The Divine Invasion

Rating:
Summary: Philosophically Scattered and Religously Absurd Sci-Fi
Review: "Above them the city machine worked, gathering up the remains of Belial. Gathering up the broken fragments of what had once been light"

By this point in his life Dick was either completely drenched in insanity or saner and more focused than he had ever been in his life. What do you get when you put together a galactically-famous super Diva, Satan in the form of a petting zoo Goat, a God that has amnesia, and of course fly-cars? Well obviously you get Phil Dick. In this, his last official novel before his demise, he tries to cram philosophies of the space time continuim as well as theology to explain reasoning behind the following ideas:
a. - God can be convinced to change
b. - Evil is the antithesis of God not because God is good, but rather because God is creation and evil is death, the absence of creation.
c. - Reality as humans know it may only be an overlapping reality of a primary reality.
d. - If God cannot remember creation, creation cannot exist.
However above all these points he stresses that all is predestined and that evil exist only because God created it. His story surrounds several key characters, mainly Herb Asher, a Kafka-esque character who has little to live for; it also follows his 'legal' son Eman, who is actually, God, or the male half of God. Yes, in Phildickian fasion this is a fairly convuluted novel, but this reviewer found it to come full circle rather well.
One dissapointment is the lack of developement in the storylines of the Cardinal of Earth and the Leader of the Communist party. Dick's point on how in the future good and evil will completely shift sides is put in place, but other than that he lets the characters he used to introduce the idea kind of fall out of the novel. He brings them back momentarily towards the end, but drops them again. Also, I found the longer passages to go into borderline incoherent rambling, but that was to be expected from latter-period Dick.
In synopsis, this is a fine read. It sometimes reads as though it were a large essay in which Phil Dick tries to cram all his theories into much too short of a medium. But the story and theories are entertaining nonetheless. A fine book, but defineitely not a starting place for beggingers in Dick's writings.

Rating:
Summary: Directionless Philosophy Overload
Review: *The Divine Invasion* is not necessarily a sequel to *Valis* but is loosely related to it through the use of some common themes and subplots. Even so, this book's few detached references to *Valis* are quickly forgotten and seem like a weak afterthought. This book is more standard science fiction than its predecessor, but the religious philosophy that PKD was studying in his later years is still the focus. At this point in PKD's life he was apparently so engrossed in finding his own theological answers to life that his studies in that field came to dominate his thoughts. When an author reads too many books out of personal interest and either consciously or unconsciously lets his reading seep into his writing, the result in a very unfocused and noncommittal book like this one, and it appears that he is no longer concerned about entertaining or enlightening the reader.

As opposed to the Gnostic Christianity focus of the last book, now PKD is dealing in ancient Jewish mysticism, as characters play out the primordial battle between good and evil in a sci-fi future. Unfortunately the characters in this story are very thin and difficult to identify with, being either doppelgangers for figures from Jewish theology, or merely longwinded mouthpieces that ramble on and on with PKD's unfocused theological ideas. Essentially, PKD's personal quest for religious answers lead to an apparent dead end, and that is reflected in this novel. His newfound knowledge is only a large quantity of detached religious ideas with little overall direction or deeper insights. That is also the exact same problem that makes this book one of PKD's more frustrating and unrewarding efforts.

Rating:
Summary: Directionless Philosophy Overload
Review: *The Divine Invasion* is not necessarily a sequel to *Valis* but is loosely related to it through the use of some common themes and subplots. Even so, this book�s few detached references to *Valis* are quickly forgotten and seem like a weak afterthought. This book is more standard science fiction than its predecessor, but the religious philosophy that PKD was studying in his later years is still the focus. At this point in PKD�s life he was apparently so engrossed in finding his own theological answers to life that his studies in that field came to dominate his thoughts. When an author reads too many books out of personal interest and either consciously or unconsciously lets his reading seep into his writing, the result in a very unfocused and noncommittal book like this one, and it appears that he is no longer concerned about entertaining or enlightening the reader.

As opposed to the Gnostic Christianity focus of the last book, now PKD is dealing in ancient Jewish mysticism, as characters play out the primordial battle between good and evil in a sci-fi future. Unfortunately the characters in this story are very thin and difficult to identify with, being either doppelgangers for figures from Jewish theology, or merely longwinded mouthpieces that ramble on and on with PKD�s unfocused theological ideas. Essentially, PKD�s personal quest for religious answers lead to an apparent dead end, and that is reflected in this novel. His newfound knowledge is only a large quantity of detached religious ideas with little overall direction or deeper insights. That is also the exact same problem that makes this book one of PKD�s more frustrating and unrewarding efforts.

Rating:
Summary: P.D.K.- Always ahead of the curve.
Review: Actually, this is the only other _Valis_ novel. There was supposed to have been a third, but Dick died before it was finished. _The Transmigration of Timothy Archer_, while good, is not properly part of the _Valis_ trilogy.
This book, while set in the far future, does continue the specific themes introduced in _Valis_, and reference is made back to some of the specific characters. You see, this is the time when VALIS, the Logos, the greater face of God, or whatever name you choose to limit it by, breaks through into our "black iron prison" to reclaim it and banish the Empire and the black magician behind it.
I admit that the story takes 50 or 60 pages to get up to speed, but by that time the IDEAS that are the real value of P.D.K.'s writing begin to surface. For instance, the idea of the "Hermetic Transform" and how the microcosm and macrocossm can interpenetrate and become One- and how to God time can run backwards. Pretty deep stuff compared to most of the semi-literate pap that is published nowdays.
What really leaped out at me though was the fact that Dick wrote of the Torah as an interactive, holographic, computer code. It predicts the future because it is the blueprint for creation that even God refers back to. He wrote this in 1981- _The Bible Code_ wasn't published until 1997. Talk about being "ahead of the curve."

Rating:
Summary: My favorite of Dick's "Valis Trilogy"
Review: Although Dick's final three books are best enjoyed as a trilogy, "The divine invasion" remains my favorite of the three. The science fiction setting of the book allows Dick the freedom to explore some of his more radical notions without having to ground them in the more mundane reality of the other books in his trilogy. One doesn't usually expect to encounter profound and moving meditations on the nature of good and evil in a science fiction book, yet Dick pulls it all together with his powerful storytelling ability.

Rating:
Summary: Philip K Dick not up to his usual
Review: by the end of this book i didn't care at all for these stupid charecters. between switching around all the time and making them shallow and boring i just wanted it to end

Rating:
Summary: A Visit from the Stars
Review: Divine Invasion opens with Herb Asher (do I detect a botanical reference?) "dead and in cryonic suspension" overseeing information traffic from within his dome around the binary star system CY30-CY30B. His sickly female neighbor, dying of multiple sclerosis, becomes pregnant with a virgin birth (her hymen is intact and Herb is repulsed by her sickness) that turns out to be the result of Yahweh--God of the old testament. Although only perhaps (like us all?) vividly dreaming, Asher accompanies his legal wife (Yah has insisted he sympathize with her by vengefully threatening to destroy his most treasured belongings, especially his tapes of Linda Fox, a galactically renowned vocalist) through quasi-fascistic interrogations and security back to Earth. There his life is reminiscent but different than on the world of methane crystals housing the dome where he "really is." As the "legal father" of God (as he explains to a police man who stops him in his fly-car) he meets his step-son, the Christ-like child who combines infinity from God (the alien who comes in half-human form to Earth) and the earthly from his human wife. Emmanuel, the God-child, is engaged in both a battle of recalling his true nature and playing with his elusive female playmate, Zina. Zina knows things about him that he doesn't. She is Shekhina, "the immanent Presence who never left the world...the female side of God" who remained with the immanent world when the Godhead split. Elias Tate, Herb Asher's best friend, is the prophet Elijah on the two-star system, but a black man who works at an audio components shop on Earth. Thus the inimitable and brilliant Dick establishes an overlapping confluence between the celestial (the extraterrestrial) and the mundane--he literalizes the Gnostic worldview, spiced idiosyncratically with bits of his personal life, esoteric Judaism and mystical Christianity. (The well-regarded literary critic, Harold Bloom, tried to write--wrote--a fiction book based on Gnosticism that fell far short of this brilliant effort.) Quoting Church father Tertullian on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Asher's friend Elias, who counsels him to dump his wife and pursue his dream--Linda Fox, who in space is only a projection of artificial intelligence--explains: Et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est." He was resurrected from the grave; this is therefore credible, just because it is absurd. I think you have to give the benefit of the doubt not to those who cannot penetrate Dick's densely nuanced tangle of relevant references upon a single reading--but to Dick, who has instantiated Gnosticism in fiction with entertainment and story-telling acumen, imparting lodes of theological information along the way where others have failed. In Islamic culture being a writer may be considered suspect because one is competing with God. But Dick is alway competing with God--and making "Him" such as he is (here an alien with a penchant for intrauterine symbiosis) palpable and relevant for modern times. That is what great authors (e.g., Pushkin in Russia) do: they revive and re-weave culture, preserving it in their creative efforts. The devil appears as an especially stinky goat, who is killed on a rooftop (as is another goat in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?!) But Belial (the sheep who lusts after non-existence) was created by God. As my son raps, "Good and evil are not equal; light created the darkness." A theological mini-masterpiece--pearls before swine are still pearls.

Rating:
Summary: Easier read than previous book in VALIS trilogy
Review: Easier to read..not understand. '..Invasion' is heavy in metaphysical underpinnings. What is real and what is illusion? It's a question that's never fully answered in this novel.

Like VALIS, '..Invasion' examines Dick's encounter with an odd colored light in 1974. Dick attempts to explain what in the world happened to him. Some think these books prove he was slipping into madness. I agree. It's an entertaining book and will make you think.

Rating:
Summary: Holy Writ disguised as SF!
Review: Easily the most readable and interesting of Dick's final soul-searching trilogy, of which it is the second installment, this novel is a recasting of the nativity story in 21st century terms. It describes the trials and tribulations of a man and his "son"---the Divine Child---as they try to smuggle God back into a world corrupted by Belial.Dick's craft was never finer than in this novel, and his philosophical speculations, inspired by early Christianity, Zoroastrianism and mystical Judaism, are at times breathtaking, even scriptural, in their beauty and subtlety. Unequivocally Dick's best.

Rating:
Summary: something missing... for me anyway
Review: I don't know what it is. Valis is one of my favourite books, and TTA is pretty close, but Divine Invasion left me without the usual exhilaration, wonder etc. I found it a chore to read. This book is as full as metaphyscial speculation as Valis, but, unlike in Valis, PKD creates a totally fictional situation. I liked the SF aspects (they were few) even though I have been led to believe that they correspond fairly accurately to events in PKD's life. When then don't I like this book? Everyone else is eager to sing its praises, and they appear to have good reasons for this. It remains a mystery. I'll have to read it again, but I don't think you could argue that this book matches Valis. Valis Regained it may be, but Valis it is not.