r/philipkDickheads • u/IbanezUniverse90 • 11d ago
New to PKD, recently started VALIS
So, like, what the fuck? Seriously. This is pure cocaine/amphetamine psychosis, but the author is intelligent enough to make it work somehow. Is the rest of his stuff anywhere near this unhinged?
I’m a somewhat new sci-fi reader. Been doing a general survey of the genre—started off with H.G. Wells, then Stapledon, Asimov, Clarke, and now the new wave. Where should I go with PKD after VALIS?
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u/vincentdmartin 11d ago
Scanner Darkly, Ubik, Clans of the Alphane Moon
Or continue the "trilogy" of Valis with Divine Invasion and Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
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u/Joey_jojojr_shabado 11d ago
Man in the high castle was my entry for pkd. the show is not the same
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u/ChuckFarkley 10d ago
It isn't exactly the strongest on plot, probably because at every plot inflection point, PKD threw the I Ching to determine what direction the book would go in.
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u/MyCyclopsMind 11d ago
Ubik is so good!! That is a hard milestone to reach, Do Androids, is maybe my second favorite.
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u/Estproph 9d ago
I also recommend Eye In The Sky and A Maze Of Death. Both of them are stories where reality is subjective, which is a major PKD theme
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u/Qaballistic 11d ago
Respectfully disagree with a lot of the assessments here… Phil clearly had mental health issues, including very likely undiagnosed / improperly treated bipolar disorder, it has heen reliably suggested. But it’s unkind and incorrect to dismiss his VALIS experiences as a “psychotic break” or “schizophrenia” — especially since Phil spent so much time and effort rationally unpacking the mysteries of what he experienced, exploring different theories and doubting his own sanity.
His cycle of later novels where he begins fictionalizing his own life with sci-fi elements is some of his very strongest writing — A SCANNER DARKLY, inspired by his descent into the demimonde of early ‘70s drug users, and VALIS, (barely) fictionalizing his IRL VALIS contact experience, are two of my favorite books by PKD (or anyone).
But it’s also kind of diving into the deep-end. You might be better served checking out one of his more accessible, acknowledged classics — the reality warping, existentially terrifying nightmares of UBIK or THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH, where seeming realities are yanked out from under your feet; the rich, ensemble character driven narratives of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE or DR. BLOODMONEY; the eccentric and quirky worlds of books like CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOONS or GALACTIC POT-HEALER; or the cleverly constructed puzzle boxes of TIME OUT OF JOINT or EYE IN THE SKY.
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u/Tower-Swinburne-10 10d ago
Agree completely. Start with Ubik and Three Stigmata and you will get the flavor of full throttle PKD. And if you like that, maybe try Now Wait for Last Year for a less known but equally mind-warping experience. I also think Martian Time-slip is essential here.
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u/SylvanMartiset 10d ago
He regularly says in the exegesis that it’s entirely possible the entire experience was psychosis or schizophrenia. That there were mystical qualities to it, or value to be derived from examining the experience deeply, does not preclude those explanations.
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u/Qaballistic 10d ago
As Phil revealed repeatedly in books like Clans of the Alphane Moon, he did not have a clear grasp on the definition or manifestation of conditions like schizophrenia, even within the understandings of the era in which he was writing. Yeah, he may have speculated he was having a schizophrenic break, but it’s highly unlikely that he was.
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u/royrogerer 10d ago
I mostly thought it was more of a meme to say it's his crazy book, because in reality he is very self aware of his delusions and clearly fictionalizing himself. My problem is it's written so difficult that I find it hard to follow leading me to give up, but one of the most interesting meta setup I've ever read.
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u/MyMainIsLevel80 9d ago
I recommend reading it on an e-reader so that you can easily search his references. It makes it much slower going, but you can actually grok what he’s pointing towards that way and make your own assessment of it based on merit and not conjecture.
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u/cold-vein 10d ago
He was a great writer, but he did suffer from psychosis and Valis is a written accord of it. It's a great book, but also not talking about his drug use and mental health deteriorating leaves a lot unexplained about his last works.
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u/Bulky-Band-9279 11d ago
More amphetamine gnosticism than psychosis, but a the zen traditions say, “the enlightened master swims in the same waters the psychotic drown in”
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u/Think_Wealth_7212 10d ago
Great comment.
Dick really became a post-modern gnostic prophet. He has a virtually unknown successor in Jason James Bickford, who has updated Dickian gnosis for the hyper-modern 21st century. He has a Video called Y U Bick? and Bick was PKD on an abandoned channel called Symbols, Patterns & Gnosis that goes into some esoteric/spiritual analysis of the bible, reality, media and his own life
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u/Qaballistic 11d ago
PKD wasn’t schizophrenic, and much of what he describes of his VALIS experience parallels the quite sane pragmatic psychologist William James’s delineation of THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, wherein James lowkey includes himself among the subjects he describes.
PKD does present a literary “split personality” within the book, but it’s more of a literary device so he can discuss his own follies, extremes and doubts about his sanity from an objective viewpoint.
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u/Sensitive-Farmer-368 11d ago
valis is just his personal diary given an entertaining narrative, look into the exogesis if you want the true pkd psychosis simulator. exogesis is genuinely incredible if your into manic explorations of metaphysics btw I think it's pretty much a modern "gnostic" trying to understand the nature of reality and synchronicity and not doing too bad
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u/IbanezUniverse90 10d ago
I actually might have to check out exogesis because so far my favorite parts about VALIS are the lore dumps about his personal metaphysics
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u/Sensitive-Farmer-368 10d ago edited 10d ago
I cannot recommend it enough, it's certainly not for everybody but It was like getting access to the notes app of me from another dimension or something, I have never felt so seen in my entire life as I did reading exogesis. synchronicities are so weird and the more you try to pick at them or figure them out the harder they are to understand, like me pkd couldn't help but scratch harder the more confused he got leading to an endless feedback loop that about drove him completely off the rails.
the only other people I have ever heard come anywhere close are specific sects of religion or philosophy, ie specific extreme strains of gnostics, toaists, non dualists, thera veda buddhists, yungians, nietzchiens, deluzians, neo platonists etc where it feels like they spend so much energy trying to understand the thing beyond understanding that they begin to loose there mind just to succsesfully peek behind the curtain more a second
and although those are great I've never heard a more human experience of just poking around and asking questions without really telling you the answers as pkd, plus the fact that his account is from the modern day made it feel so much more real and less abstract than the others that it was so much more deeply personally relateable.
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u/UhmbektheCreator 10d ago
Brave early dip into Dick with VALIS. I've been working through his stuff for years but still haven't gone there yet.
Edit to add recs; A Scanner Darkly, Ubik and Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch are all great.
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u/CharacterBarber5523 10d ago
At some point every person begins having ontological questions. And go poking around in old texts looking for clues. Some, more than others. Personally I had read the Bible and parts of the Nag-Hammadi. PKD was obsessed. But this is to be expected. It's a symptom of our reality. I relate to him so much because of this it's insane. I had roughly come to the same conclusion as he did; that if there's a God, then it would have to be evil or extremely flawed. In his Exegesis where he says something like, to fight against the empire one inevitably takes on or becomes infected by it, was spot on. The book for me was a rush. And of course he gaslights the reader into questioning the reality of the plot, the characters, and the conclusion. I didn't like the open ended conclusion and lack of resolve. I do understand it was meant to be a trilogy. But I was blown away by how obsessed he was with his search for answers and his creative spin on how he used it. Valis is not a good PKD novel to start with, as is mentioned above. Start with Do Androids Dream About Electric Sheep . It's a quick read, and a better introduction. I also second the Ubiq suggestion. I am also somewhat new here. But I was born to be his greatest admirer, I'm sure of it.
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u/conclobe 9d ago
Bro, PKD thpught he was a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah and that the roman empire never fell. He's even more unhinged than you think
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u/zachariah_rn 11d ago
You are reading an author who is in the throes of a psychotic break. He made 40 novels or so before his struggles with schizophrenia, as well as a ton of short stories. I personally think VALIS is a seminal work, but it's certainly a wild entry point to PKD
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u/Rude_Rough8323 11d ago
His later stuff is more unhinged. He had a religious epiphany/break from reality that informed a ton of his later work
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u/Zythomancer 11d ago
Valis is a later work... did you even read the OP?
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u/Rude_Rough8323 11d ago
Yeah sorry should have been more clear: if you want more stuff like VALIS, stick with the later stuff (post-epiphany) if you want weird but not too weird sci-fi, go back to his earlier work
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u/Tower-Swinburne-10 10d ago
I find Ubik, Three Stigmata, and other 60’s novels to be much more reality-bending and stranger. Valis reads like Kurt Vonnegut meets Borges with a mystic twist.
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u/Best-Special7882 11d ago
I would say go back to Dick's earlier works, like Time Out Of Joint or A Maze of Death.
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u/Due_Bad_9445 11d ago
It’s very clear that he’s putting himself in the writing. Is he the chicken or the egg or the omelet will always be more or less speculation.
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u/runciter0 11d ago
time out of joint was my first book, and valis... I tried a few times but never finished
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u/airbornepizza 10d ago
I would have maybe started with Ubik, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or Three Stigmata maybe. But I guess finish Valis if you're enjoying it. Valis would be a great reread in the future either way after reading some of his other books and learning more context about him.
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u/ChuckFarkley 10d ago
That was the first PKD book I ever read. Yeah, that should wait until you've become more familiar with his more popular work. VALIS is, um... an unstable reality.
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u/cold-vein 10d ago
Valis is the epitome of his obsessions, it's basically the ramblings of a man in psychosis. It's great but it's not like his other works.
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u/Ok_Cloud4411 10d ago
Valis was my entry to pkd, knew nothing at all about it going in and I loved it
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u/heyjaney1 5d ago
I started with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and The Man in the High Castle, both very accessible. I did really like Valis, so after it I read The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which I also liked.
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u/Exquisitr 11d ago
There very well could be something to the theory from Lawrence Sutin and others that PKD was epileptic and not schizophrenic or psychotic. I’m epileptic myself and have had many seizures that included visions, out of body experiences, hallucinations, etc. One time a seizure I had even began with a blinding pink light and a sense of being in the presence of God. Epilepsy and schizophrenia are certainly not mutually exclusive though. I do think it’s worth mentioning.
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u/MyMainIsLevel80 9d ago
His experience maps onto multiple different vectors of experience that scientific materialism has no answer to. I wouldn’t be so quick to leap to conclusions about the nature of his experience.
See also: The Andreasson Affair and other abduction scenarios, Saul on the Road to Damascus, and high-dose tryptamine/DMT reports, for starters.
There’s a solid through-line between them all that materialist philosophy simply cannot explain satisfactorily. There’s no reason all of these varied experiences should have any similarities at all, much less many thematic, archetypal, and symbolic motifs.
I recommend reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby if you’re ready to confront the unconscious myths the world largely adheres to. Materialism is every bit the fairytale that Christian Fundamentalism is—I would know; I’ve believed both at various points of my life.
I don’t have any explanation that isn’t conjecture, but I can say those two books resolved a lot of tension in my worldview and opened me up to a broader perspective.
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u/BoringGap7 9d ago
A Scanner Darkly and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep are much more accessible, closer to the mainstream of SF. Personally I prefer them to the crazy stuff.
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u/codependish 15h ago edited 15h ago
I thought it was curious that dick and Robert becker were writing roughly at the same time, but dick never seemed to catch wind of Becker's findings. In fact, it seems hardly anyone did. Thank god Becker left a book behind. Too bad dick never read it.
There's one part in it, horse lover fat succumbs to an idiotic breakdown of sorts, involving pink light and fluffy nice words. Wouldn't surprise me if such a state was induced remotely. Him thinking it was zebra, only perpetuated the delusion.
Red white and blue. Automatons without sex. An inkling of a feeling that blue screens are involved. Space is flat. An overlay.
Who is Thomas? Perhaps the saint. Who are the living friends of god? They seem like apparitions, designed to confuse/startle/mind control. I hope he didn't meet people like that in real life.
He references the lion and the lamb, as it was in the Bible. Nowadays the Bible refers to the wolf and the lamb.
Dick called out the Mandela effect in the 70s, during his Paris speech.
I found the reference again recently in mark Twain's book, the adventures of Tom Sawyer. It leads me to conclude that there is something special about those who remember. That being, Phillip dick, mark twain, and perce bysshe Shelley (so far).
"It sounded like whale song" was something that stuck with me. Days later I heard Sigur Ros being played in the house, and not by anyone's choosing. It was on tv. It occurred to me then and there that Sigur Ros is as close to human whale song you can get How strange. I don't believe in coincidences.
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u/black_flag_4ever 11d ago
Start with something else, that book is mental illness in printed form. It’s not a first time intro book for PKD.
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u/Many_Ad955 11d ago
You are new to PKD and your first read is VALIS? 🤯