His dentist phoned in a prescription for a pain reliever, and PKD had it delivered. When a young woman showed up with his meds, he noticed her necklace. When he asked her about the symbol on the necklace, she explained that it was a fish — a Christian symbol. She touched the fish symbol and said “This is a sign used by the early Christians.”And something happened to PKD. He didn’t know at the time that he would spend most of his remaining years trying to figure out exactly what had happened to him that night. The product of all that figuring was what is called the VALIS Trilogy: VALIS, The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
VALIS is semi-autobiographical. PKD employs a neat trick to tell his story: He splits himself into two characters. Phil Dick is the normal, down to earth guy who writes regular novels and who narrates most of the story. Horselover Fat is the exuberant writer of science fiction. He takes lots of drugs, has many wives and girlfriends and ex-wives and ex-girlfriends. He’s always broke because science fiction doesn’t pay crap. He’s the idea guy — the big dreamer.
And Horselover Fat is the person that something happened to that night in February 1974. A pink light filled his head. The fish symbol became a double helix. For a moment, he remembered his life as an early Christian in Rome. He remembered hiding from and being hunted by the Romans. And then he was back in 1974 accepting a little white bag of pain pills.
But the something wasn’t over. About a month later, Horselover was lying in bed when the radio began shrilling ugly sentences at him. A dark aurora surrounded his apartment. When he woke up a few days later, he saw Ancient Rome superimposed on 1974 California. He thought in Koine Greek, which he didn’t speak but which his wife recognized. He became convinced he was living in two realities: modern California and Ancient Rome. He named his ancient persona Thomas.
As PKD introduces this weirdness little by little into VALIS, he and his friends debate the philosophical and theological implications. Until they go to the movies one day.
But I don’t want to go there — the book takes off like a rocket, and there are too many spoilers. Instead I want to talk about those theological implications. PKD spent a ton of time trawling through ancient and modern philosophy trying to figure out what the something that happened to him meant. He was fascinated with the ancient gnostics — something I knew very little about. And there I found something new and intriguing to me.
We talk quite a bit about MG 2.0’s thought experiments based on a creator God. Where I get stuck is the leap from creator God to loving creator God. It simply doesn’t follow from the existence of a God who creates a universe, earth, and its inhabitants that the God loves his creation. I get stuck right there every time. “Why,” I think, “can’t creator God be evil?”
Apparently some of the Gnostics asked the same question. And they concluded that our creator God is evil. Well, he’s not really a god at all. (And he is a very naughty boy.) He’s a Demi-urge. And he’s crazy. Malicious, evil, crazy.
There is a real God and he is really good. But he’s not omnipotent. He can’t just bust into creator God’s universe and serve him with a three-day notice. He can only beam true knowledge into our universe from time to time to help rescue us from this monster.
It’s an elegant solution to the problem of evil.
It also is the propellant for the other two books. In the Divine Invasion, Jesus returns in a sci-fi way. Or is it Jaweh? And is he the God guy or the bad guy. I get confused.
In The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, the Episcopal Bishop of California studies a new find of Gnostic scrolls that contain the teachings of Jesus before there was a Jesus. Oops.
My recollection is that the something that happened was a conversion experience for PKD. But the books don’t reveal what flavor of Christian he became. Maybe if I read his exegesis (Yeah, he wrote one. I have only read snippets.)
PKD’s famous definition of reality appears in VALIS. (But it first appears in one of his speeches) I wonder which of his many odd experiences went away. And did he stop believing in them.
I enjoyed all three books. They come in a bound edition with a very nice afterword by Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, The Ministry for the Future). If you like PKD’s science fiction, you will likely enjoy them, as different than they are from his usual dystopian stories. If you’ve never read PKD, I’d start with something else.
Happy reading.
