Customer Reviews

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

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Unlike "VALIS" and "The Divine Invasion", this novel dispenses with science fiction apparatus in its examination of religious and philosophical issues. Based on the life of controversial Episcopal Bishop James Pike, who was a close friend of the author's, this is one of Dick's best written novels. Many of his earlier works were produced at a blisteringly fast pace, without much time for revision; some of them are essentially first drafts. Here, in Dick's last work, he slows down enough to polish his prose and put events in their proper context. The result is a fascinating and deeply moving story.

Although this novel is usually billed as part of a trilogy or series, its sole connection with "VALIS" and "Divine Invasion" is that the story has a religious theme. Otherwise there is no connection.

I have read the other reviews of this book and, quite frankly, they all missed the point of this book. To start with it is written from the female perspective, which is not an easy task for a man, and yet PKD pulls it off briliantly. This is not a book about Dick trying to run his snobbery down our throats but an insightful and emotionally touching perspective of a man pursuing truth, with a zeal that leads to his death, as viewed by another party (female). Indeed, its very core reflects the Bible's condemnation of pride proceeding the fall, mixed with the emotional tenderness that Mary must have felt when she witnessed her sons death from pursuing his ideals. Dick began an introspective search for a meaning of God after his encounter with Valis, continued the journey, in The Divine Invasion, with a discussion of the modern God of the New Testament versus the ancient gods that existed before humans adapted monotheism, finishing with Transmigration. Don't pass this book over because you will miss Dick's best writing before he died. I also recommend Eye in the Sky and Clans of the Alphane Moon as two more of PKD's brilliance and humor.

TTA has very little to do with either Valis or the Divine Invasion, despite it supposedly being the third in the Valis Trilogy. 'The Owl in Daylight,' the book PKD never wrote, was the third in that trilogy. TTA stands alone.

I adore this book; it is simply one of my favourite PKD books. It is about love, empathy, and death. It is part biography of Bishop Pike, but more than that it is a profound study of life and death. The main character, Angel Archer, is one of PKD's best, and truly the best woman ever to inhabit a PKD novel. We have Ursula Le Guin to thank, and least in part, for that.

This book is almost completely dialogue, both interior and exterior. The plot means little; it is a cover for the real issues at hand. This is not a biography. The biographical material provides the plot, but this is not where the heart of the novel lies. The best aspect of TTA is the characters: Archer Archer especially, but also Edgar Barefoot. Each character in this book is real, not in the sense that they exist in the real world, but in the sense that they are really real characters (I know this sounds awkward.)

It is a book about sadness and pain, but in the end it is about love. Not love as in romantic love, but abstract love, love and understanding for all things. PKD was a truly good-hearted man, and this is the greatest testament to him.

This is perhaps the most readable book by Philip K Dick, a science fiction writer whose driving ambition seems to have been to finally be recognized as a "real" writer. The character this book is organized around is based on Dick's real life friend, Bishop James Pike, who never seemed to care if he was considered orhtodox or not. Perhaps that's why he was brought up on heresy charges and almost excommunicated from the Episcopalian church. The character in the book seems to reflect the real Pike, who went around California getting little old ladies from Pasadena (literally) to sit on the floor of their churches and give Zen a chance. He also wrote a fairly controversial book, The Wilderness Revolt, painting Jesus as a Hebrew nationalist intent on driving out the Romans.

Some real life events that led Pike to write his book The Other Side are outlined in PKD's book from his own perspective. This was supposed to be PKD's big mainstream novel, his breakthrough to the other side, but only he would decline Greek nouns in a "mainstream" novel, or claim that Jesus never existed and was a code-name for psychedelic mushrooms designed to throw the man, the Romans, off the track (he doesn't even have the good grace to call it "manna" but insists on some Hebrew verb for "I am"...). PKD writes from a woman narrator's perspective throughout, which makes it even more interesting.

The central problem in the book revolves around transmigration really, or reincarnation as it is more commonly called, and deals with the unknowability factor. It mercifully allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, just as life does. In terms of style it almost achieves a kind of perfection all its own, a polishedness that gleams the way a well-used doorknob might, the thoughts of a man used to dealing with metaphysical happenings on an everyday basis. I highly recommend it.

Angel Archer is in distress. The three people she has loved the most in the world are all dead: her husband Jeff, her father-in-law Timothy, her best friend Kirsten. At a lecture given by Edgar Barefoot (a character based on that of Alan Watts) she reflects:"It costs a hundred dollars to find out why we are on this earth. You also get a sandwich, but I wasn't hungry that day. John Lennon had just been killed and I think I know why we are on this earth; it's to find out that what you love the most will be taken away from you.." Barefoot later tells her that the point is to eat the sandwich, the rest doesn't really matter. Philip K Dick's book is the story of how Angel comes to the point where she can eat that sandwich.

Angel is disillusioned by many things. By her education ("I graduated from Cal. I lived in Berkeley. I read The Remembrance of Things Past and I remember nothing.") By concepts ("Like the medieval realists, Tim believed that words were actual things. If you could put it into words, it was de facto true. This is what cost him his life.")

Timothy is the opposite. He knows things. He knows the Holy Ghost is the Hebrew ruah, the female spirit or breath of Yahweh. He knows 'If I have all the eloquence of men or angels but speak without love I am just a gong sounding or a cymbal clashing'. He knows he can hold heretical beliefs and take a mistress and get away with both. The charismatic bishop gives life to all the people around him. But as the newly discovered Zadokite documents are published and translated, the cornerstone to his assurance, his faith, is lost. He believes that if the sayings of Jesus are merely quotations from the sayings of another teacher who lived 200 years earlier, then Jesus cannot be the son of god, the gospels cannot be inspired literature and the Christan church cannot be the one true faith. His faith is built on concepts: once one falls, the rest fall too, like a house of cards. Desperately, Timothy seeks another faith to fill the gap. For a while he becomes a spiritualist, believing he has been contacted by his dead son Jeff. Then he believes that if he can find the anokhi, the process whereby the early Christians partook of the Eucharist and became one with Christ, he will find answers which will resolve his doubts. The Zadokite Documents imply that anokhi was a real substance, which believers consumed, a kind of magic mushroom. If Timothy can find and take that mushroom he will be saved. He flies to Israel, drives ill-equipped into the desert, and dies.

Angel has always taken drugs. Now, in her grief, she has come to earth. To help her she has Bill, who can't follow concepts but who can give her affection. And Barefoot, who knows that death and life are two parts of one whole, and that focusing on being in each moment granted us is the closest we can reach to purity in this life. Pondering on the life and death of Timothy, Angel begins to find meaning in each, comes to understand that it was necessary for him to die and her to suffer so she can find some form of resolution, and with it, some form of wisdom.

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (published 1982) was Philip K Dick's last work, and one of his best written and well-organised (Dick's 12 'mainstream' novels are much more carefully written than his SF stories). Dick's book comes with a bibliography and references to Aeschylus, Plato, Dante, Donne and Yeats among others.

Philip K Dick is best known for his novels The Man in the High Castle (published in 1962, awarded the SF Hugo award 1963) and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (published 1968, the basis for the 1982 film Blade Runner). It is generally accepted that Dick is a great science fiction writer. Stanislaw Lem says in his essays Microworlds (1984) that there are only three science fiction writers: H G Wells, Dick and the Strugatsky brothers. The rest are adventure story writers. It is possible to turn this assertion on its head and say that these three writers are not science fiction writers at all. This fussing about labels is not as trivialising as it sounds. How we classify a writer, for instance, controls what preconceptions we bring to their work, and whom we compare them to, what context we see them in. Dick's work does not fit easily into the science fiction mould, nor into that of the 'novel': romantic, experimental or post-structuralist. He belongs to a tradition that includes Aristophanes, Lucian of Samosata, Grimmelshausen, Swift, Gogol, Kafka, Orwell, Hasek, Samuel Becket, Nabokov, Simenon, Borges. These are all 'respectable' authors, but are they novelists? Or science fiction writers? Dick will be appreciated best, and given his true stature, if seen as part of this stream of fiction.

All these writers, including Dick, express unease, self-doubt, even paranoia as a response to the society in which they live. They satirise, express cynicism, look for some more 'eternal' structure where ideals and values are more stable.

It is these concerns that unify Dick's work. "Second Variety" (1953) shows automated mechanisms taking over the conduct of a war for their own, non-human, purposes; in Mary and the Giant (1955, 1987) the titular character enters the alien world of adulthood and becomes an alien herself in order to survive; in Eye in the Sky (1957) a number of characters impose their own radically different 'reality' on others (what is real?); in Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959, 1975) characters' fantasies become realities to others; in The Man in the High Castle (1962) an alternative reality in which the Axis powers won WWII gives birth to a banned work of fiction in which the Allies were victorious - which is real?: more germane, conquest and control are shown as unreal and destructive values; in The Simulacra (1964) the President of the United States is one: is this fantasy or reality?; in The Penultimate Truth (1964) peace is declared, but not for the majority of the world's population, who are spurred on to greater efforts by a televised simulation of war; in "We can remember it for you wholesale" (1966) memories are implanted, we cease to be what we remember; in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) machines become more human than humans, and have the same existential problems (what is human?); in A Scanner Darkly (1977) reality is distorted by a drug, and the drug is called death, which we all have to take; in Valis (1981) god searches for man just as man searches for god and one of these is a science fiction writer called Philip K Dick: the question asked is, is this real or is it science fiction?; in The Divine Invasion (1981) god forgets who he is and is healed by his feminine part so he can heal the world.

The progression from distrust of political manipulation, fear of alienation caused by mechanical and electronic substitutes for the senses, paranoia and 'reality fluctuations' caused by drugs taken to deal with these fears, doubts caused by unrestrained metaphysical speculation ending in a powerful need for a healing resolution fuel the works Dick wrote between 1956 and 1982.

More important than what form of fiction Dick wrote is the realisation that he was a gnostic, one who sought for (and found) hidden knowledge. But he was a very strange kind of gnostic, one who expressed his wisdom in pulp fiction.

I had read the first two books in PKD's 'trilogy', and so when I picked ths one up I was expecting another confusing muddle of religion-meets-drugs. I couldn't have been more wrong. While religion and drugs (in this case, a psychedelic mushroom representing both) are a central theme, this book is much more down-to-earth and understandable by the average reader. Gone are the hallucinations, the schizophrenia, the strange futuristic alien settings. What's left is a few average (yet extroardinary) people, struggling to cope with difficult events in their own private ways. This book made me think more than any other book I've ever read, and PKD's message comes across far more clearly than in his other novels, simply because the things in this book could happen to any of us. My all-time favorite novel, and an excellent book no matter what genres you prefer.

First off, I liked this book immensely. It had brilliant ideas about human nature and the origins of religious faith. It was more humanistic than most Dick novels, something sorely lacking in some, but it still uses the ideas to move the characters, which is never good. Here, the characters are made out to be the originators, not just instruments of the ideas, so it does make some sense that they would be motivated to follow the ideas wherever they lead. It's just that this motion tends to turn the characters into robotic true-believers, and thus instruments of the plot. I don't mean to dis, cause PKD is a brilliant thinker, and damned if I could do a better job, I'm just saying that there are unfortunate flaws in his writing style that make him a little less fun to read than say Robert Anton Wilson. Or Tom Robbins. Or Kurt Vonnegut. Or Chuck Palahniuk. Or... nevermind. This is a very good book!

Well first let me say that this is a great book.Much easier to get into than Valis. However,the thing that I want to bring to potential readers is that this story is basically taken from a book by Bishop Pike titled "The Other Side".Pike's book details his experiences with contacts fom his son who committed suicide in 1966.The book by Pike is an incredible read.It details Pikes various contacts with his son,his liberal theology,and his courage in asking tough questions of his religion.Its is still hard to imagine a Bishop putting out a book like this unless something really incredible happenned to him.An added note is that in the forward of his book, Bishop Pike thanks his good friends Mr. and Mrs. Phil Dick for all their support.Based on the Bishop's story much of what is found in TToTA is based on real events.

Although considered part of the Valis Trilogy, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer stands on it's own. Unlike the first two books, this book is highly readable and the prose is excellent. It actually reads quite smoothly, though the issues concerned within are just profound as in the first two books. Towards the end of his career, Philip K. Dick focused highly on theological issues in his fiction, and this might be the apex of that writing. Few writers could have pulled this book off; few, indeed, would have even tried. Unlike most PKD books, and certainly the first two of Valis, continually shift their realities and gradually reveal shocking plot twists... this book does not. The plot is coherent, the message is clear. It's a shame that Dick died just as he was writing at his most lucid. He will be missed. Read this book.

What I mean by other two books are, of course, VALIS and The Divine Invasion...And don't let people tell you these are a trilogy either...this one, Dick's final work stands out by being totally believable and easy to understand for readers not accustomed to Dick's normal fare. While this book is almost always listed as Sci-Fi, I have yet to find a single science-fiction element in it. It is a very poignant human drama, where a young widowed woman tries to make sense out of the senseless deaths of her loved ones against the backdrop of the Bay area circa 1960's and 70's. While some of the plot elements are a little strange (Jesus is really a mushroom), they are never really presented as facts, just speculations...again, people trying to make sense out of that which seems to make no sense. What I found most interesting was the atmosphere Dick presented of Berkley in that era. Having been born in the late 70's, and in the southeast, I had no idea of the state of affairs in the part of the country back then. I think anyone who enjoys a very well-written book concerning personal human dramas should check this out. Forget it's labled sci-fi, and forget about the "first two" books (which are indeed good, but not the same as this one), and check this one out.