Rating: 
Summary: Literary SF exists...
Review: Tired of SF novels that read like increasingly banal versions of "Starship Troopers"? Well, Philip K. Dick is the cure for you. Each of his novels sets off on its own, wonderful meandering journey that takes you places you've never imagined, and Radio Free Albemuth is no exception.The plot basically follows American History until the late 1960s, when a character named Fremont but actually a shell for Richard Nixon takes over the country by assassinating his rivals and proceeds to make a mockery of the Bill of Rights. That's just the backdrop for a fascinating foray into the "real" meaning of the Bible, the Jesus story, and eternal life. BTW, this book, at just over 200 pages, takes a while to read. There are no banal page-long descriptions of the weather, clothing, etc. a la a pulp fiction novel. It's rich with ideas from page to page, so it's not necessarily a page-turner. You have to stop and think about it -- best if read not all at once but a few chapters at a time.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant portrait of our culture slipping into darkness.
Review: To me, this was the accessible, sentimental VALIS. While it is not so rich in detail, one does not have to read the exegesis of Gnostic terminology found in VALIS. I believe the story benifits from this as it allowed Dick to focus more tightly on his main characters and their emotions. Parts of this books made me feel like I was reading a later day addition to C. S. Lewis' Perlandria series. The feeling of divine contact and its sudden withdrawal was just devastating. I have rarely read such a clear portrayal of the emotions surrounding direct religious experiences. The other aspect of this book I liked was its obviously autobiographical narrative, and its dark hints at Nixon's raw grasping for power and possible responsibilities for the loss of some of our most popular leaders of the '60s. Radio Free Albemuth provides a fascinating alternative to VALIS, and can be enjoyed at several levels. It also combines in an accessible manner the important themes Dick wrote about in "A Scanner Darkly" and "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said". While it is derrivative of these books, the insight and ideas have been honed to their essence.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't judge PKD by this one
Review: Try to read "Radio Free Albemuth" and you'll need no further explanation of why it wasn't published while he was alive. Even by the slapdash standards of an unfortunately large part of Dick's writing, this is very, very bad. Don't waste your time on it -- not when you have "Man in the High Castle" and "A Scanner Darkly," among others, to choose from. All writers have drafts and manuscripts that serve their purpose of getting the brain going; they make interesting footnotes for scholars and groupies, and they churn out royalties for literary estates, but they don't make literature. This one is only a dry run for "Valis," a well-edited and gripping story that best shows the later Dick.
Rating: 
Summary: VALIS from the dark side?
Review: Well, I wonder: maybe this truly was only an early version of VALIS, never intended to be published. At first, all the similarities and little differences made it hard to take RFA one way or the other, but then I started to think: what about if I had read this one first, would it have been so much worse? The answer is no. Of course, RFA couldn't ever be a complete match for VALIS, which is a masterpiece. This one makes a point of preaching about the tyranny of Nixon, showing that PKD truly was a political paranoid; VALIS concentrated more on the religious side, and that's just fine. But Radio Free Albemuth is, by any standards, a great work of fiction, postmodern in the original sense of the world, but also easy to read with detailed character descriptions and brilliant oneliners so typical for Philip K. I recommend.
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