The Divine Invasion

Rating:
Summary: Interesting theory but badly written
Review: I really liked Dick's "Do Androids Dream" and was excited to read another of his books. What a disappointment!

The characters in "The Divine Invasion" seem to exist only for symbolic reasons. Dick needs a protagonist to convey his religious theory but he doesn't create anyone believable.

The main character, Herb Asher, is obsessed with a sappy singer named Linda Fox or "The Fox" (how eighties is that?) but we don't find out what he likes so much about her. His wife, a virgin who carries Yaweh (God) as a human child, comes across as unlikeable and morbid. As a musician, I feel that Dick's portrayal of the music industry and the sound system that Asher sells to The Fox is absurd. For such a visionary as Dick it seems pretty silly to write about music tapes in a future of space colonization... I mean did he think we'd be recording to tape forever?? Also there are a couple of chapters in which Dick writes about powerful religious leaders who seem to be forgotten by the end of the book.

I will say that I think PKD's religious ideas are interesting. I like his portrayal of God and the Torah as being parts of the same whole. It's also interesting that he explains that the angry god of the Jewish Bible is only one facet of God's personality. This is something that bothers me about the bible and I'm glad to see Dick addressing it. Aside from these things, I wouldn't recommend "The Divine Invasion".

Rating:
Summary: PKD deconstucts God himself...
Review: I'm sorry, but I just can't agree with anyone who says this book proves Dick's insanity. I found The Divine Invasion much more lucid than his earlier, more acclaimed works (The Man In The High Castle, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep). While his early books are surreal stories in which identifiably human characters struggle within a twisted plot whilst uncovering basic truths of life, this book is the deconstruction of God himself, his purpose, his thoughts and his perceptions.

Indeed, the very idea of God as an amnesia-stricken child is a brilliant backdrop for Dick to explore our perceptions of religion and reality in a very non-linear yet coherent manner.

Granted, even though it is peppered with clasically Dickian humor (poor Herb Asher listening to muzak within his cryogenically induced dream), this is not the most entertaining of Dick's work. It is however, in my humble opinion, much more thought provoking in it's scope and as such, a more valuable insight into PKD's unique mind than the brief glimpses of his genius contained in his more conventional SF novels.

Rating:
Summary: Explain the Unknowable in Terms of the Not Worth Knowing
Review: I've enjoyed many of Philip K. Dick's books - he was a writer of ideas (Yahweh bless his soul!). However, I must part company with him on this one. Unless you have already been "brained" by early relentless inductrination in Judaism, Christianity or Islam - the three great monotheistic patriarchal miasmas, you'll feel terribly indegested if you try to swallow this book. I read about half of it and got enough of the Torah nonsense, etc. to decide to skim the rest of it, after which I quickly depostited it in the garbage.
Religion and science fiction make for a truly putrid concoction. If for no other reason, I read science fiction to recapture a sense of the unimaginable endless complexity and wonder of the world. The resurrection of stale banal ideas from organized religion truly poison my drink!

Rating:
Summary: The virgin mary had stretch marks.
Review: In this the second book of Dick's "religious" trilogy, Dick takes us on a darkly bizzare and often hilarious journey into creation, existence and damnation. In a universe where the earth is ruled by Satan, and God is being smuggled onto the planet in the womb of a diseased cynic, it seems that man has become unworthy of salvation. A brilliant follow up to Valis, here Dick asks the question, does man deserve to be spared, or should he perish in the apocalypse as preordained? Read it and decide for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Divine Dick
Review: Philip Dick was an immensely creative and entertaining writer - a real stylist but also a creator of wonderfully inventive plots. But he does something else, something that many of the best SF writers do - he is an educator. But where other SF writers educate their readers about the latest scientific discoveries and technological developments - and the implications of these for individuals and for the environment and society of humans - Philip Dick takes on deeper things - the nature of reality, the psychological functioning of the mind, and in this novel, God and religion. These are topics that Philip Dick certainly doesn't trivialise. He obviously spent much time researching and understanding the philosophy of these ideas in a way that enables his novels to be a foundation for readers who are interested - and his novels have a way of making you interested.

I suspect that the average reader of novels - even literary novels - would be surprised by some of the background material that Philip Dick weaves into his stories. In fact, I'm surprised myself when I realise I'm deep in some theological arguments that were probably 'lifted' from some research source and then brought to life in such an engaging way.

In this novel you, like I, might be confronted for the first time by a really tangible God, something drawn together from the ideas of generations and generations of philosophers.

Rating:
Summary: Not PKD's Best Work
Review: The concept behind this book - that God has been exiled from the Earth and is attempting to return to do battle with evil - was intriguing enough that I bought a copy. The story that Philip K. Dick spins from this concept doesn't live up to its promise, however.

I found the writing in Divine Invasion to be very uneven. Portions of the story were enjoyable, and the signature PKD theme of altered reality makes its appearance more than once. But the characters were lacking; apparently divine entities have little or no personality, and the human characters were pretty thin as well.

What was most annoying to me, though, was the almost endless theological rumination. Granted, I expect a novel about God to deal with issues of a divine nature. But PKD runs on and on at great length, apparently presenting almost any thought he had on the nature of God, Creation, Evil or what-have-you, and with very little focus, so that the story suffers in the end. Layer on top of this a healthy dose of what would pass for a religous studies curriculum, and Divine Invasion falls flat.

I would recommend that you pass on this book and, instead, read a novel that better showcases PKD's talents - say "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said" or "Ubik".

Rating:
Summary: Not PKD's Best Work
Review: The concept behind this book - that God has been exiled from the Earth and is attempting to return to do battle with evil - was intriguing enough that I bought a copy. The story that Philip K. Dick spins from this concept doesn't live up to its promise, however.

I found the writing in Divine Invasion to be very uneven. Portions of the story were enjoyable, and the signature PKD theme of altered reality makes its appearance more than once. But the characters were lacking; apparently divine entities have little or no personality, and the human characters were pretty thin as well.

What was most annoying to me, though, was the almost endless theological rumination. Granted, I expect a novel about God to deal with issues of a divine nature. But PKD runs on and on at great length, apparently presenting almost any thought he had on the nature of God, Creation, Evil or what-have-you, and with very little focus, so that the story suffers in the end. Layer on top of this a healthy dose of what would pass for a religous studies curriculum, and Divine Invasion falls flat.

I would recommend that you pass on this book and, instead, read a novel that better showcases PKD's talents - say "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said" or "Ubik".

Rating:
Summary: Gnostic wisdom in an sf wrapper
Review: The Divine Invasion clearly fits the category of science fiction, unlike its predecessors A Scanner Darkly and VALIS, which are just marginally science fiction. But Dick departs from conventional SF by assuming the utter reality of what religion describes, while staying within the scientific spirit of the quest for objectively verifiable knowledge. He continually alludes to religious and philosophical ideas of great profundity and historical resonance, while through the very structure of the narrative he emphasizes the relativity of time. The "divine invasion" refers to the invasion of the world by Yah (God), directly opposing Belial (Satan) who rules it. This sounds simplistically dualistic, but the overt Gnosticism of the religious premise contains many subtleties. Yah inflicts Job-like suffering on Rybys Romney, the mother of Emmanuel, a brain-damaged child who is the Christlike incarnation of God. But by "falling" into incarnation, the god is humanized. The music of English Renaissance composer John Dowland forms a backdrop to the novel, giving it a tender and classic flavor amidst the science-fictional trappings. This book will strike many as an odd mixture. I find it a wise book, permeated by knowledge and compassion, that opens new vistas in speculative fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Dick's strange Gnostic vision
Review: The protagonist of the Divine Invasion is Herb Asher, a recluse living on a human colony on the planet CY30-CY30B. Asher spends most his time lying in bed, listening to singer Linda Fox, until one day a deity identifying itself as the Judeo-Christian God Yahweh calls him to comfort his neighbor, Rybys Rommey, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. A prophet named Elias Tate informs them that Rybys, a virgin, is pregnant with the Second Coming and the three travel to Earth where the child will finish the battle with Belial, the Adversary who banished Yahweh to CY30-CY30B thousands of years earlier and has kept the Earth under his dark cloud since.

Or at least that is the story that keeps playing in Asher's head as he is kept in a frozen state awaiting a new pancreas to replace the one that was injured in the jet crash that killed Rybys upon their return to Earth. Meanwhile, her child Emmanuel, who survived the crash but with brain damage, lives with Tate and attends a special education school with Zina, a girl who seems to know much about Emmanuel and his place in the cosmos.

Welcome to the strange, strange world of latter day Philip K. Dick. The science-fiction author, who specialized in surreal settings and complex puzzles concerning identity, questioned the cosmos as only he could in his final trio of novels of which the Divine Invasion is the middle entry. The novels were inspired by an instance in 1974 in which Dick alleged that a transcendental being briefly possessed him.

For a project inspired by such an absurd episode, the Divine Invasion has a tight, highly coherent theological underlining. Dick shows a remarkable understanding of Gnostic principles, with Asher, Fox, Rybys, Tate, Emmanuel, and Zina each representing an important component of the Christian cosmic order. Although Dick is as reader-friendly as possible (he makes no presumptions about readers' foreknowledge of these concepts), one will have to be patient as he carefully unveils and explains his characters' significance, shifting surface realities and using non-linear story telling. If you can deal with that, you will be treated to a highly imaginative and highly intelligent philosophical novel. The Divine Invasion is another instance in which the term mad genius perfectly applies to Dick.

Rating:
Summary: Some of Dick's best work.
Review: The second of the VALIS trilogy, this is not as powerful as the first or the last because of its galactic setting which at times becomes a bit too much. Despite this the series as a whole has made me a fan of his work which goes way beyond sciencefiction questioning our morals,and religious beliefs. Blending ideas associated with Christianity, Budhism, and Gnosticism, Dick is brilliant as usual, taking us on this journey of the coming messiah. Valis as a series is a prophetic twist of philosophy, religion and sciencefiction which goes beyond what I expected. Read it and become enlightened, if you make it through VALIS you have to read "Radio Free Albemuth"- which is writen in the same autobiographical style,focussing on the conspiracy and Ferris Freemont.