In A Maze of Death a group of strangers all receive job transfers to a remote planet and await instructions as to the purpose of their colony. We have a mystery on our hands when those instructions don’t arrive, and the members of the group are murdered one by one.

The LSD-inspired plot that follows has a great ending when we find out the colonists have been in a simulated reality all along. They are actually crew members of a ship stranded with no hope of rescue, and so they enter these computer-created artificial worlds again and again, with an amnesia of their actual plight, in order to pass the time before their inevitable death in space.

The religion they all follow in their invented world was generated by the ship’s computer. It resembles Christianity, although with a logic based on the existence of a physical God.

Cast of characters

• Ben Tallchief – Delmak-O’s naturalist
• Seth Morley – Delmak-O’s marine biologist
• Mary Morley – Seth’s wife
• Betty Jo Berm – Delmak-O’s linguist
• Bert Kosler – Delmak-O’s custodian
• Maggie Walsh – Delmak-O’s theologian
• Ignatz Thugg – Delmak-O’s thermoplastics expert
• Milton Babble – Delmak-O’s doctor
• Tony Dunkelwelt – Delmak-O’s photographer and soil-sample expert
• Glen Belsnor – Delmak-O’s electronics specialist and the group’s leader
• Roberta Rockingham – Delmak-O’s sociologist
• Susie Smart – Delmak-O’s clerk
• Wade Frazer – Delmak-O’s psychologist
• Ned Russell – Delmak-O’s economist

Other things to know

• How I Rose From the Dead in My Spare Time and So Can You – their religion’s holy book written by Communist theologian A. J. Specktowsky
• The Intercessor – a Christ-like manifestation of the deity
• The Mentufacturer – the God-like manifestation of the deity
• Walker-on-Earth – the ‘Holy ghost’ manifestation that completes the deity’s trinity
• Form Destroyer – the yin to the deity’s yang

The Divine Invasion has a funny set up. We find out Herb Asher was killed in an accident but is in cryonic suspension awaiting an organ transplant that will revive him. The Cry-Labs warehouse is close to an FM radio tower, and so as Asher dreams and relives the events leading up to the accident he also hears a faint muzak version of Fiddler on the Roof that no one else can hear. This gag comes up again late in the book during a farcical encounter with a cop when Asher isn’t sure what reality he is in.

Other than these brief moments The Divine Invasion is a mostly humorless story about a woman on a faraway colony planet who is impregnated by Yahweh who was driven there from Earth in 73 A.D. She travels back to Earth along with the Joseph stand-in Herb Asher and a reincarnated Elijah so that her soon-to-be-born son Emmanuel can overthrow Earth’s ruling powers and save mankind… or something along those lines.

It gets better in the second half when Zina transports them all to an alternate reality and there is some mystery about who/what Zina really is (Wisdom? A fairy queen? VALIS? Satan? Christ himself… which would make Emmanuel what?), but it still remains my least favorite book of the VALIS Trilogy.

Cast of characters

• Emmanuel – the reborn savior
• Elias Tate – Elijah reincarnated. Emmanuel’s guardian after Herb and Rybys die
• Herb Asher – Emmanuel’s ‘father’
• Rybys Rommey – Emmanuel’s mother
• Zina – the young girl who is Emmanuel’s friend
• Cardinal Fulton Statler Harms – Chief Prelate of the Christian-Islamic Church. Trying to use Big Noodle to verify St. Anselm’s Ontological Proof for the existence of God
• Nicholas Bulkowsky – Procurator Maximus of the Scientific Legate
• Linda Fox – intergalactic pop superstar, at least in the book’s beginning reality

Other things to know

• Christian-Islamic Church – formerly the Catholic Church
• Scientific Legate – formerly the Communist Party. One of the two ruling parties of Earth along with the C.I.C.
• Big Noodle – Earth’s great Artificial Intelligence

Whether or not you like VALIS depends on how much you can tolerate Dick’s ramblings about the events of February/March 1974. See R. Crumb’s take on what supposedly happened to him if you aren’t familiar. Others might find it endlessly fascinating, but it’s never done much for me.

VALIS is narrated by Philip K. Dick himself as he tells the story of the apparent descent into madness of Horselover Fat. Since it’s given away early on, it’s not a spoiler to say Fat and Dick have a Tyler Durden thing going on. ‘Philip’ means ‘Horselover’ in Greek and ‘Fat’ is the German translation of ‘Dick.’

I like the style of his later books, but outside of a few amusing scenes (particularly when Fat tries to avoid talking about religion with his therapist so that he doesn’t get sent back to the psych ward but ends up ranting about the deranged god Yaldaboath when the therapist asks him if he believes in God) this book would make a fine cure for insomnia.

In short: Horselover Fat starts to lose his mind after the suicide of a friend, believes he is being contacted by some kind of alien satellite and eventually goes on a quest to find the reborn savior. The story in the VALIS film that Fat and his friends go see is repurposed from Radio Free Albemuth which was unpublished when Dick wrote this book.

Cast of characters

• Horselover Fat – our protagonist
• Philip K. Dick – as himself
• Gloria – commits suicide at the beginning of the book
• Stephanie – young dope dealer who gives Horselover Fat a clay pot
• Kevin and David – Horselover Fat’s friends
• Sherri – Horselover Fat’s friend who dies of cancer
• Beth – Horselover Fat’s wife
• Christopher – Horselover Fat’s son
• Dr. Stone – in charge of the North Ward mental hospital
• Maurice – Horselover Fat’s therapist
• Eric Lampton aka Goose – writer/director of the VALIS film
• Brent Mini – created the music for the VALIS film
• Sophia – Eric and Linda Lampton’s daughter. The reborn savior??

Dick began Deus Irae in 1964 and collaborated on it with Roger Zelazny on and off for the next twelve years before it finally was published in 1976.

A religion called the Servants of Wrath springs up after a nuclear war wipes out most of the planet’s population. The followers worship the destroyer who has come to Earth in the form of Carl Lufteufel, the man responsible for the bombs.

Tibor McMasters, an armless and legless man very similar to the phocomelus Hoppy Harrington from Dr. Bloodmoney (except that Tibor’s cart is pulled by a cow), is hired to paint a church mural featuring Lufteufel for the Servants of Wrath. He sets off on a pilgrimage, followed by Pete Sands, across the post-apocalyptic wasteland in order to find Lufteufel and take a photo of him to reference for the mural.

Cast of characters

• Father Handy – father in the Servants of Wrath church
• Tibor McMasters – limbless artist who paints the SOW church mural
• Pete Sands – Christian church member
• Dr. Jim Abernathy – Christian priest in Charlottesville
• Lurnie Rae – SOWer who decides to join the Christian church
• Carl Lufteufel – Deus Irae. The God of Wrath. Former Chairman of the Energy Research and Development Administration who was responsible for the nuclear war
• Jackson and Earl Potter – lizard-like mutants Tibor meets on his journey
• Jack Schuld – a hunter who says he is tracking Lufteufel but turns out to be Lufteufel himself
• The Great C – a computer out in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that captures passerby and dissolves them in underground vats of acid

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is the last book Dick wrote, published just after he died in 1982. I thought it was terrific, although I’m someone who enjoys the exploration of theology that makes up most of the plot.

Our narrator, a woman named Angel Archer, tells about her father-in-law Bishop Tim Archer who has a crisis of faith after the discovery of an ancient document casts a doubt on Jesus’s divinity. It opens on the day of John Lennon’s murder in 1980, but the majority of the story is flashbacks.

This one is considered one of Dick’s “mainstream” novels, and I wish he had been given a chance to write more books like this. It’s funny and smart and grounded in the real world of Berkeley, California.

Cast of characters

• Timothy Archer – Episcopalian Bishop of California
• Jeff Archer – Timothy’s son
• Angel Archer – our narrator. Jeff’s wife and Timothy’s daughter-in-law
• Kristen Lundborg – Angel’s best friend and Timothy’s mistress
• Bill Lundborg – Kristen’s schizophrenic son
• Edgar Barefoot – hosts a radio show about mysticism on KPFA in Berkeley
• Fred Hill – owner of the Bad Luck restaurant. Possible KGB agent
• Dr. Rachel Garret – the elderly medium they use in an attempt to talk to Jeff from beyond the grave

Other things to know

• The Zadokites – an obscure Jewish sect
• The Zadokite documents – fictional documents that predate Jesus by 200 years.
  Supposedly they contain “Q” which is the basis for the synoptic gospels in the Bible. The Zadokite fragments, part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, are a real thing, but the rest was invented by Dick

I picked up this copy at the library. The author photo on the back, credited to Nicole Panter, shows Dick wearing a Rozz Tox t-shirt, a reference to Gary Panter’s Rozz Tox Manifesto that argues artists should embrace capitalism. Nicole Panter was the manager for The Germs, and Gary won three Emmys for his set designs for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

Some Rozz Tox quotes:

• Capitalism for good or ill is the river in which we sink or swim.
• Waiting for art talent scouts? There are no art talent scouts. Face it, no one will seek you out. No one gives a shit.
• Law: If you want better media, go make it.