Valis (S.F. MASTERWORKS)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Only Philip K Dick could produce a novel as comically disturbing as Valis (1981), grappling with troubled, off-sane episodes of his own life and triumphantly resolving them through SF.
Early in 1974 Dick felt a "pink beam" flashing through his head, a religious experience--or mild stroke--which inspired him to write his vast theological "Exegesis". In Valis the pink beam illuminates Dick's mentally unstable friend Horselover Fat; Philip is Greek for lover of horses and Dick is German for fat.
Dick's alter ego Fat duly creates the weird Gnostic theology of the Exegesis, with its visions of salvation from the insane side of reality--the Empire, whose Black Iron Prison cages us all. "The Empire never ended." Also there's a three-eyed race among us and all time between AD 103 and 1974 may be a divine illusion...
The resulting debates between Fat and friends, including Dick, are often hilariously insane. It's clear that Fat is deluded--until they all see the SF movie Valis, whose rock star actor-director suggests David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth and which uncannily features Exegesis code phrases, timeslips, third eyes, early Christian symbols and pink beams.
Maybe the film's Vast Active Living Intelligence System, a satellite which controls minds via lasers, is the same as the messiah imagined by Fat? Naturally he and friends contact the director, leading to an unexpected interview with VALIS itself.
Dick was the supreme SF master of booby-trapped reality and Valis celebrates his own escape from the trap that claimed him in 1974. Chilling, moving and acknowledged by the SF Encyclopedia as the finest novel of Dick's last years. --David Langford --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Classic science fiction from the master
--This text refers to the
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Possibly the most complex of Dick's works it ranks, along with A Scanner Darkly, as his greatest achievement, blurring the boundaries between psychology, literature and science fiction.
After a series of mental traumas and breakdowns Horselover Fat (Dick himself)discovers a cipher hidden in the most banal representations of reality that unlocks the secrets to the universe. Completely confused Fat stumbles from revelation to realisation, constructing complex cosmologies on the way and dicovering the true purpose of the universe and the reasons for all the mistakes.
Along the way he utterly confounds therapists, friends, his own paranoia and the reader, eventaully stumbling on the secret purpose of Valis, the divine operator.
This is a classic rendering of the psychotic mind, the incredible truths it can uncover and the complete confusion and disorientation it suffers along the way.
If you like Dick read this book, it reveals him as fragile, vulnerable and fascinating.
And if you're interested in asking questions about anything, read this book - it won't answer any of them, but it sure as hell will put a different slant on the way you ask them.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This started to fry my synapses and I had to put it down. If you have a looser grip on consensual reality (like PKD) be careful. this book can create cracks in your reality.
The autobiographical element is fascinating. PKD's experiences with ETs and psychedelics are spun out and pulled open for us to try to understand. If you have ever experienced similar things and failed to understand them this book gives you a manual or a new religion to work with.
Not brilliantly easy to read so I can't give it 5 stars and it certainly won't appeal to everyone.
The autobiographical element is fascinating. PKD's experiences with ETs and psychedelics are spun out and pulled open for us to try to understand. If you have ever experienced similar things and failed to understand them this book gives you a manual or a new religion to work with.
Not brilliantly easy to read so I can't give it 5 stars and it certainly won't appeal to everyone.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It is wonderful to have another PK Dick reissue, especially by SF Masterworks- who have produced a lovely selection (with great covers)...I wasn't THAT much of an SF fan- more of the borderline of Ballard/Burroughs/Vonnegut (which I found out was SF!!!)...The SF Masterworks imprint has lead me to excellent, neglected works such as Ballard's 'Drowned World' or Matheson's 'I am legend'...and most of all to the works of Philip K Dick.
I began with a selction of short-stories ('Imposter', 'The Exit Door Leads in', 'The little Black Box', 'We Can remember it for you wholesale'- all collected in 5 volumes)and this lead to novels such as the classic 'The Man in the High Castle'...and the realisation that William Gibson owed a little debt to Dick...
The previous re-issues, 'Now wait for last year' and 'A Scanner Darkly', were very much drugs novels- somehwhere between 'Naked Lunch' & 'Fear & Loathing'(with Dick's use of philosophy and his own brand of the future- which as the best SF- is here in the present)...Dick had a multitude of breakdowns- all detailed in excellent tomes on his work (the 'Pocket Classics' is a good intro to this)and this eventually lead to 'Valis'.
This is one of those postmodern texts that has the author as a character- something that has been done from Vonnegut to Martin Amis to Milan Kundera...It is the story of a vision and explores themes in all of Dick's work: we see the move from 'Do Androids...?' and 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch' to 'Now Wait...'and 'A Scanner Darkly' (of which portions of are re-worked)to this book.
The closest books to this are Burrough's 'Naked Lunch' and elements of Keroauc's 'Big Sur'- but really there is nothing else quite like it...WARNING- not to be read as an introduction; move from the short stories to earlier works like 'Martian Time Slip' to 'Ubik' to 'Now Wait...' to 'Scanner' (and everything else!!!). Ingest some Jean Baudrillard. Check the Philosophy section. And then read this maddening book about madness...one that you will have been glad to read...Now, can we have some more PK Dick reissues, notably 'Simulcara' & 'Palmer Eldritch'?
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Acid flashback?Trans-ischemic attack?Or did God really communicate...
In 1974,Philip K.Dick found himself thinking that everything had gone pink,and that he was now seeing images from ancient Rome. Read more
Published 5 months ago by PygmyTwylyte
Not sure what to make of this
It seems to me that everyone who scores this book badly gets a lot of 'unhelpful' votes. Well, in some ways I can see the point of those reviewers in that I personally hated this... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Dr. Andrew Phillips
Just run with it
I read this book in Greece by the beach and spent two days wasting the holiday just sitting in a camping chair with my eyes wide open unable to put it down and finding it difficult... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Katherine
Interesting but ultimately too difficult to finish
I'd have to say that anyone who writes this off (sorry) as crap can't have much of an imagination. Certainly it's hard going and there's not much of an actual story to it, but it... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Sure_Fingered
Question the world
Always being a SF fan, i moved on to the Masterworks collection to broaden my reading horizon. For some reason Philip K Dick was someone i never got around to. Wow! Read more
Published 13 months ago by micksramblings
Probably Not For The Newcomer To PKD's Work
"It began with a blinding light. A divine revelation from a mysterious intelligence that called itself VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System). Read more
Published 14 months ago by M. D. Jenkins
A Bit Boring
I got this book after reading a fascinating interview from 1980 in Who Writes Science Fiction?. After reading that, this book was a disappointment. It seems that Mr. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Johns
So very sad.
I think one has to be a fan and have some knowledge of Philip K. Dick to really enjoy this book. It is a highly autobiographical work and as such, is incredibly personal. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Mr. Omnibus Biscuit
great philosophical novel
Valis is not only a great novel, but a philosophical treatise of Dick's ideas about God and Gnosticism. Highly recommended.
Published 20 months ago by lbolla
Only for the big fans of Philip K Dick
I was quite disappointed with Valis and would say that I found reading this quite taxing. Some of the writing is very confusing and uses words that would only enter your... Read more
Published 23 months ago by G. Edwards
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