Valis - Softcover

Dick, Philip K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553141562 ISBN 13: 9780553141566

Publisher: Bantam Books, 1981

Synopsis

â Dick is one of the ten best American writers of the twentieth century, which is saying a lot. Dick was a kind of Kafka steeped in LSD and rage.â â Roberto Bolaño

What is VALIS? This question is at the heart of Philip K. Dickâ s ground-breaking novel, and the first book in his defining trilogy. When a beam of pink light begins giving a schizophrenic man named Horselover Fat (who just might also be known as Philip K. Dick) visions of an alternate Earth where the Roman Empire still reigns, he must decide whether he is crazy, or whether a godlike entity is showing him the true nature of the world.

VALIS is essential reading for any true Philip K. Dick fan, a novel that Roberto Bolaño called â more disturbing than any novel by [Carson] McCullers.â By the end, like Dick himself, you will be left wondering what is real, what is fiction, and just what the price is for divine inspiration.

About this title

Review:

The first of Dick's three final novels (the others are Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). Known as science fiction only for lack of a better category, "Valis" takes place in our world and may even be semi-autobiographical.

The proponent of the novel, Horselover Fat, is thrust into a theological quest when he receives communion in a burst of pink laser light. From the cancer ward of a bay area hospital to the ranch of a fraudulent charismatic religious figure who turns out to have a direct com link with God, Dick leads us down the twisted paths of Gnostic belief, mixed with his own bizarre and compelling philosophy. Truly an eye opening look at the nature of consciousness and divinity.

From the Inside Flap:

Valis is the first book in Philip K. Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being are The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). This disorienting and bleakly funny work is about a schizophrenic hero named Horselover Fat; the hidden mysteries of Gnostic Christianity; and reality as revealed through a pink laser. Valis is a theological detective story, in which God is both a missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime.

"The fact that what Dick is entertaining us about is reality and madness, time and death, sin and salvation--this has escaped most critics. Nobody notices that we have our own homegrown Borges, and have had him for thirty years."--Ursula K. Le Guin, New Republic

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0553141562
• ISBN 13: 9780553141566
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 227