Valis

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Summary: Phillip K. Dick's theological morass
Review: I am a huge fan of Dick's work, from Solar Lottery to Ubik. I feel he was a great genius. However, this seems to be less of a novel than a collection of his theological musings hurriedly injected into a thin "story." I expect better than long rambling (and disjointed) musings on the nature of a "higher being." Neither The Divine Invasion nor the Transmigration of Timothy Archer suffer from a lack of plot, despite being theosophical in nature, so it was with great anticipation that I purchased this book. A little more story, and little less discourse, could have made this into an interesting read. If you are a fan of Dick's, or good writing, try almost anything else by him, with the additional exception of "Mary and the Giant," which is still better than this one.

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Summary: VALIS changed the way i think!
Review: If you enjoyed THE MATRIX you will love VALIS. What is VALIS? a question that can't be answered as easily as "what is the matrix?". VALIS is everything and everyone, a satalite that doesn't exist, our savior, a movie made by a musician, and horselover fat's obsession.

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Summary: Much material based on PKD's real-life experiences
Review: If you found VALIS a profound emotional experience, you might be surprised to discover that much of the material was based on Philip Dick's real-life experiences. To dig deeper into the "mystical experiences" that changed PKD's life, I'd suggest Lawrence Sutin's biography "Divine Invasions," available from Amazon.com, and the book "Philip K. Dick: The Dream Connection," a small press book featuring a long interview with PKD in which he describes these experiences more completely than in any other non-fictional source. This book is available from Impermanent Press (you can guess the web address). Together, they add depth and reality to VALIS.

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Summary: My first reading of Dick; I'll be back for more
Review: This was the first science-fiction-esque book that I have read in some time, and it is quite the mind-bender. Although the pace of the book never seemed to reach its potential, I was intrigued throughout and found myself empathetic to a few of the characters. While the work certainly shies away from the classic conflict/resolution pattern of literature, Dick's interesting and original cosmology and view of Gnosticism are quite compelling and worth the time I spent reading the book. I will definitely be picking up a few more of this man's works.

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Summary: You Either Get It or You Don't....
Review: "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.

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Summary: A Tragic Epitaph
Review: Having read most of Dick's published body of work(and there are new things cropping up every year) I have to say that this book is nothing more than a sad statement of the self-destructive nature of Mister Dick. Philip K. Dick was a great, prolific talent in his day who had a knack for exploring the various aspects of human madness in both funny and provacative ways while also including the most fundamental of fiction writing's ingredients -- plot. Yes, I know to you post-modern relativistic types that plot, like anything else that may dicate form to an art, is a vile and disqusting word. But simply put, the best of novels and short fiction has a discernable plot, with a long term goal that is either acheived or failed. And Dick, in books like Clans of the Alphane Moon, Eye in the Sky and, of course, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (oh my, does liking this last book make me a conformist?)manages to viably explore human madness and tell a good story at the same time. And don't be fooled by what you may have learned in college, my friends, but a well written, plot driven story that also holds valid intellectual content is much more difficult to craft than the splattering of thoughts that one finds in this book and others (such as the works of Henry Miller) like it. In fact, writing like this is the prose version of a painter who blindly throws paint from cans into a jet engine which in turn spaltters the paint on a canvas with no possiblility of form and content. Somehow this senseless splattering of colors is compared with well crafted works by the likes of Picasso and Dali. And so is the case with this book. It does not compare in greatness to any of Dick's ealier classics. We have been trained by professors and other intellectuals to be "open-minded" to formless garbage. That is likely because those who preach the merits of garbage can only produce garbage. Never be "open-minded", my friends. One needs a criteria in life to find purpose. Moderation is the only true evil.

Dick, unfortunatly, was a great talent who spent his last years writing moderate, evil swill. Put simply, he fried his own mind in the senseless abuse of drugs that destoryed other geniuses of his time. And the post-modern idiocy that is Valis is a mere reflection of lost brain cells, pshycotic flashbacks and a culture that is thankfully long dead.

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Summary: The ultimate masterpiece in sci-fi
Review: Despite the headline, I'm rather unwilling to classify this book as science fiction. It's not a vision of what will be; it's a vision of what could be. The ultimate reality-blender also; Philip K. Dick always understood that greatest fantasy has a certain sense of reality that makes you almost believe in it. If this is not enough, then there are his amazing ideas of religion and metaphysics. One of the most intelligent and civilized books I've ever read, and at the same time, entertaining and funny too. The best work of a genius.

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Summary: Absolutely the finest novel I have ever read
Review: In the top tier of fiction, I place only this book and Peace on Earth by Stanislaw Lem. I'm lukewarm on PKD most of the time; I think he's a writer of extreme swings and inconsistency, but in Valis he packs every page, every sentence, every word, with such fanatical intensity that I've read it six times and it's increased by enjoyment exponentially each time. I can sort of understand how the philosophical monologue format and the almost complete lack of action could put some readers but to me it perfectly matches subject matter to form. It captures the malaise of the times so well. Also the denoument (or lack of one) might bother people but what other way could it end?

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Summary: A book that defies one-line summaries.
Review: I am almost reluctant to review this book, since it's rather different from anything I've ever read. For a very crude idea, picture Holden Cauffield meets Oliver Stone meets Valentinus. I've given it three stars almost as a cop-out, since I would as easily understand a rating of one as I would a five.

This is the story of a man wounded by tragedy and guilt, in search of redemtion amidst a background of what I can only call metaphysical conspiracy. It is inspired by the author's own mystical experience, as is a tractate included as an appendix to 'Valis'.

'Valis' see-saws between engaging Gnostic themes and some arguably off-putting high wierdness. Dick peppers his work with quotes and ideas (or his twist on them) from a great variety of esoteric sources, and some might find the book a worthwhile read for these tidbits alone. But be advised, when 'Valis' is strange, it is very strange. Trans-temporal three-eyed crab creature from Sirius strange. And it does not (perhaps, by it's nature, cannot) resolve itself into the neat package some readers might hope for.

In the end, I was left wondering whether Dick with his keen writer's mind hadn't overanalyzed and over-literalized the catalyst experience which inspired this book. Perhaps that is a presumptious suggestion on my part, but 'Valis' left me with the image of a man being given a magic stone by which he can travel to the moon and back, and deciding to build a rocket ship around it anyway. To me there seemed alot of extraneous, "bolted on" stuff. But I suppose it's possible that I'm missing some point or other. Given the very personal nature of Dick's writing here, not many could hope to grasp his every point.

Even so, I did find something genuinely moving here. At the book's heart is a greatly embellished retelling of Plato's parable of the cave. And both the Gnostic and human drama elements stand up fairly well even with all the wierd stuff bearing down on them from above (though a loud creaking can be heard in places).

The bottom line is that I admired this book, even though I'm not sure that I really liked it. If you are in the mood for something different, this is not a bad bet.

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Summary: Uhh...
Review: That was my reaction, anyway. David Pringle (editor of Interzone) listed 6 (more than any other author)Dick novels in his book Science Fiction: the 100 Best Novels. He said he considered putting this one in there, too, but many people considered it unreadable. Count me in on that one. Everyone seems to just love this book, but I forced my way to page 25, and then had to stop. It was so boring, stupid, and weird, I just couldn't get into it.