Valis

Rating:
Summary: Dick's soliloquy to the reader
Review: What makes Valis extraordinary is its ability to take the most bizarre and unreal experiences and granting them logical explanations - so that apparently irrational acts are given a meaning to their madness. We are given insights to the world of the characters - we come to understand the principles they work by, the names that they give the most bizarre things, and we learn to understand their world through those names.

Rating:
Summary: The strange mental projections of PKD
Review:

This is my second novel after "The Man in the high castle". What hooked me on to PKD was not so much the actual pace or over all structure of the book, but rather, it is the innovative and imaginative kernel ideas that drive his stories. The author had the rare ability to create some very surrealistic vistas, which were able to drive whole novels. I am so far a beginner at PKD novels, but what I have observed, is that it is not a major plot line which drives his stories but rather, it a unique idea or set of ideas which lead to some very unconventional stories.

Valis is supposed to be one of his extreme novels which is less about fiction but rather his own autobiography superimposed and interweaved with the story to create a kind of semi-fiction which shows a lot of his metaphysical thinking and his thoughts on religion and GOD. I believe "Transmigration of Timothy Archer", "Divine invasion" and this one form a kind of trilogy, but I am not sure as to whether they are continuously on the same story line or a grouped together just because they are all on the same theme.

In any case, this novel is narrated from the point of view of PKD himself and this is a story about his friends, Horselover Fat (The fictional projection of PKD himself), Kevin - the cynic, David (The Roman Empire priest projection of Horselover Fat), and PKD for search of GOD. So it's kind of PKD is looking at himself and has epitomized that as another character. We can call Horselover as the other consciousness of the real PKD. The things that happen to HF are incidents which supposedly happened to PKD. In any case we know from the very beginning that HF is nothing but a figment of imagination of PKD, and HF was in PKD's mind.

All along the book, PKD spells forth his personal laws which I believe he has summed up in his own personal treatise called the "Exegesis" which tries to reveal the true meaning and origin of our existence and GOD. PKD started maintaining this, his own wisdom book after he suffered a break down in 1974, due to drug abuse and much of the things that PKD hallucinated form the core content of the book -the exegisis as well as VALIS. The core content of the "Exegesis" are summed up in a set of laws which he called "tractate". This will be all a bit unnerving and strange at first to a basic first time reader of PKD, especially with all those multiple personality characters and shifting perspectives.

The story in a nutshell - HF(PKD)gets pink beams of light shot over him , in which he gets information about events about to happen, such as his son's illness. And due to these experiences, another personality from ancient Rome (David takes over him at times or rather breaks into this world. Similarly, probably HF is breaking into the other guy’s world and time. PKD surmises that at any given point of time there are multiple realities taking places in different space time and all these space times are on a linear line. And once in a while at a time of divine intervention, or in a state of supra-consciousness, ordinary humans are able to break out of their own space time and break into the space time of the same self but on a different space time.

At first his friends think him to be crazy. His friend Kevin, is continuously cynical and things that GOD is irrational, proof being his dead cat, which he believed did no harm to anyone and hence did not deserve to die under the tires of a truck and thus wants to know why GOD let his cat die.

Midway through the book, Kevin takes PKD, HF, and David to see the movie VALIS which stars Mother Goose AKA Eric Lampton and his wife Linda Lampton. Kevin, the cynic has been to this movie and invites his friends along because of the strange coincidence of the theme of the pink light and sudden time shifts in the movie which corresponds exactly to HF's abnormal experiences. The movie consists of oddly placed jump cuts with an absolutely ridiculous plot . It is basically a collage of images loosely stitched together to give the appearance of a film. In the film Mother Goose teams up with a character in the movie "Nicholas Brady" who is the music composer for Mother Goose's music in the film. Nicholas in the film has developed a mixer instrument in which human beings get morphed to another space time. The music consists of unmusical electronic sounds which run along with the movie. In the movie a Ferris F Freemont , president of the USA is the villain and USA is epitomized as the "black iron Prison" and American governance as a return of the rule of the Roman Empire.

PKD, HF and friends come to the conclusion that the movie is filled with subliminal messages and that the music holds many secrets. They postulate the music is oddly placed sound frequencies which provide messages to the subconscious. A few clues lead them to believe that the movie is meant for a certain set of people who can decipher the code and thus are the chosen people for a certain cause. The odd team of friends manages to set up a meeting with Eric Lampton. They are accepted by Eric aka Goose when they provide the cipher message that HF (aka PKD) has been receiving with the pink beams of light-info. They discover that the music for the film VALIS is composed by a Mr. Mini, who has grown weak because of his closeness to the Supreme Being who is directing them to create this movie so that those who can decipher it are meant to be the chosen messengers of the supreme being.

PKD in this novel questions our faith in different GOD's and asks a question which can probably be synopsized as - What if GOD (Christ, Allah, Buddha etc) are nothing but the same instance-holographic-thought projections but in different persona-media formats fired at us in the form of rich information content providing us with a mental screensaver to keep us content and provide us hope.

GOD Shiva of hindu pantheon, with the third destructive eye is put into the story and it is shown that we are much closer to the search for ET's than we think. Infact you dont need to look heavenward for the ET's, it's much more closer. Saying more will spoil the fun for the potential VALIS explorers.

As I said read this book for the genuine kernel ideas of which probably many an author has spun corollary stories. The movie MATRIX oddly has the same strand of a plot idea which leads me to think whether PKD was the unofficial source of the screenplay. But be warned that this book doesn't have a conventional plot structure and may meander a bit due to all the physco-religio babble that PKD fills in. If you have read PKD before you will enjoy the whole, if you have never read PKD before, read some of his mainstream works before trying this one.



Vikram


Rating:
Summary: My first Phillip Dick
Review: I bought this book by accident instead of Ubik. I guess it was worth reading, but I didn't think so until about 125 pages into it. First I'm not religous or spiritual so the begining was pretty bland, being written from the perspective of a crazy guy who thinks god is sending him messages. To be honest I felt really dumb because I had to reread alot of it for it to make sense as a story. When it did pick up half way through and start to make sense it was a good read worthy of 4 stars. Valis did have many really original ideas in it, which does make me want to read more of Phillip Dick's books.

Rating:
Summary: A Bag of Mixed Nuts
Review: Valis is the product of a few things: Dick's 1974 hallucinatory experiences, his belief that whetever the eye sees is reality on some level, and his own zany brand of writing.
The book consists of a mix of autobiography, Dick's Gnostic philosophies, his interpretations of his 1974 experiences, and a fictional story of schizophrenically-projected Horselover Fat (projected by none other than "Phil" who has written himself into the story ala 'Radio Free Albemuth') so it's not really a fictional novel, it's not really an autobiography and it's not really a philosphical treastise.
However, Valis does makes for a pretty good read, it would certainly make an odd member of anyone's book collection. While reading the book it's tempting to say that Dick's mind was fried but by the end it seems he had his head screwed on straight enough. He might have been on the wrong track in trying to explain what he saw in 1974, but from a spiritual viewpoint he's come up with some very novel and interesting ideas (and ideas were always Dick's forte). Valis is a tripped-out book but it isn't much worse than say, 'Counter Clock World' or 'Flow My Tears' on the fried-brain meter.
In conclusion if you're a PKD fan, don't stay away from this one, welcome it with open arms. I suggest reading 'Radio Free Albemuth' and 'The Shifting Realities of Phillip K. Dick' edited by Lawrence Sutin beforehand to gain a clearer understanding of where Dick was coming from.