Hmm… What do I say about this book? At the best of times, Philip K. Dick is a writer whose works dance on that thin line between the logical and the fantastical - and don’t get me wrong; I love the edgy, the weird, the improbable - however, this book seemed to go so far beyond into the blurry realm of the unexplained and the inexplicable, I was finding it hard to keep track of what was going on!
Despair. Drugs. Death. Divinity. To me, VALIS was a world borne of, as much as born into, such a setting. Narrated by Horselover Fat, it is a recounting of his visions that explain the meaning of Earth and all life on it. Along with friends Kevin and David, it is an interpretive journey that takes him to the 2-year old Sophia - the personalized incarnation of Holy Wisdom - and beyond.
Horselover Fat and Philip K. Dick. Early Rome and 1974 California. Koine Greek and extraterrestrial communication. Through a constant superimposition of a remote past and a harsh present, PKD creates a world where we are all “memory coils (DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like thinking system…” Into this system, Dick introduces the possibility of VALIS, part of an artificial satellite network wherein “pink laser beams” are transferring information to humanity, and wherein symbols are being used to trigger recollection of intrinsic knowledge; example, after a religious experience, triggered by an ichthys (“Jesus fish”) necklace, the story goes on to establish the narrator as a secret Christian, secure in the belief of Christ’s return. Or God. Or Zebra. Or Vast Active Living Intelligence System. And that “the empire never ends”.
In reading this book, I wildly vacillated between moments of complete obscurity and points of clear understanding. I think this book calls for a second (or seventh) read to fully understand what the author was aiming to share with the rest of the world.
“My search kept me at home; I sat before the TV set in my living room. I sat; I waited; I watched; I kept myself awake.”
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