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==External links== |
==External links== |
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*[http://pkdickbooks.com/SFnovels/Valis.html Valis book cover gallery] |
*[http://pkdickbooks.com/SFnovels/Valis.html Valis book cover gallery] |
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*[http://www.philipkdickfans.com/weirdo/ |
*[http://www.philipkdickfans.com/resources/miscellaneous/the-religious-experience-of-philip-k-dick-by-r-crumb-from-weirdo-17/ VALIS comics drawn by R. Crumb] |
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*[http://deoxy.org/pkd_tcs.htm Tractates Cryptica Scriptura] The appendix of ''VALIS'', an extract of the Exegesis |
*[http://deoxy.org/pkd_tcs.htm Tractates Cryptica Scriptura] The appendix of ''VALIS'', an extract of the Exegesis |
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*[http://www.sirbacon.org/dick.htm Terence McKenna article about Philip K. Dick & VALIS] |
*[http://www.sirbacon.org/dick.htm Terence McKenna article about Philip K. Dick & VALIS] |
Revision as of 07:43, 25 January 2012
Author | Philip K. Dick |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Series | VALIS trilogy |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Bantam Books |
Publication date | 1981 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
Pages | 227 |
ISBN | 0-553-14156-2 |
OCLC | 7066446 |
LC Class | CPB Box no. 2502 vol. 18 |
Followed by | The Divine Invasion |
VALIS is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of one aspect of God.
VALIS is the first book in the VALIS trilogy of novels including The Divine Invasion (1981), and the unfinished The Owl in Daylight. Together with Dick's last book, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) (thematically related to the unfinished trilogy and included in several omnibus editions of the trilogy as a stand-in for the unwritten final volume), VALIS represents Dick's last major work before he died. Radio Free Albemuth, a posthumously published earlier version of VALIS, is not included as a component of the VALIS trilogy.
Voice
The main character in VALIS is Horselover Fat, an author surrogate. "Horselover" echoes the Greek etymology of the name Philip, while in German, Dick's surname means "fat".
Dick, as narrator, states early in the book that the creation of the character "Horselover Fat" is to allow him some "much needed objectivity." In this particular work the narrator is also a fictional character provided as a cool, pragmatic counter-point to Horselover's slow disintegration.
Even though the book is written in the first-person-autobiographical, for most of the book Dick treats himself and Fat as two separate characters; he describes conversations and arguments with Fat, and harshly if sympathetically criticizes his opinions and writings. The major subject of these dialogues is spirituality, as Dick/Fat is/are ostensibly obsessed with several religions and philosophies, including Christianity, Taoism, Gnosticism and Jungian psychoanalysis, in the search for a cure for what he believes is simultaneously a personal and a cosmic wound. Near the end of the book the messianic figure, incarnated by the child Sophia (a name associated with Wisdom in many Gnostic texts, literally meaning "wisdom" in Greek [ Σοφία]), temporarily cures him, and the narrator describes his surprise that Horselover Fat has suddenly disappeared from his side.
Synopsis
Horselover Fat believes his visions expose hidden facts about the reality of life on Earth, and a group of others join him in researching these matters. One of their theories is that there is some kind of intelligent machine in orbit around the planet, and that it is aiding them in their quest. They eventually go to an estate owned by a popular musician, after said musician stars in a movie which contains obvious references to the same revelations Fat has experienced. They decide the goal that they have been led toward is Sophia, who is two years old and the Messiah anticipated by well-known religious teachings. She tells them that their conclusions are correct.[1]
Reception
Thomas M. Disch reported that "the fascination of the book, what's most artful and confounding about it, is the way the line between Dick and Fat shifts and wavers. Disch concludes that "as a novel, as a whole novel, . . . it went off the rails sometimes. But the first half holds together wonderfully, considering how much there is to be held together."[2]
Dick's book Exegesis
VALIS has been described as one node of an artificial satellite network originating from the star Sirius in the Canis Major constellation. According to Dick, the Earth satellite used "pink laser beams" to transfer information and project holograms on Earth and to facilitate communication between an extraterrestrial species and humanity. Dick claimed that VALIS used "disinhibiting stimuli" to communicate, using symbols to trigger recollection of intrinsic knowledge through the loss of amnesia, achieving gnosis. Drawing directly from Platonism and Gnosticism, Dick wrote in his Exegesis: "We appear to be memory coils (DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like thinking system which, although we have correctly recorded and stored thousands of years of experiential information, and each of us possesses somewhat different deposits from all the other life forms, there is a malfunction - a failure - of memory retrieval."
At one point, Dick claimed to be in a state of enthousiasmos with VALIS, where he was informed his infant son was in danger of perishing from an unnamed malady. Routine checkups on the child had shown no trouble or illness; however, Dick insisted that thorough tests be run to ensure his son's health. The doctor eventually complied, despite the fact that there were no apparent symptoms. During the examination doctors discovered an inguinal hernia, which would have killed the child if an operation was not quickly performed. His son survived thanks to the operation, which Dick attributed to the "intervention" of VALIS.
Another event was an episode of supposed xenoglossia. Supposedly, Dick's wife transcribed the sounds she heard him speak, and discovered that he was speaking Koine Greek-the common Greek dialect during the Hellenistic years (3rd century BC-4th century AD) and direct "father" of today's modern Greek language- which he had never studied. As Dick was to later discover, Koine Greek was originally used to write the New Testament and the Septuagint. However, this was not the first time Dick had claimed xenoglossia: A decade earlier, Dick insisted he was able to think, speak, and read fluent Latin under the influence of Sandoz LSD-25.
The UK edition of VALIS also included Cosmology and Cosmogony, a chapbook containing selections from Dick's Exegesis.
Main characters
- Phil: narrator, science fiction writer
- Horselover Fat: narrator
- Gloria Knudson: suicidal friend of Fat's
- Kevin: friend of Fat's, skeptic, based on K.W. Jeter
- Sherri Solvig: Fat's friend, dying from lymphatic cancer
- David: Catholic friend of Fat's, based on Tim Powers
- Zebra: pure energy, discorporate, the Logos, living information, the "plasmate", "God"; communicates with Fat
- VALIS: title of an American science fiction film, appears as a satellite, controls reality, synonymous with Zebra.
- Eric Lampton: rock star, screenwriter, actor, aka "Mother Goose" - apparently a fictionalised version of David Bowie
- Linda Lampton: actress
- Sophia: the child-messiah, incarnation of VALIS
- Brent Mini: electronic composer, a fictionalised version of Brian Eno.
Philosophical and cultural references
Theology and philosophy, especially metaphysical philosophy, play an important role in VALIS, presenting not just Dick's (and/or Horselover Fat's) own views on these subjects but also his interpretation of numerous religions and philosophies of the past. The most prominent religious references are to Valentinian Gnosticism, the Rose Cross Brotherhood, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, as well as Biblical writings including the Book of Daniel and the New Testament epistles. Many ancient Greek philosophers are discussed, including several Pre-Socratics (Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Empedocles and Parmenides) as well as Plato and Aristotle. More recent thinkers that are mentioned include the philosophers Pascal and Schopenhauer, the Christian mystic Jakob Böhme, the alchemist Paracelsus, the psychologists Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, the Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade, and the author and psychologist Robert Anton Wilson. In Wilson's autobiographical Cosmic Trigger (released shortly before Dick commenced work on VALIS), Wilson describes similar musings concerning the 'Sirius Connection', contemplating the idea that alien entities are sending out waves of information that we can tune in on.
The action of VALIS is set firmly in the American popular culture of its time, with references to the Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa and Linda Ronstadt as well as the fictional rock musicians Eric Lampton and Brent Mini. However, the novel also contains a number of high culture references such as the poets Vaughan, Wordsworth and Goethe, and the classical composers Handel and Wagner. In particular, the novel contains several extended discussions about Wagner's metaphysical opera Parsifal.
Black Iron Prison
The Black Iron Prison is a concept of an all-pervasive system of social control postulated in the Tractates Cryptica Scriptura, a summary of an unpublished Gnostic exegesis included in VALIS.
Once, in a cheap science fiction novel, Fat had come across a perfect description of the Black Iron Prison, but set in the far future. So if you superimposed the past (ancient Rome) over the present (California in the twentieth century) and superimposed the far future world of The Android Cried Me a River over that, you got the Empire, as the supra- or trans-temporal constant. Everyone who had ever lived was literally surrounded by the iron walls of the prison; they were all inside it and none of them knew it.
In popular culture
VALIS was adapted in 1987 as an electronic opera by composer Tod Machover, and performed at Centre Georges Pompidou, with live singers and video installations created by artist Catherine Ikam.[3]
On February 1, 2004, Variety announced that Utopia Pictures & Television had acquired the rights to three of Philip K. Dick's works: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said; VALIS; and Radio Free Albemuth.[4]
John Alan Simon, director of the film adaptation of Dick's Radio Free Albemuth, remarked that VALIS will form the basis of a sequel to the Radio Free Albemuth film if it is successful: "Since Radio Free Albemuth is essentially the first draft of VALIS, we ended up with rights to both from the estate of Philip K. Dick. If Radio Free Albemuth is successful, VALIS the book would form the basis for the sequel to VALIS the movie. In other words, the story of VALIS would form the basis for VALIS 2."[5]
The novel VALIS can also be seen in a Season 4 episode of the television series Lost, being read by the character Benjamin Linus.
Criticism
- Galbreath, Robert, (1982). "Salvation-Knowledge: Ironic Gnosticism in VALIS and The Flight to Lucifer", Science-Fiction Dialogues, Ed. Gary K. Wolfe, Chicago: Academy Chicago, pp. 115–32.
- _______________ (1983). "Redemption and doubt in Philip K. Dick's VALIS Trilogy", Extrapolation 24:2, pp. 105–15.
- Palmer, Christopher, (1991). "Postmodernism and the Birth of the Author in Philip K. Dick's VALIS", Science-Fiction Studies # 55, 18:3, pp. 330–42.
- Stilling, Roger J., (1991). "Mystical Healing: Reading Philip K. Dick's VALIS and The Divine Invasion as Metapsychoanalytic Novels", South Atlantic Review 56: 2, pp. 91–106
See also
References
- ^ "VALIS Plot Summary", Philip K. Dick Trust
- ^ "Talking with Jesus", F&SF, July 1981, pp.36-38
- ^ "WorldCat entry for "Valis: an opera in two parts"". Online Computer Library Center. 6565 Kilgour Place, Dublin, Ohio 43017-3395 USA: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: location (link) - ^ Harris, Dana (2004-02-01). "Variety.com - Utopia picks Dick works". Variety.com. Retrieved 2006-08-14.
- ^ AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN ALAN SIMON
External links
- Valis book cover gallery
- VALIS comics drawn by R. Crumb
- Tractates Cryptica Scriptura The appendix of VALIS, an extract of the Exegesis
- Terence McKenna article about Philip K. Dick & VALIS