Customer Reviews

Deus Irae

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book mines one of the most fertile areas of post-apocalyptic science fiction, the conflict of faith. What do people believe in when it looks like God has turned his back on the world? This book is perhaps the best possible flip side to Walter M. Miller, Jr's "A Canticle for Leibowitz."

In a world devastated by a war that has evidently been more than nuclear, Tibor McMasters is an artist for the Servants of Wrath, who worship the creator of the bomb. Pete Sands is an acolyte of the waning Christian church. These strange friends wind up on a search for Carleton Leuftufel, the man who ordered the bomb, so that he can be painted and adored as the Deus Irae, the man who remade the world.

This brief book appears to have been written by Dick from sketches by Zelazny. These two writers, among the most thoughtful in science fiction, have created a forgotten classic of Twentieth Century literature. An acid trip view of a world twisted and distorted, you are left at the end to decipher what it means. How can we believe in a good god in a bad world? But how can we believe in a bad god and survive? What god suffices? Or is that a doomed thought?

There are no answers. Like "The Matrix" or "Leviathan," we are left with important questions and our own resources. This is hard. Though this is not the greatest philosophical science fiction novel ever written, it's right up there, and it's not to be undertaken lightly.

Though this book, like most SF from its time, has become dated, it remains eminently readable and beautifully constructed. We can only mourn that these two great minds are gone now, and enjoy this great meeting of their intellects. Highly recommended.

First off, I love Zelazny and Dick, especially Dick, so maybe it's no suprise that I love this book. True, part of the writing is recycled from some of Dick's short-stories, true it bears his trademark sloppy writing style. But who cares if he wasn't a 'technically' gifted writer, when his ideas are so compelling, his horror so gut-wrenching, and his humor equally so!

This ia another post-apocolyptic distopia with a few 'straight' (unmutated) humans left among various mutational forms ('bugs', 'runners', 'rollers' etc.). Dick's penchant for radioactively evolved animals (intelligent worms and dung-beetles who talk in American Slang) is in full force, as well as his signature distrust/fascination with large institutions and mechanisms. There are three scenes with old broken-down automated factories that are chilling and (in the latter cases) hysterically funny!

The hero is a 'phoce', a man with no arms or legs (phoce means something like 'dophin-like') who is (by way of military surplus extensors) a religious painter who is sent on a pilgramage of sorts to find the 'deus irae' (angry god), which is seen by his church to be the man who 'pushed the button' and started WW3. An agent from the almost defunct Christian Church is sent to foil the nearly helpless phoce, because the church fears that if the angry god church captures the deus iraes visage, their ascendancy over Christiantity will be complete. It's an insane and funny/sad prospect all around. Like so many Dick books, it contains a plot that is completely unbelievable, even absurd in extremis and yet still has a strangely truthful resonance.

This book is an easy and enjoyable read. I don't put it in the same league as the best Dick classics like Man in the High Castle, Ubik, Dr. Bloodmoney, but it's a CLOSE 2nd. And like those books, the same themes, pathos and humor, paranoia and blazingly creative intellect are all there. And like those, the same 'magic realism' of Borges, Marquez etc. is also in evidence.

Dick wrote this in collaboration with another sf great, Roger Zelazny, though the end result is not really one of either author's best efforts. In a post-World-War-III wasteland a religion has grown up around the God of Wrath, whose human embodiment is one Carleton Lufteufel, the government official who detonated the doomsday device that contaminated the Earth's atmosphere with radioactivity. Limbless painter Tibor McMaster sets off in his cart on a quest to find Lufteufel to capture the god's true visage in a painting. There's some interesting speculation around the encounter between a vitiated Christianity with this life-negating religion (Deus Irae means "God of wrath") and a somewhat Zen-like spiritual renewal may be found in the novel's conclusion. The religious preoccupation gives the novel interest as a kind of reflection of Dick's other greater novels of the late 60s and 70s, despite the somewhat casual and fragmented history of its composition.

These two authors are, in my opinion, among the most literary in science fiction. They are right up there with Ursula LeGuin, Orson Scott Card, Theodore Sturgeon and Robert Silverberg. But while I've always loved Zelazny, I've had an almost visceral reaction to the works of Philip K. Dick. His stuff strikes me as a particularly bad acid trip and it's usually so depressing that it's hard to get through (even though I do recognize his merits as a writer). But Zelazny seems to have tempered this tendency in Dick and Dick has added some depth, spice and kick to the Zelazny passages. They're both funny writers, and I sure would like to have been a fly on the wall when they cooked this one up. I'm frankly puzzled as to how these two even got the idea of collaborating, but nevertheless, *Deus Irae* seems to have been a marriage made in heaven - and consummated in hell.

I won't reiterate the plot except to note that in this post-holocaust world of mutants and cyborgs, the man who gave the bomb order, instead of being vilified, is deified. It is he who is the Deus Irae.

There's a fair amount of theological banter that was probably the fruit of the authors' conversations, such as this passage where the Deus Irae himself (in disguise) is talking. "I see. Aquinas cleaned up the Greeks for you, so Plato is okay. Hell, you even baptized Aristotle's bones, for that matter, once you found a use for his thoughts. Take away the Greek logicians and the Jewish mystics and you wouldn't have much left."

I'm sure that the gut-wrenching, stomach-turning parts were Dick's brainchild, while the lyrical human-interaction passages were written by Zelazny. But somehow it all bakes into a cake, is witty and entertaining, and even has a happy ending - sort of.

You may like it; you may hate it, but it's NOT a pot boiler and it IS well written.

pamhan99@aol.com

Here's a novel with important pieces missing.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Most of us would probably prefer a novel with important pieces missing to one with everything spelled out. Then again, there's a fine line between making readers think for themselves and leaving them in the dark. In this case, the authors may have stepped over the line. Let's have a look.

In post-apocalyptic America, a new religion has come into being. They worship a new god, the Deus Irae, or God of Wrath. They believe that this god also has a human form (or maybe just a human servant) in the person of one Carleton Lufteufel, a former government official who gave the order that set off the nuclear devastation. Since this god's works plainly surround the people at all times, the Church of Wrath attracts a lot of followers, and the old Christian church is in a bad way.

The Church of Wrath commissions Tibor McMasters to paint a mural on one of their buildings - a wise choice, since he's the greatest artist of the age despite having no arms or legs. To that end, the Church sends him on a journey to find Carleton Lufteufel, take a picture, and include his genuine likeness in the work. A local Christian novice, Pete Sands, decides to go along. He tells himself he's doing this to protect Tibor from harm. He may have other motives - his church would clearly prefer that Tibor fail in this quest. And Tibor has some grave doubts about the whole thing. Will Tibor and Pete find Carleton Lufteufel? And more importantly, if they do, what will they do about it?

Not a bad setup, you'll agree. What's more, in their journeys Tibor and Pete encounter some nice freakish details, such as talking bugs and lizards, a carnivorous computer and a cranky automatic factory. Their encounters with these oddities are often funny, thank God; the factory, for instance, attempts to fix Pete's bicycle and instead produces a torrent of pogo sticks.

The writing is worth the time, too. I've said before that Philip K. Dick was not a great stylist, but he could be phenomenal when on his game. Roger Zelazny, his co-writer, had a deserved reputation as one of the best stylists in science fiction. Together, they produced a lot of wonderful passages here, such as when Tibor obtains a dog to keep him company. An armless and legless man in a poisonous wilderness would certainly be happy to have a dog - these passages in "Deus Irae" go one step further and make you feel his joy personally.

So it's all the more frustrating to read through "Deus Irae" and find yourself with so many unanswered questions. For instance, what in the world is so godlike about Carleton Lufteufel? At one point, Tibor encounters a powerful presence that descends on him from the sky, speaks to him, gives him arms and legs and then takes them away, so the God of Wrath is no mere specter. What's the connection between this powerful being and Carleton Lufteufel, though? Elsewhere we see Lufteufel himself, living in an old bunker with a developmentally delayed girl, in great pain from the metal shards that the nuclear explosions drove into his head - does this man turn into the God of Wrath periodically? Is he even aware that people consider him to be the God in human form? What the heck is going on?

More sticky yet is the novel's conclusion. Suffice to say here that an abrupt act of dreadful violence brings the whole quest for Carleton Lufteufel to a sudden halt. It's plain enough how this event might plunge Tibor into despair, but there's another witness who realizes at that moment how the event was supposed to play out, and sees that it has not done so. Well, if it had, what would the consequences be? And does the witness wish that things had worked out as planned? And why? In context, these are important questions, and the emotional pitch of the writing bites hard, but the answers are vague at best. Sorry, guys - no pass.

As I said, it's not an author's job to spoon-feed us everything, but this is going a little far. Without answers to some of these basic questions, "Deus Irae" reads like a series of unconnected episodes, and it obviously tried for more than that. The last few chapters, indeed, give some hints about what the authors wanted to achieve, and for that, the imaginative content and the quality of the writing, this novel may be worth a read. Too bad it isn't worth two or more.

Oddly enough, the flaws of "Deus Irae" do not generally appear in the rest of Philip K. Dick's work - his plotting was usually very clear and he rarely concluded his novels too soon. Those flaws are sometimes to be found, however, in Roger Zelazny's work. I read somewhere that PKD invited Zelazny's collaboration because he didn't know enough about Christianity. I'm not convinced of that, frankly - PKD's exploration of religion took up his entire life. I suspect it was Zelazny who suggested the road setting, and who may have allowed the story to run out of gas.

Oh well. It's a PKD story nevertheless. Anyone who has read "Dr. Bloodmoney" will recognize the postapocalyptic America, full of small towns and dangerous mutants, brought on by an evil scientist with a significant German name, and including a figure with no arms or legs. If PKD felt he needed a collaborator, for the second and last time in his career, that was his business.

I also read that when Zelazny learned of PKD's financial difficulties, he reduced his royalty share from one half to one third. I hope God blesses him for that, and I really don't care which God does the job.

Benshlomo says, Partnership is difficult, but worth it.

I have read over a dozen Philip K. Dick books and can say without a doubt this was the worse one I read, and maybe the worst book I have read in a long time. People have claimed that Dick's Vulcan's Hammer is the worst, but this has to be up there. I had enjoyed the posthumous collaboration between Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny called Psychoshop and thought this would be the same caliber. Nope. This novel was aimless and boring. Yes, boring. I plowed through it hoping it would go over some hump and get good. Never did.

I would recommend reading just about any Philip K. Dick book over this one. If you need recommendations I'd say go: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Man In The High Castle, The Divine Invasion, VALIS, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Radio Free Albemuth, Scanner Darkly, Now Wait For Last Year, Ubik, Martian Time-Slip, Time Out of Joint, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said...before even thinking about reading this book.

Last snub, what's up with the Vintage cover art for this title?

I've always found Dick to be a very uneven writer, The Man in The High Castle, A Maze of Death, and the short story Second Variety are brilliant, Galactic Pothealer was OK. As for the rest, I think his autobiographical work "Confessions of a crap artist" gives an honest accurate summation, a living proof of Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap).

Dick's contribution to Deus Irae was three already written short stories, and I think it is a measure of Zelazny's class that he can assemble something readable. I brought it mostly because I am a Zelazny collector, and class it more as an interesting curiousity. Buy 2nd hand rather than new.

It amused me to no end reading all these reviews by confused Zelazny fans. "It's a bad acid trip!" "I don't like questioning theology!" To which I can only say "Shove off!" Philip K. Dick remains, long after his death, the only true artist in an ever more debased genre.

Deus Irae in particular illustrates this. It follows a phocomelus mural painter (something readers of Dr. Bloodmoney will be familiar with) as he goes on a "pilg" to directly experience the God of Wrath -- the man who pressed the big button on doomsday and nuked the world. Along the way, he encounters all the varied denizens of this post-nuclear war world -- including some friendly reptoids and an intelligent, malfunctioning factory responsible for a genuine laugh-out-loud moment -- and is further accompanied by the hideous follower of the laughed at and ignored Christian church.

Like all of Dick's best work, this takes the reader into scary philosophical and theological waters: How can people believe in an all-loving God in the face of so much suffering? And how much of the history of the big religions is truth, myth, or just some con-job from an old drunk in a barn?

I always wondered how two writers collaborate to write one novel. Does one start and write til he's stuck, then send it over to the other? Or is one responsible for the dialogue, the other plot and exposition? Do they trade chapters back and forth?

Deus Irae is immediately recognizable Dick. God & theology theme, wacky mutants, and dialogue that cause you think about and examine our basic Christian beliefs. Why not a God of Death and Retribution?

I can't say I've read any Roger Zelazny, so I don't recognize his style, plotline, or contribution to the book. However, if he was responsible for toning down the paranoia and rambling to which Dick sometimes succumbs, I guess it was a good mix.

A disclaimer: Like a previous reviewer, I will read anything Zelazny wrote, because he's a true master. Amber! Lord of Light! Amazing stuff. He died far too young.

Philip K. Dick, on the other hand, doesn't float my boat. I've read three of his books now, and didn't like any of them. I'm gonna quit. I should have quit before this one.

Bottom line: If you loved Canticle for Liebowitz and Lord of Light, you'll like this. I loved Lord of Light, but Canticle is as far as I want to go into questioning Christian theology, so this one gets three stars, mainly for Zelazny's influence.