Alfie Gallagher πŸ”– The third most frightening thing about Philip K Dick’s Valis is that it is largely autobiographical.


I realised this halfway through reading the novel when I came across a video recording of a lecture Dick gave to an incredulous audience at a sci-fi festival in Metz in 1977. Expounding on concepts such as orthogonal time, computer-programmed realities, parallel universes, and seemingly parallel selves, Dick clearly shared the fundamental doubt of his alter ego(s) in Valis – namely, what if the world itself is not the real world at all?

The second most frightening thing about the novel, for me at least, is that I have struggled with similar doubts myself. I have suffered from chronic mental illness since childhood and for a long time, one of my worst fears was that reality was not as it seemed, that malign forces were somehow manipulating the very fabric of existence from behind the scenes. It was unnerving to find parallels between my own experiences and Dick’s, especially his eerie suspicion that the mechanism of his bathroom light switch had somehow been changed and whether this suspicion was merely a cognitive distortion or in fact a sign of the artificiality of the phenomenological world.

Valis is a difficult read. It doesn’t contain much in the way of plot, and it ends without any clear resolution. There are fictional elements, but for the most part, the novel is a vehicle for Dick’s attempted explanations and extrapolations of his quasi-religious experiences in the early-to-mid 1970s. The novel is rich in philosophical and theological discourse. It demonstrates the awesome range of Dick’s erudition, blending classical Greek philosophy, Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, and modern physics. The key theme of Valis is doubt. Dick never seems sure whether or not he is sane, and that is the most frightening thing of all.

 Alfie Gallagher is a Sligo based blogger who can be found @ Left From The West.

Valis (1981)

Alfie Gallagher πŸ”– The third most frightening thing about Philip K Dick’s Valis is that it is largely autobiographical.


I realised this halfway through reading the novel when I came across a video recording of a lecture Dick gave to an incredulous audience at a sci-fi festival in Metz in 1977. Expounding on concepts such as orthogonal time, computer-programmed realities, parallel universes, and seemingly parallel selves, Dick clearly shared the fundamental doubt of his alter ego(s) in Valis – namely, what if the world itself is not the real world at all?

The second most frightening thing about the novel, for me at least, is that I have struggled with similar doubts myself. I have suffered from chronic mental illness since childhood and for a long time, one of my worst fears was that reality was not as it seemed, that malign forces were somehow manipulating the very fabric of existence from behind the scenes. It was unnerving to find parallels between my own experiences and Dick’s, especially his eerie suspicion that the mechanism of his bathroom light switch had somehow been changed and whether this suspicion was merely a cognitive distortion or in fact a sign of the artificiality of the phenomenological world.

Valis is a difficult read. It doesn’t contain much in the way of plot, and it ends without any clear resolution. There are fictional elements, but for the most part, the novel is a vehicle for Dick’s attempted explanations and extrapolations of his quasi-religious experiences in the early-to-mid 1970s. The novel is rich in philosophical and theological discourse. It demonstrates the awesome range of Dick’s erudition, blending classical Greek philosophy, Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, and modern physics. The key theme of Valis is doubt. Dick never seems sure whether or not he is sane, and that is the most frightening thing of all.

 Alfie Gallagher is a Sligo based blogger who can be found @ Left From The West.

5 comments:

  1. The enemy read Philip K Dick......

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  2. A brilliant review Alfie and cleverly structured. You took us to the last line before revealing what the most frightening thing was. Your reviews add serious to the literature aspect of the blog. You also show just how competently a book can be reviewed with an economy of words.

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  3. I appreciate the kind comments. I only wish writing was easier for me than it is. Sometimes it is joyous, but most of the time, it is like pulling teeth!

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  4. As I said to Alfie the other day:

    One of his finest works and proof that he belongs in the same category as Ballard. He is a master at making you question every aspect of your worldview, and I can't help but wonder if Andrew Niccol was influenced by Valis when writing The Truman Show.

    The Room by Hubert Selby Jr is another book that operates in similar terrain to Valis, but is a much grittier proposition.

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  5. Thanks Alfie for sharing your challenges and thanks for the review. Certainly will check it out further.

    I believe we all live in our own created realities.
    Yes, its seems we're looking out on a world through two windows but since research by Herman Von Helmholtz in the mid nineteen century science has known different. Rather than thinking of vision as looking out windows, two satellite dishes, picking up data via light waves is a more accurate analogy. Likewise we have satellite dishes for sound waves and also alternative sensory receptors for various other types of data. All of which goes to the brain which in turn presents us with a best guess representation of what going on out there. People not getting how fecking weird all that is ... alas don't get it.
    The hardware we all share, coupled with innate resource templates (pre-installed basic software) ensures we all more or less initially come into the world primed for a collective illusion of what's going on out there. The innate resource templates we are born with need to be activated and continuously updated in the environment. For example we have pre-installed software for language acquisition but yet we will primarily only develop the language of that which our carers speak.
    In reality, and in a similar same way as it appears that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, how we experience the world is but a convincing collective illusion. Misunderstandings about how our experiences are created, and continuously updated, make for all kinds of possibilities for glitches in what otherwise might be a largely satisfying and contented life.

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