I love the VALIS trilogy and like to recommend Radio Free Albemuth as an intro book to new PKD readers.
It’s basically a rewrite of the trilogy in a single, short novel.
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.