Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (68 page)

46. A Maze of Death, originally titled The Name of the Game Is Death (w. 1968, p. 1970). A group of colonists encounter inexplicable doings-including brutal murders-on the supposedly uninhabited planet Delmark-O. They then learn the truth of Milton's maxim that the mind creates its own heavens and hells. See Chapter 6 as to Phil's LSD experience (described in Chapter I1 of Maze) and Chapter 7 for the Phil-Bishop Pike relationship. In his "Foreword" to Maze Phil cites the help of William Sarill in creating the "abstract, logical" religion posed in the novel; Sarill, in interview, says he only listened as Phil spun latenight theories. The plots of Eye, Ubik, and Maze are strikingly similar: A group of individuals find themselves in a perplexing reality state and try to use each other's individual perceptions (idios kosmos) to make sense of what is happening to them all (koinos kosmos). Only in Eye, written ten years earlier, is this effort successful. In Ubik and Maze, by contrast, individual insight and faith are the only means of piercing the reality puzzle. In Maze, Seth Morley alone escapes the dire fate of his fellow twenty-second-century Delmark-O "colonists" (who are, in truth, the trapped crew of a damaged rocket ship, dreaming a polyencephalic dream to stay sane), through his faith in the Intercessor. There is a quaternity of gods in Maze-an admixture of Gnosticism, neo-Platonism, and Christianity: the Mentufacturer, who creates (God); the Intercessor, who through sacrifice lifts the Curse on creation (Christ); the Walker-onEarth, who gives solace (Holy Spirit); and the Form Destroyer, whose distance from the divine spurs entropy (Satan/Archon/Demiurge). The tench, an old inhabitant of Delmark-O, is Phil's "cypher" for Christ. Rating: 7.

47. Our Friends from Frolix 8 (w. 1968-69, p. 1970). A repressive Earth police state tries to keep the people down, but some mighty powerful aliens from Frolix 8 have other ideas. Phil dismissed Frolix as a potboiler. In plot, it's a throwback to his fifties work, especially Solar Lottery. In Frolix, solitary genius/space traveler Thors Provoni (leader of the Undermen) tries to find help for an oppressed Earth on far-off Frolix 8-a parallel to the journey to Flame Disc by John Preston (leader of the Prestonites) in Solar. But Preston, a craftsman, stands for individuality and hard work, while Provoni (a freak combination of ultra-highintelligence New Man and psionically gifted Unusual) wins the support of the wise Frolixians through empathy. Meanwhile, the New Men and the Unusuals tyrannize the genetically mediocre Old Men (us) on twenty-second-century Earth. Nick Appleton, one such Old Man, is an anxiety-ridden, pill-popping tire regroover (Jack Isidore's profession in Crap Artist), who loves dark-haired girl Charley. Frolix is a fast-paced policier without the reality shifts that dominate the other late-sixties novels. Willis Gram, the Unusual police chief, prefigures the sympathetic police protagonists to come: Felix Buckman in Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and Robert Arctor in A Scanner Darkly. Rating: 4.

48. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (w. 1970, rew. 1973, p. 1974, won John W. Campbell Award). See Chapter 7. Rating: 7.

49. The Best of Philip K. Dick (w. 1952-73, p. 1977). This selection of nineteen stories, in which Phil played an active part, lives up to its title, including two moving tales of childhood, "Foster, You're Dead" and "The Father-thing" (see Chapter 2); tales from Phil's Berkeley salad days, like "Roog," "Beyond Lies the Wub," "Second Variety," "Colony," and "Impostor" (see Chapter 4 and A Handful of Darkness, above); and the best of all of Phil's stories, "The Electric Ant" (see Chapter 7). Rating: 10.

50. The Golden Man (w. 1952-1973, p. 1980). An admirable story collection assembled by editor Mark Hurst with Phil's input. The "Introduction" and "Story Notes" by Phil are alone worth the price of admission. The best story is "Precious Artifact" (w. 1963, p. 1964), in which the all-too-human need for hope gives the conquering Proxmen the edge they need. "The Little Black Box" (1964), originally part of The Canymede Takeover but removed from the final version, introduces the empathic religion of Mercerism, which plays such a major role in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? "The King of the Elves" (1953) (see Chapter 4) is a gem-Phil's best fantasy story. Rating: 8.

51. A Scanner Darkly (w. 1973, rew. 1975, p. 1977). See Chapters 8 and 9. Rating: 9.

52. Deus Irae, in collaboration with Roger Zelazny; originally titled The Kneeling Legless Man (w. 1964-75, p. 1976). Can an artist ever render ultimate truth? It is painter Tibor McMasters's impossible task to try, as he sets out in pursuit of the great god Carlton Leufteufel, who in his wrath called down nuclear devastation on Earth. See Chapters 6 and 10. Phil's first collaborator on Deus Irae was Ted White, who lost enthusiasm but suggested, in 1967, that Zelazny take it on. The collaborative marriage was a happy one: Working primarily through the mail, with peak years of productivity in 1970 and 1975, Phil and Zelazny at last produced a moving novel on the harrowing spiritual "pilg" (pilgrimage) by armless, legless "inc" (incomplete) Tibor McMasters, the master artist of the post-nuclear holocaust twenty-first century. Zelazny, whose Hugo-winning Lord of Light (1967) Phil admired, was a gracious collaborator who says he treated the project as "Phil's book"; when Zelazny learned of Phil's financial straits in 1975, he voluntarily reduced his royalty share from one-half to one-third. Deus Irae is, at root, a Phil Dick novel, with a plot that follows (unusually closely) an outline Phil submitted to win the Doubleday contract in 1964. Two of Phil's early stories, "The Great C" (1953) and "A Planet for Transients" (1953), were drawn upon for plot parts, but a greater influence was Dr. Bloodmoney- the post-holocaust setting and the resemblances between Dr. Bluthgelt and Hoppy Harrington in Dr. Bloodmoney and Carlton Leufteufel and Tibor McMasters in Deus Irae. Leufteufel (sky devil), the onetime government advocate of nuclear war as rational policy, is disfigured and driven mad by the engines of destruction he has unleashed and becomes the human embodiment of the God of Wrath (Deus Irae). McMasters's pilg ends in apparent glory, with a divine vision, but he dies in bitter isolation, having made "certain diary-like entries" on the subject of whether or not his portrait of the Deus Irae is genuine. The parallel to the Exegesis is plain. Deus Irae is a fascinating blend of sixties Phil (such as Pete Sands, in Chapter 3, citing drugs as a valid means of inducing visions) and seventies Phil (the Palm Tree Garden in Chapter 18-the natural vision conferred at last). Rating: 7.

53. The Dark-Haired Girl (w. 1972, 1975, p. 1988). See Chapter 8 for discussion of The Dark-Haired Girl, "The Evolution of a Vital Love," and "The Android and the Human," the three major pieces included in this volume. This eclectic collection of letters, essays, a story, and a poem will fascinate those who crave a front-seat roller-coaster ride through the psyche of Phil the lover. The romantic letters included in The DarkHaired Girl run the gamut from breathtaking ecstasy to vicious spleen. As Paul Williams notes in his astute "Introduction," the judgments passed by Phil on the personalities of the women he adored are not necessarily trustworthy. At his most bitter, Phil could mergebriefly-with the uncomprehending android state he normally despised. At his most adoring, he is irresistible-to the reader, at least, if not always to the women he courted. This volume is as naked a portrayal of a writer's inner life as you will find. As noted in Chapter 8, Phil later had reservations as to the worth of the Dark-Haired Girl letters. "Man, Android and Machine" (1975), a twisting, sophisticated essay (originally intended to be delivered as a speech at a London SF conference that Phil never attended) that explores the concept of "orthogonal" or "layered" time, is a good introduction to this key theme of the Exegesis. Rating: 6.

54. Radio Free Albemuth, originally titled Valisystern A (w. 1976, p. 1985). Record producer Nicholas Brady and SF writer Phil Dick do battle against the Empire that never ended. See Chapters 2, 10, and 11. Albemuth was purchased in 1976 by Bantam editor Mark Hurst, a staunch ally of Phil's work. When Hurst suggested changes in the manuscript, he had no idea that Phil, never one for minor rewrite tinkering, two years later would produce an entirely new and different novel, to wit, Valis, his masterwork, as to which Albemuth stands as a preliminary study. In Albemuth, Phil appears as an explicitly named autobiographical character for the first time. But fellow protagonist Nicholas Brady is also Phil: the Phil of his Berkeley youth, who never became an SF writer but instead took that A & R job Phil said he was offered by a record company back then. Nicholas sees himself standing beside his bed, just as Phil did in the early fifties, and has a vivid, eight-hour vision of Mexico, just as Phil did in 1971. The events of 2-3-74 are spread through the fifties and sixties for Nicholas, who is contacted (controlled?) by Valis (God? a satellite constructed by Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence? other?) as part of the battle of light against the darkness of Ferris Fremont (Richard Nixon) and the oppressive Empire that has never ended. Brady's handling, in Chapter 15, of the Xeroxed shoe ad parallels Phil's handling, in March 1974, of the "Xerox missive"; Brady's prior agonies of conscience over how much to cooperate with the Friends of the American People (FAP) parallel Phil's own with respect to his 1974 communications to the FBI. Rating: 6.-

55. Valis (w. 1978, p. 1981). See extensive discussion in Chapters 10 and 11. Rating: 10.

56. I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (w. 1953-80, p. 1985). This posthumous collection, edited by Mark Hurst and Paul Williams, includes, most notably, an entertaining 1978 speech with the aptly Phildickian title "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (in which Phil confesses that he rather enjoys creating universes that do fall apart), as well as three first-rate stories published in 1980: "Chains of Air, Webs of Aether" (adapted into The Divine Invasion), "Rautavaara's Case" (in which the brain activity of a dying human astronaut is utilized by research-oriented Proxmen as a window into the next world), and "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (first published as "Frozen Journey"-a spaceship computer tries without success to find happy life memories to occupy the mind of an astronaut awakened from cryogenic slumber during a ten-year space voyage). Rating: 7.

57. The Divine Invasion, originally titled Valis Regained (w. 1980, p. 1981). See Chapter 12. Rating: 7.

58. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, originally titled Bishop Timothy Archer (w. 1981, p. 1982). See Chapter 12. Rating: 8.

59. The Owl in Daylight. Phil's last novel project. See Chapter 12.

SOURCES AND NOTES

I have thought it best to avoid the clutter of tiny endnote reference numbers throughout the narrative. These endnotes should allow interested readers to readily trace primary sources. Specific references (by page number) are provided for all direct quotations. Sources that provided especially useful bits of information or inspiration (but were not directly quoted in the text) are listed generally for each chapter.

Much general information in the narrative comes from unpublished PKD manuscripts, letters, and other material in both the PKD Estate Archives (in Glen Ellen, California; Paul Williams, literary executor) and the Special Collections of the University of California-Fullerton Library (Linda Herman, chief librarian), as well as the over one hundred personal interviews conducted by the author. Specific citations of these sources are provided only when they are directly quoted. In the case of all direct quotations, all bracketed material is my own. In the case of quotations from the Exegesis and other unpublished manuscripts, I have taken the occasional liberty of correcting obvious misspellings.

As there are many different editions of most of the novels of Philip K. Dick, I have, for uniformity's sake, referenced quotations from all of them by chapter rather than by page number, along with the year of first publication. For the same reason, quotations from stories are referenced simply by the title and year of first publication. As to the Exegesis, references are to the numbers assigned to the manila folders in which the pages are presently being stored in the PKD Estate Archives; as most of Phil's entries are undated, the years of composition provided are often my estimates based on internal textual evidence.

In the case of Phil's unpublished letters, journals, and manuscripts (copies of all such, with noted exceptions, are in the PKD Estate Archives), the reference is to the date and (for letters) the intended recipient. Quotations from all unpublished works by authors other than PKD are referenced by manuscript title and chapter. In all cases where published works by other authors are used, references are to page numbers in a specific edition.

I am grateful to all fellow authors and interviewers whose labors I have drawn upon in this work. Although I have made no specific citations thereto, I must acknowledge, as an invaluable fact-checking source, PKD A Philip K. Dick Bibliography, compiled by Daniel J. H. Levack (San Francisco: Underwood/Miller, 1981). Out of the welter of previous writings on PKD, four books were of special help in the overall biographical map-making process: D. Scott Apel, ed., Philip K. Dick: The Dream Connection (San Diego: The Permanent Press, 1987); Anne Dick, Search For Philip K. Dick (written 1982-85 and as yet unpublished-which is a shame); Gregg Rickman, Philip K. Dick: In His Own Words (Long Beach, Calif.: Fragments West/The Valentine Press, 1984); and Paul Williams, Only Apparently Real: The World of Philip K. Dick (New York: Arbor House, 1986).

Introduction: If Heraclitus Is Right

Books and articles: Stansislaw Lem, "Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case-With Exceptions," in Bruce Gillespie, ed., Philip K. Dick: Electric Shepherd (Melbourne, Australia: Nostrilla Press, 1975).