Dick himself splits into two personalities, one rational and the other deranged. Crucially, both books also detail a ‘splitting of personalities:’ whereas in A Scanner Darkly, Bob Arctor ends up narking on himself, in VALIS Philip K. Both novels are about the after-effects of the sixties drug subculture, and both address the themes of suicide and despair. In many respects, VALIS picks up where A Scanner Darkly leaves off. There’s more to it than that, of course, but that’s the bare bones of the actual plot. Phil Dick and Horselover Fat realise that they are one individual, not two, and the three friends return to their homes, whereupon they learn that the two year-old Saviour has died. They also claim that their two year-old daughter is a Saviour in a line that includes Elijah, Jesus Christ and a few others. After this, the four friends go to meet the filmmaker, Eric Lampton, and his wife Linda, who claim to be beings from another star. Eventually, the four friends go to see a film called “Valis,” which seems to corroborate much of what Horselover Fat experienced during March 1974. During the course of the novel, we are treated to some stories of Phil Dick/Horselover Fat’s unsuccessful attempts to save the suicidal Gloria and terminally ill Sherri, as well as the aftermath of his own suicide attempt. Fat spends years trying to work out what has happened to him, spinning outlandish theories with his friends Phil Dick, Kevin and David.

The ‘plot’ (what little of it there is) goes something like this: during the 1970s, a man by the name of Horselover Fat has a strange experience, in which he is bombarded by a pink beam of light. What is VALIS about? Herein lies one of the problems. Now, on perhaps my fifth reading, I cannot say that I share the high opinion many other PKD-philes have of this book. But over the years, on subsequent readings, I have grown increasingly uneasy with the status of VALIS as one of PKD’s best novels. I distinctly recall starting to read it late in the evening and continuing almost until dawn. When I first read it in 1999, at the age of eighteen, I was entranced. I fell out of love with VALIS by degrees.

VALIS by Philip K. Dick