The Divine Invasion

Author - Philip K. Dick ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Vintage was reviewed on 3-Nov-2008.

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1) Paperback Book The Divine Invasion by Vintage. This is second book in unofficial VALIS thrilogy. First one is VALIS, go read that first :)

This book is also into gnosticism, religion and models of Christian beliefs but is not so deep as VALIS.

Get PKD whenever you can, you have 70 percent chance to get a good book. I can´t remember if he ever wrote bad book, even his not so notable works are good books, especially compared to other writers.¤

2) Paperback Book The Divine Invasion by Vintage. The second part of Dick´s final probing into what he perceived as the nature of God, we´re back into more or less straight science-fictional territory. While "VALIS" could be described as a modern-day story with some surrealist touches, this one is set decidedly in the future, kicking off at a colony where the people live in domes. Herb Asher spends most of his time listening to his singing idol Linda Fox and enjoying the fact that nobody is bothering him. Except someone does bother him, a manifestation of God, or God himself or, oh, don´t think about it. They tell him to go to his sick neighbor, who not only has MS but also turns out to be pregnant via the Almighty, with the Almighty. As it turns out the Earth has been taken over by the Adversary and so our interpid heroes smuggle the child back to Earth for a rip-roaring suspense-filled adventure full of thrilling action as only Philip K Dick can do! Yes, I´m kidding. The other characters get kind of shoved aside for a theological debate that spans multiple faiths and philosophies, while in between the plot sort of trundles along so that the story isn´t all talking heads. In the meantime, reality gets questioned (Asher winds up in cryogenic suspension after an accident), things you believe turn out to not be necessarily true, everything means more than one thing and characters are more representations of abstract concepts than anything else. The meat of the story is actually fairly interesting, as God-child Emmanuel more or less cripples himself to make a point and struggles to regain his lost kingdom of reality, arguing with people who may be actual enemies or simply aspects of himself. Those debates are intriguing, although it´s basically Dick working through his jumbling of philosophies on the page itself, and we´re just along for the ride. As a story, I´m not sure how well it works, mostly because, and I can´t believe I´m saying this, it´s not weird or surreal enough. Given the setup we´re presented with here, the follow through is fairly mundane, as Emmanuel and his main sounding board/possible enemy walk down the street and argue about stuff, or just stand in a room and do it. It´s interesting from an intellectual standpoint but not exactly bracing from a story standpoint, and I think the novel needed the extra jolt of "Has my mind just been blown?" juice that Dick could sometimes give his trippier works, if only to make it a little more memorable. But what we do have is a strangely coherent examination of religious beliefs, straightforward and with a bit of story wrapped around it. It never really drags, except when the two characters start quoting Scripture at each other (sometimes in languages I don´t know!) but if you can keep a handle on who is who and who is representing who from which faith, it can all be fitfully entertaining. Not terrible but not totally memorable either, it does sort of prove that his most coherent works were not always his best.¤

3) Paperback Book The Divine Invasion by Vintage. I found this book an interesting re-telling of the New Testament, if different from other Philip K. Dick works.

´Linda Fox´ is obviously a stand in for Linda Ronstadt, as Mr. Dick was known to be an extremely ardent fan of hers. The comparisons are quite obvious, once the reader knows this.

Robert a.¤

4) Paperback Book The Divine Invasion by Vintage. I know that Philip K. Dick is one of the great classic sci-fi writers, but this book seemed dreadful to me. At many points I had a difficult time figuring out just what was happening, and when I did , it seemed to be such pretentious rubbish. For example "I see now what Plotinus saw , he realized. But , more than that, I have rejoined the sundered realms within me; I have restored the Shekhina to En Sof". Another sample, "The cosmic cycle will bring this age inevitably, it will be the next shemittah , very much like the first; the Torah will again rearrange itself out of its jumbled matrix." Some will find this very profound and delight in the obscure Hebrew references. For me, it was confusing , boring , and at times made me suspect the author was intoxicated.
More a poorly written religious fantasy than sci-fi , I must say this is one of the worst books I have read in some time.¤

5) Paperback Book The Divine Invasion by Vintage. PK Dick´s The Divine Invasion is the second of the so-called "Valis Trilogy," which begins with Valis. Not a true trilogy - the books are related by theme, not story - this book deals with many of the same issues as Valis; god, divinity, faith, belief, and free will.

I confess that The Divine Invasion did not at first click with me the way most of Dick´s books do. It was only when what is being dealt with finally revealed itself that I found myself drawn in - yet even then, this did not rise to my list of favorites by this master writer. The gist is this: God left the Earth thousands of years ago because Jesus did not work out as He planned; He holed himself up on some far flung planet; now the Second Coming has arrived, and the new messiah is going to be birthed by a human colonist and brought to Earth. The catch? A police state has long been on the watch for his coming, hoping to prevent it.

The subject matter is fantastic, but the left turns and reality-changing (not unlike Lies, Inc., aka The Unteleported Man) were often disconcerting. That´s usually fine if you´re reading over the course of just a few days, but since I stretched this one out over more than a week, keeping my head in Dick´s shifting realities and whirling viewpoints was at times more a chore than a joy. That´s more a reflection of how I read the book (and how long it took me) rather than the book itself, however, because the ideas are very strong. I´m confident that if given a fresh read over a shorter span a better novel will reveal itself. Whether "better" means "great", of course, is debatable.

This book was written in Dick´s last years, which were very introspective and wrapped up in religion and philosophy. The Divine Invasion is no different in that regard. If that´s the PKD angle you´re looking for, well, here it is.¤

6) Paperback Book The Divine Invasion by Vintage. What if God were alive and in exile on a distant planet? And what if He wanted to come back? This is the unsettling and exhilirating premise of The Divine Invasion, the second novel in the trilogy that includes Valis and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 1-Dec-2008, 06797344579780679734451, 490-570-650-460-620-6X0-8

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