* Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
* Ubik
* The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
* A Scanner Darkly
* VALIS (but probably not until you've read some of his others, and also read a bit about his life, because it's pseudo-autobiographical)
I just finished reading a biography of him called "Divine Invasions" (not to be confused with his book "The Divine Invasion", which is roughly a sequel to VALIS), which I recommend as well. PKD was an utterly brilliant, fascinating, and sadly broken man.
When I walk around London and see large structures like St Paul's cathedral sat directly alongside skyscraping banking institutions, I can't help but wonder if in fact "the empire never ended". (https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html)
Then I shake the thought off and go uneasily to my workplace.
I quite like to recommend “A Maze Of Death” as a starter, and the short story collections.
There are some very weird (and IMHO great) concept novels like “Flow My Tears the Policeman Said”.
And of course there’s “A Scanner Darkly”
After a while you get a feeling there’s a sort of semi-coherent PKD reality out there, in which continuity is less important than the concept being played with, but the background is consistent in its own odd way.
Objectively, I know this was a coincidence (like the events that lead to PKD's belief in VALIS) - but it's fun to wander down thoughtways where perhaps just as complexity emerges from well-patterned subatomic lattices, so might that patterning emerge at higher levels of emergence - geodes that look similar, parallel evolution, and then at a level humans can recognise (as coincidence or synchronicity), and maybe at other higher and equally unrecognisable levels, in a dance between fractal cosmoi.
But then one has to live in the world, and do science, and pay rent, and one isn't meant to dwell in such powerful memetic rooms for long.
"I can just picture myself being examined by a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist says, “What year is it?” And I reply, “A.D. 50.” The psychiatrist blinks and then asks, “And where are you?” I reply, “In Judaea.” “Where the heck is that?” the psychiatrist asks. “It’s part of the Roman Empire,” I would have to answer. “Do you know who is President?” the psychiatrist would ask, and I would answer, “The Procurator Felix.” “You’re pretty sure about this?” the psychiatrist would ask, meanwhile giving a covert signal to two very large psych techs. “Yep,” I’d replay. “Unless Felix has stepped down and had been replaced by the Procurator Festus. You see, Saint Paul was held by Felix for —” “Who told you all this?” the psychiatrist would break in, irritably, and I would reply, “The Holy Spirit.” And after that I’d be in the rubber room, inside gazing out, and knowing exactly how come I was there. Everything in that conversation would be true, in a sense, although palpably not true in another. I know perfectly well that the date is 1978 and that Jimmy Carter is President and that I live in Santa Ana, California, in the United States. I even know how to get from my apartment to Disneyland, a fact I can’t seem to forget. And surely no Disneyland existed back at the time of Saint Paul.
So, if I force myself to be very rational and reasonable, and all those other good things, I must admit that the existence of Disneyland (which I know is real) proves that we are not living in Judaea in A.D. 50. The idea of Saint Paul whirling around in the giant teacups while composing First Corinthians, as Paris TV films him with a telephoto lens — that just can’t be. Saint Paul would never go near Disneyland. Only children, tourists, and visiting Soviet high officials ever go to Disneyland. Saints do not."
It’s basically a rewrite of the trilogy in a single, short novel.
...but in typical PKD fashion, it gets weird, because he adapted the rough plot of Radio Free Albemuth into the book VALIS as a fictional movie called VALIS.
I'll be reading this today.
It's also not really related to VALIS at all. I still don't really understand why people call it "the third novel in the VALIS" trilogy. It explores some of the same philosophical and religious themes, but has no connection otherwise.
The "second book", The Divine Invasion, feels closer to VALIS (and it's pretty good, I'd recommend it!), especially because of the gnostic themes. But even that is distinctly different.
VALIS honestly stands entirely on its own. PKD never wrote another book quite like it -- in fact, nobody has.
I didn't manage to get into VALIS. It felt a bit mental-illness-ey in a way that other PKD work didn't, and as someone who had a loved one with terrible schizophrenia, it rubbed me a bit wrong. Maybe I'll try it again soon, I can see it on my shelf from here.
PKD likely suffered from a large variety of mental illnesses, and he frequently wondered if he was schizophrenic himself (although he had therapists give him a negative diagnosis). The events of 2-3-74 may have also been the result of a frontal lobe epilepsy.
He constantly was trying to figure out whether the things he experienced were the result of mental illness or something else entirely. Or trying to figure out whether there's any difference at all. The core theme of his work is "what is real?", and that became something that consumed his own personal reality in his last decade of life.
So I think a good way to read VALIS is knowing it's coming from a person who was deeply suffering, and trying to come to some explanation of what he experienced. And how that truly underlies Horselover Fat's deep fear that the universe is possibly guided by an "irrational mind". PKD wanted to know whether his suffering had any meaning, or was just the result of an irrational, and unknowable universe.
is one of the best thing you can gift yourself.
Also it has nothing at all to do with androids or anything. IIRC it’s something to do with illegal surgery, or transplants perhaps, but I remember it being so terrible that I don’t even want to go find the book and see.
Whereas Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is subtle and divine — one of PKD’s best and always worth a reread.
You're pretty close in your plot summary, it's about a dystopian future where surgery, and specifically possession of surgical instruments, is illegal. The "Blade Runners" are couriers that deliver the scalpels to underground surgery clinics. The name makes a lot more sense for that than for an android hunter but I'm happy we got the Blade Runner we got.
It's also a relatively short read, but packed with so much more to explore than the movie dug into. I really wish Mercerism had been brought into the film. It's such an insightful critique of religion and society, and quite prophetic for time in which the story was written.