. Who knows? Maybe I am just a crazy as PKD because I'm obsessed with the perception of reality, holographic universes, the edict of "As Above, So Below", and the nature of consciousness. Or maybe I'm just a naturally curious person that happens to be heavily stimulated by PKD's intelligence, his humility, his sincerity, and his travails.Any way t...

2.5 "time I will not get back but what is time anyway" stars !!Fourth Most Fun Review Written in 2019 Award Well this was quite the experience.... Was this 1. self-indulgent onanism 2. a search for meaning in the throes of micropsychosis 3. a genius exploration of technology within the realms of christian mysticism 4. self-indulgent onanism 5. an emotionally and spiritually empty book with some intellectual vigor 6. a roundtable discussion with Phillip K Dick, Paulo Coelho, David Mitchell and U...

I/he looked in the mirror to find the face of God. We are all created in God's image, or so we've been taught, I/he thought. But I/he saw no God there; instead there was fallibility, weakness, hypocrisy, despair, and longing. A desire and a need to fool oneself, to compartmentalize so that one part can hide from the other. Where is this so-called God, I/he thought. Perhaps God is disguised somehow, in the background... or camouflaged in the foreground, a Zebra hidden in plain sight.I/he look

Imagine taking a walk in a bad neighborhood and sitting on a sidewalk bench. Beside you sits a disheveled homeless person with crazy eyes. Despite your best efforts the two of you strike up a conversation. Slowly, incredulously, you begin to realize that this crazy person is well read. No, this person is educated, well educated and though he goes off on wild tangents and makes seemingly ludicrous claims, his mind is a brilliantly tangled mess, a fecundity of original thought. And yet all the whi...

If someone were to make the “You seem to like Philip K. Dick, and I want to maybe give him a shot, but I don't know where to start because he's written dozens of novels” statement my instantaneous response would be, “NOT Valis!” Then I would add I've only read five or six of PKD's novels and I'm giddy with the prospect of reading further into his catalog. But no, no, don't start with Valis, or else you may never pick up another PKD book and you'd miss out on his masterpieces.PKD wrote Valis late...

VALIS: Reconciling human suffering with divine purposeOriginally posted at Fantasy LiteratureIt’s often said that “one must suffer for one’s art.” They must have been referring to Philip K. Dick. He slaved away in relative obscurity and poverty at a typewriter for decades, churning out a prodigious flow of low-paid Ace and Berkeley paperbacks (sometimes fueled by amphetamines), went through five marriages, battled with depression, mental illness and suicide attempts, all culminating in a bizarre...

Long ago I formulated a theory I call “Bibliophilic Serendipity.” Certain books come to me at the right time. If they’re read too soon, when I don’t need them yet, they don’t have any effect on me. But once in a while they come at the right time. Although I read science fiction in my teens, I had largely given it up by the time I went to college to study philosophy. I only returned to science fiction a few years ago. I discovered Philip K. Dick in 2017. I read The Cosmic Puppets and I was instan...

VALIS: Vast Active Living Intelligence SystemMind-bending? Oh yeah. Out there? Way out. But does it make you think about what you've read? You bet.Horselover Fat (this really is the character's name) is taken to the psychiatric hospital after failing to correctly commit suicide. Fat has screwed up a lot to this point in life, or so it is described. Those psychedelic drugs of the 60’s didn’t help. His reasoning for attempting to off himself? Failing to keep a friend from doing the same. PS. His w...

“Fat conceives of the universe as a living organism into which a toxic particle has come. The toxic particle, made of heavy metal, has embedded itself in the universe-organism and is poisoning it. The universe-organism dispatches a phagocyte. The phagocyte is Christ. It surrounds the toxic metal particle – the Black Iron Prison – and begins to destroy it.”Nope! No idea what that means. I haven’t a clue! And there are plenty more where that came from. A couple of years ago I made a start on VALIS...

“People suffering nervous breakdowns often do a lot of research, to find explanations for what they are undergoing.” “The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts.” “‘The mustard seed,’ I said. ‘That grows into a tree so large that birds can roost in it.’”“You hear the sound of a beer can so automatically you see a beer can.”“I don’t know what to think. Maybe I am not require to think anything, or to have faith...

I was prompted to read this after it popped up in a season 4 episode of LOST. Philip K. Dick - image from FutureConscienceHorselover Fat is both the narrator and a third-person character. He is our everyman through whom we are led in a contemplation of the nature of reality, god and sanity. Was Fat really the recipient of a beam of pink light that contained information from god? Or is he just a psycho who speaks both as himself and as his alter, and more real ego, Philip K. Dick? Is god reincarn...

Philip K Dick's life is divided into two parts by the crippling, yet weirdly productive, breakdown he underwent in February and March of 1974. He was in a bad way at the time. His wife and child had left him, he was strung-out and exhausted, and coming off pain medication from a wisdom tooth extraction. In this delicate state, he opened the door to a delivery girl who was wearing a gold pendant of the Christian ichthys symbol; as it caught the sun, Dick experienced a beam of pink light shooting

This was not exactly a tough read but required focus. There isn't much of a plot but it seems to be another semi-autobiobraphical account of PKD, similar to 'A Scanner Darkly'. This story is loaded with religious, spiritual, gnosticism, and other bizarre revelations. The overlying issue of mental illness is reflected in the main character and his cognitive processing. At points I was asking myself "Where is this going?" and then other point were clear and precise. I read this very quickly and I

I semi-regularly freak out over my own consistency on goodreads. What do I do about reading a novel that is contained in a book with multiple novels, what cover do I choose, what about books that I read multiple times, do I keep the original date that I read it or update it to the newest date? So many stupid things to waste my time worrying about when there are so many other stupid things I could be wasting my time worrying about. For my own peace of mind, I'll state here that I read this book f...

Philip K. Dick had a series of hallucinations in 1974 which presented themselves as encounters with the divine, specifically with a gnostic version of the divine. From that point until the end of his life, his mind was the setting for an elaborate conflict between his basically rational nature and the intense, undismissable sense that he had received a true mystical epiphany. This novel is a fictionalized elaboration and exploration of that conflict, one which is faithful to the content of Dick'...

So said the Lord.Like with A Scanner Darkly I just sat back and let the crazy flow through me. Unlike A Scanner Darkly there was no epic emotional payoff at the end. The ending was abrupt and the afterward was just more crazy. Hell, it sounded like it wasn’t even PKD that wrote it. This was all food for thought and food for a straight jacket. The Empire Never Ended.

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Access Denied Prototype: “Valis” by Philip K. DickIs Phil Dick talking about regressing back to former time periods, or the much more radical notion of previous structures existing in the sub-strata of reality and emanating forward, like the notion of ancient Rome, a proto-fascist state, The Black Iron Prison of VALIS, falling forward through history. I think for Phil Dick - sensing these things - was no mere matter of psychological th...

Hailed as a existential masterpiece by some, or panned as a taxing testament of non-stop drivel by others, VALIS is one of Phillip K. Dick's most renowned works, and one that mirrors the author's life experience rather closely. There are many aspects of this book worthy of five stars. Conversely, there are other parts that hover around the one or two star mark. So on average, VALIS is getting three stars; which deserves more explanation.VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System) is a specula...

"The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time." Philip K. Dick, Valis