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Philip K. Dick

Valis and Later Novels: A Maze of Death / Valis / the Divine Invasion / the Transmigration of Timothy Archer Hardcover – July 30, 2009

by Philip K. Dick (Author), Jonathan Lethem (Editor)

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In 2007, Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s became the fastest selling title in The Library of America's history. The 2008 companion volume, Five Novels of the1960s & 70s, broke series records for advance sales. Now comes a third and final volume gathering the best novels of Dick's final years, when religious revelation, always important in his work, became a dominant and irresistible theme.

In A Maze of Death (1970), a darkly speculative mystery that foreshadows Dick's final novels, colonists on the planet Delmak-O try to determine the nature of the God-or "Mentufacturer"-who plots their destiny. The late masterpiece VALIS (1981) is a novelistic reworking of "the events of 2-3-74," when Dick's life was transformed by what he believed was a mystical revelation. It is a harrowing self-portrait of a man torn between conflicting interpretations of what might be gnostic illumination or psychotic breakdown. The Divine Invasion (1981), a sequel to VALIS, is a powerful exploration of gnostic insight and its human consequences. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982), Dick's last novel, is by turns theological thriller, roman à clef, and disenchanted portrait of late 1970s California life, based loosely on the controversial career of Bishop James Pike-a close friend and kindred spirit.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Print length

864 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Library of America
Publication date

July 30, 2009
Dimensions

5.14 x 1.1 x 8.14 inches
ISBN-10

1598530445
ISBN-13

978-1598530445
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was the author of 36 novels and more than 120 stories, including such celebrated works as The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for the film Blade Runner). He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005.

Jonathan Lethem is the author Fortress of Solitude and many other novels and story collections.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Library of America (July 30, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 864 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1598530445
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1598530445
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.14 x 1.1 x 8.14 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #104,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #36 in Science Fiction Short Stories
- #125 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Books)
- #615 in Short Stories Anthologies

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Philip K. Dick

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Over a writing career that spanned three decades, Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned toward deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film; notably: Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and in 2007 the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

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Gary Borkan

Darkside of P. Dick

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 5, 2012

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A life long fan of Phillip K. Dick, I am happy to read any and all of his works. However, this one contains several novels that are not his usual. Valis is an attempt to novalize/commercialize his volumnious Exgenesis, and possibly this was a task best left undone. Dark and hard to read, but I still want it in my collection. This really gives you an insight into the inner demons he struggled with in the later years. Devine Invasion is more typical Dick than Valis but still a bit dark, and heavily influenced by the Exgenesis. The physical book itself is an excellent publication. This series includes High quality binding, and excellent grade of paper, including built in bookmark ribbon. This is hard to come by these days where it is usual to have half cardboard, with a little cloth on the spine hardback bindings.
All in all, buy it and the two companion volumes in the series.

4 people found this helpful

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thirdtwinTop Contributor: Batman

Dive In A Little And Be Swept Away

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 13, 2016

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Some of the authors better-known longer works are collected here and the ideas remain captivating even if the plots hold together only loosely. If you haven't read any of his work scan it a bit at a time and at least some of his ideas will take your mind places it's never been. His short stories are also recommended as more cohesive as his mind wandered less in smaller works and he didn't try and cram too many ideas in one place without resolution as he did in his longer works. But he's worth a read because his voice is unique in literature.

3 people found this helpful

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Angry Mofo

A document of individuality falling apart.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 24, 2016

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Among the three Philip K. Dick anthologies published by Library of America, this is by far the weakest, and the only one that I cannot, in good conscience, recommend. The other two aren't consistent, because Dick himself wasn't consistent, but they are always readable. Even Dick's weaker novels are usually very energetic and filled with bizarre, imaginative detail. You're guaranteed to at least read to the end, if only just to see what manner of sleazy salesmen and reality-altering drugs will appear. And when he was at his best, he was brilliant.

But the novels collected here are mostly unreadable (I say "mostly" because the volume does include A Maze Of Death, an earlier and much better novel from 1968). Late in his life, Dick underwent a severe crisis of personality, from which he never recovered. It began in 1974, when he had an inexplicable out-of-body experience, which he believed to have profound spiritual significance. His "visions" began to creep into his work. Dick attempted to make sense of them in a document that he called "The Exegesis," which quickly spiraled out of control. Dick obsessively filled up thousands of pages; needless to say, this material has never been published in full (even the 2011 edition is edited). He then tried to rework some of it into more conventional novels, and the results are compiled in this volume.

Well, it was the seventies, and maybe this was just the style at the time, or something. But, for understanding what happened to Dick, I think it is helpful to read the writings of Fr. Seraphim Rose , the American-born Orthodox Christian monk. Neither Philip K. Dick nor Fr. Seraphim ever had any clue about each other's existence, even though, ironically, both lived in San Francisco around the same time. But after Fr. Seraphim founded a monastery in a remote location in California and devoted himself to the ascetic life, he was approached by a number of very damaged people whose experiences were absolutely identical to Dick's. Some of these are documented in Fr. Seraphim's most well-known book, Orthodoxy And The Religion of the Future , others in his biography .

One does not need to fully embrace Fr. Seraphim's religious beliefs in order to be horrified by the utter similarity of all of these experiences. All the people in question (Dick included) had a firm conviction that they had experienced some sort of esoteric revelation and obtained "secret knowledge." But not a single one of them (Dick included) could coherently explain what the secret was, exactly. And it was not for lack of trying: this Dick anthology is over 800 pages long.

Nonetheless, every revelation had common elements. Dick's novel VALIS is absolutely typical in that sense -- for example, he spends pages on the Nag Hammadi library. Gnostics and Christian apocrypha make frequent appearances in these accounts, having allegedly preserved the secret knowledge (whatever it is) throughout the ages, hidden from normal people, never to be written down. In his book, Fr. Seraphim shows how these vaguely Christian-sounding elements are often combined with out-of-context fragments from Asian religions, which also happens in VALIS. Science-fiction elements, in the form of scientific-sounding jargon, are also quite common; being a science-fiction writer, Dick is in some sense the poster child of this phenomenon.

VALIS begins where A Scanner Darkly left off -- a burned-out druggie (an intentional stand-in for the author) trying to deal with the wreckage of his life. He experiences visions and goes on a quest with his buddies. They are able to unlock their hidden potential and see into the past and future. Then, they discover that all human knowledge is guided by something, which might be an intelligent supercomputer, or a supernatural being, and that this entity communicates with people using subliminal messages. The reader might observe here that the entity seems more than a little malevolent, which is another common element of all such "visions."

But to the "visionaries," the intensity of the experience is sufficient proof of its "truth," leading them to accept it uncritically. Dick toys with the idea that he might be going crazy, but the implication is that, if he's not crazy, then everything must be exactly as he saw it. It does not occur to him that his supernatural entity may be deliberately misleading him, or misrepresenting itself -- which is very easy to do with people who already had a desire to see "secret" revelations.

From a literary standpoint, VALIS at least contains the beginnings of a novel -- some episodes from A Scanner Darkly are retold, the references to divorce and addiction are lived-in, and the protagonist's suffering is genuine. But in the follow-up, The Divine Invasion, characters talk only in exalted monologues and the description is incomprehensible, consisting of fragmentary references to different religions combined with Dick's usual cutesy neologisms. It is literally unreadable.

The last years of Dick's life are an uncanny illustration of Fr. Seraphim's argument: these so-called "revelations" are always extremely destructive, and always, in 100% of cases, lead to the degradation of the "visionary's" personality. There are two crucial points to understand. First, there is nothing new or original in Dick's religious writing -- every single one of his religious references is widely used, in exactly the same way, by the very strange and unpleasant people described in Fr. Seraphim's book. Second, Dick's revelations did not enhance his creativity, but instead killed it. He was a singular American writer who produced at least two stone-cold masterpieces ( Do Androids Dream... and A Scanner Darkly), and then all of a sudden he spent years on a maniacal text that no one can read even in summary form. We can't say why it happened to him in particular. Fr. Seraphim observes that these "truth-seekers" have an intense, sincere hunger for spiritual truth, but are undisciplined, and vulnerable to spiritual deception. Dick wanted truth, but if his visions were real, they are now laughing at him.

11 people found this helpful

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Cyd Ropp

Valis Improves with Age

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 4, 2015

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Philip K. Dick has somehow become more brilliant since his death in the 1980's. The Valis books deal with a puzzling spiritual encounter/ mental break/ ET encounter Dick actually had in the 1970's. In Valis, Dick writes the story as it happened to him. Another book in this collection, A Maze of Death, deals with the same material as if it were a space-opera that happened on a grand scale to a futuristic character.
This book goes hand in hand with studying Gnostic cosmology, which I am doing. I can see the parallels with Dick's Valis stories, and Dick refers to many Gnostic ideas in these books. Fascinating, somewhat crazy, writing.

7 people found this helpful

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John T. Way

Superb volumes of American classics

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 3, 2015

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I have been a subscriber to LOA for a long time. These editions are superb in content as well as being very well made. Interesting, however, is I can order from Amazon quicker (delivery) than from LOA themselves. The only difference is that LOA include a slipcase. I don't really need slipcase, so price and shipping is less from Amazon. I would HIGHLY recommend these novels, etc. to everyone -- there are over 250 volumes issued since 1979.

4 people found this helpful

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Chris

Valid, the divine invasion, transmigration of Timothy archer

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 1, 2013

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The only thing left desired by the content is the impossible wish that Dick was still among us producing these amazing works. In the realm of theological science fiction he has no peer.
With that said the hard copy compilation is very nice. The best part is the book lays flat no matter what page you are on. It's the little things :)

One person found this helpful

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Eric

PKD

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 24, 2018

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A fantastic collection and contains one of my all-time favorite books: The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

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Bradley Dean Sommerfeld of RLSS

The later works of Philip K. Dick from Library of America

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 30, 2012

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The stories contained in this Library of America volume are all excellent reads, but I prefer the other collection. Valis is one of my least favorite Philip K. Dick stories, but still it holds much water compared with almost any great writer of the twentieth century. These novels are all written well.

One person found this helpful

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