Phillip K. Dick: Valis

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I just read this book, and, like, what the fuck. Why didn't anyone tell me to read this before? Consider it required reading, especially if you fancy yourself a Christian.

Uhh, more comments on PKD's greatness.

― Andrew (enneff), Thursday, 9 January 2003 11:35 (twenty-three years ago)

we've had at least two PKD threads so look 'em up. I am currently reading one of his earlier ones: 'Time out of joint'.

Valis is one of his best (I also must reread it sometime). read a 'scanner darkly' next.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Thursday, 9 January 2003 11:50 (twenty-three years ago)

Valis is awesome. Its part of a trilogy inspired by some 'mystical' experiences that Dick had around 1974. The others in the series I think are 'The Divine Invasion' and 'The Transmigration of Timothy Archer'. Also well worth reading I'd say are 'Ubik' and 'The Man In The High Castle', and yes just about all his works, but things did definitley go very weird for him at some point where he seemed to be living in one of his own novels and the books themselves just got stranger as he tried to fathom WTF was going on.

― brainliner, Thursday, 9 January 2003 15:44 (twenty-three years ago)

The server god is back! :-) If only for a bit?

Need to reread it. KUCI has a cameo in it, if I remember rightly.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 9 January 2003 15:46 (twenty-three years ago)

The only SF autobiography, in that it is what he thought was going on at the time?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 9 January 2003 18:37 (twenty-three years ago)

yeh -you simply HAVE TO do "the divine invasion" next. IMHO it's even stronger!

― bob snoom, Thursday, 9 January 2003 22:56 (twenty-three years ago)

Calling those three a "trilogy" is highly debatable. In any case, not only is Valis essential reading, but it is essential re-reading. The best elements of a PKD book are usually in the background & sub-plots, and are much more noticable the second time around. (I happen to be really keen on "The Galactic Pot-Healer", though most people don't consider it a major PKD work.)

― Dave Fischer, Friday, 10 January 2003 01:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Calling those three a "trilogy" is highly debatable.

Take it up with Phil -

"I would call VALIS a picaresque novel, experimental science fiction. The Divine Invasion has a very conventional structure for science fiction, almost science fantasy; no experimental devices of any kind. Timothy Archer is in no way science fiction; it starts out the day John Lennon is shot and then goes into flashbacks. And yet the three do form a trilogy constellating around a basic theme."

From this interview: http://www.philipkdick.com/articles/final-interview.htm

― brainliner (brainliner), Friday, 10 January 2003 02:14 (twenty-three years ago)

Wish I could! I am very happy that I had the chance to accuse Douglas Adams of plagarizing Lem before he died...
Thanks for that reference though - I didn't realize Dick himself ever refered to those as a trilogy. (I still don't consider "three books I wrote while trying to get one particular idea off my chest" to constitute a "trilogy" though.)

― Dave Fischer, Friday, 10 January 2003 05:20 (twenty-three years ago)

I've read "A Scanner Darkly" a few times - my single favourite novel ever. I've just last night started reading "Now Wait For Last Year" which is pretty entertaining thus far.

I'm not really "back" per se, just using up funds at internet cafes during my travels. I'll see about internet access from home when I settle in Madrid in a week or two.

― Andrew (enneff), Friday, 10 January 2003 10:29 (twenty-three years ago)

"martian time slip" also i like aplenty worth checking out

― bob snoom, Sunday, 12 January 2003 12:35 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm reading solar lottery at the moment (his first novel) and though not as good as say, martian time slip, its a good read too.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 12 January 2003 12:37 (twenty-three years ago)

What about Radio Free Albemuth? I actually think that "fourth installment" is better than Valis trilogy (although I love Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). Mebbe I should read all those again!

― J (Jay), Sunday, 12 January 2003 14:51 (twenty-three years ago)

oh - and if you run out of "valis" style dick. try Haruki Murakami's "wind up bird chronicle" / "hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world" / "a wild shep chase" / "dance, dance, dance". less sci-fi (save for wonderland) but still brilliant everyday folk losing their way and getting embroiled in mental /emotional waywardness w/ a big, scary vertiginous supernatural good vs evil or a big fat pointless NOTHING underscoring the whole thing. blew me away anyhow!

― bob snoom, Sunday, 12 January 2003 17:56 (twenty-three years ago)

"a wild sheep chase". nnng!

― bob snoom, Sunday, 12 January 2003 17:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Radio Free Albemuth was the first draft of Valis. I think it's great too. Murakami reminds me of Pynchon more than Dick.

― Dave Fischer, Sunday, 12 January 2003 19:14 (twenty-three years ago)

thanks snoom. I'll keep this in mind.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 12 January 2003 21:18 (twenty-three years ago)

haha as usual Julio, I can lend you a Murakami if you like - "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". I am becoming your personal librarian!

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 12 January 2003 21:40 (twenty-three years ago)

heh. yeah sure. you can give it to me at the FAP (if i can make it that is).

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 12 January 2003 21:42 (twenty-three years ago)

Not a bad idea to remind me by email nearer the day, if you are coming, but sure.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 12 January 2003 21:46 (twenty-three years ago)

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 12 January 2003 21:47 (twenty-three years ago)

three years pass...

awesome

― kingfish du lac (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 9 June 2006 05:18 (nineteen years ago)

rank PKD books in order of genius:

1. three stigmata of palmer eldritch
2. scanner darkly
3. valis
4. etc

― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Friday, 9 June 2006 05:22 (nineteen years ago)

Agree.

― Andrew (enneff), Friday, 9 June 2006 06:30 (nineteen years ago)

4. Confessions of a Crap Artist

― Andrew (enneff), Friday, 9 June 2006 06:31 (nineteen years ago)

i'd go
1. a scanner darkly
2. valis trilogy
3. ubik
4. 3 stigmata (which he apparently hated, but it goes well with the sirens of titan)
5. dr. bloodmoney
6. the rest

― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Friday, 9 June 2006 06:59 (nineteen years ago)

I've read and loved Scanner Darkly and Ubik and plenty of his short stories - so I'm amazed I've never come across Valis.

― David Orton (scarlet), Friday, 9 June 2006 12:15 (nineteen years ago)

i found a copy of valis in a bookstore in paris when i was 14 years old, i was on an exchange with a french family. blew my dome & never looked back since.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 9 June 2006 14:00 (nineteen years ago)

1. divine invasion
2. valis
3. a scanner darkly
4. flow my tears, the policeman said
5. martian time-slip
6. the three stigmata of palmer eldritch
7. the transmigration of timothy archer
8. the man in the high castle
9. do androids dream of electric sheep
10. ubik

I'm currently reading the cosmic puppets which looks to be one of his better early novels.

― peter in montreal (spaces are allowed), Friday, 9 June 2006 14:51 (nineteen years ago)

i just lent cosmic puppets to my roommate last night!! it's great, i think. really very fast-paced and captivating; i remember reading most of it in one sitting while bugging out in an old apartment, just kind of scrunched up in this chair in my tiny windowless room.

i dunno about RANKING, but some of my favorites:
valis, obv.
confessions of a crap artist (not much SF but bizarrely nauseating study of certain americans)
three stigmata
scanner darkly
radio free

― electro-acoustic lycanthrope (orion), Friday, 9 June 2006 15:23 (nineteen years ago)

I like a couple more of(I'd agree Timothy Archer is) his non-SF: Mary And The Giant, which is about a very blunt, youg and restless girl, starting out in a dull, small Cali town, in the early 50s. Eventually she makes it to San Francisco, ain't so impressed with that either. The kind of person I can't help liking, even though I've learned to stay the fuck out of her way, and her interest. Entertaining satire on folk music and audiophilia and other, though I don't share his basic opinions (her attitude is an extention of his, duh, but he's got an overview--he's always the expert novelist, even when also VALISed). The Big Bubble is sort of a "sequel," in the sense those xpost later novels are a series. It has more to do with exploitation of the young, and trying to think young way too long, way too desperately, but also here's where his PKDian imagination starts to loop through the itchy dry surfaces, as it will in A Scanner Darkly, for inst (Soon To Be A Major Motion Picture, I heard: anybody got details?)

― don (dow), Friday, 9 June 2006 17:56 (nineteen years ago)

five years pass...

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lbmuj88L6q1qzxdi6o1_400.jpg

― partistan (dayo), Saturday, 17 September 2011 09:58 (fourteen years ago)

WANT IT

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 17 September 2011 10:18 (fourteen years ago)

Valis is intense. So good.

confessions of a crap artist (not much SF but bizarrely nauseating study of certain americans)

I should read this one I guess? sounds good. saw someone reading it on the subway the other day

― dmr, Saturday, 17 September 2011 15:39 (fourteen years ago)

yeah, crap artist is really good!

― jel --, Saturday, 17 September 2011 15:46 (fourteen years ago)

four years pass...

I'm on a PKD marathon of sorts. I've reread Man in the High Castle, which kicked things off, since then, I've gone through (all first time reads):

Our Friends from Frolix 8
The Game Players of Titan
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
A Scanner Darkly

And finally Valis. Right now I'm dead center in Divine Invasion.

I literally Keanu'd upon finishing Valis.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/woah.gif

I don't think it's much of a spoiler because the book is over thirty years old, but if you haven't read Valis in full, you may want to skip this next part of my post.

I was curious about what some of you all think about the theory that Eric Lampton was supposed to be David Bowie, Mini was Brian Eno and the film that blew Dick's mind was the Man Who Fell to Earth. Now, obviously the plots of the two films are completely different (and Valis is obviously not a real film, but I digress), but I guess Man Who Fell to Earth and Eno's early ambient music had a pretty profound impact on PKD (that is to say, if this theory is true).

Any thoughts?

― austinato (Austin), Saturday, 26 September 2015 15:12 (ten years ago)

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