Describe Books Supposing VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1)
| Original Title: | VALIS |
| ISBN: | 0679734465 (ISBN13: 9780679734468) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | VALIS Trilogy #1 |
| Characters: | Philip K. Dick, Horselover Fat |
| Setting: | Santa Ana, California(United States) |
| Literary Awards: | Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for Foreign Novel (1985) |
Philip K. Dick
Paperback | Pages: 242 pages Rating: 3.93 | 23170 Users | 1491 Reviews
List Out Of Books VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1)
| Title | : | VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1) |
| Author | : | Philip K. Dick |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 242 pages |
| Published | : | August 3rd 2004 by Vintage Books (first published February 1981) |
| Categories | : | Science Fiction. Fiction. Philosophy. Religion. Novels. Science Fiction Fantasy. Fantasy |
Explanation As Books VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1)
VALIS is the first book in Philip K. Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). This disorienting and bleakly funny work is about a schizophrenic hero named Horselover Fat; the hidden mysteries of Gnostic Christianity; and reality as revealed through a pink laser. VALIS is a theological detective story, in which God is both a missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime.Rating Out Of Books VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1)
Ratings: 3.93 From 23170 Users | 1491 ReviewsJudgment Out Of Books VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1)
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 lookedFat 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 havent a clue! And there are plenty more where that came from. A couple of years ago I made a start on VALIS,
Religion is a form of schizophrenia. Consider: an attempt to make absolute sense of the world, fitting its endless random details into a coherent overall pattern. Which am I describing? It's no surprise that religious delusion figures so prominently on psychiatric wards -- they're categorically made for eachother. Beside the psychiatric ward in this novel, see also Anne Quin's The Unmapped Country, which I finished immediately before this, or pretty much any other example.As a novel, this fits
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
VALIS is an intensely rational portrait of a kind of madness, of doubling, doppelgangers, and split personalities, of reality, coincidence, and paranoia, of messages, everyday life, and divine intervention. That makes the novel sound a bit better than it actually is. The narrative is an odd mix of petty, personal problems--a friend's suicide, another dying of cancer, the (well, one half of) the protagonist's marital problems--and living gnostic revelation and knowledge. I mean, was God even
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 wasnt even PKD that wrote it. This was all food for thought and food for a straight jacket. The Empire Never Ended.
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
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