If you thought "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" was bizarre but exciting and somehow reassuring, you aint seen nothing yet. All the various Delusionals, paranoids or otherwise visionary protagonists in the fiction of Philip k. Dick were poor imitations ('twice removed' anyone?) of reality. His reality that is. Here's an excerpt from the wikipedia entry on the guy himself:
Dick and his visions
In his youth, around the age of thirteen, Dick had a recurring
dream for a number of weeks. He dreamt that he was in a bookstore, trying to find an issue of
Astounding Magazine. This issue, when he found it, would contain a story called "The Empire Never Ended", which would reveal to him the secrets of the universe. As the dream repeated, the pile of magazines through which he was searching got smaller and smaller, but he never reached the bottom of it. Eventually, he became anxious that discovering the magazine would drive him mad (like the
Lovecraftian Necronomicon, promising
insanity to its readers). Shortly thereafter, the dreams stopped. They never returned, but the phrase "The Empire Never Ended" would appear in his later works.
Quotation
My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?' Many of my stories and novels deal with psychotic states or drug-induced states by which I can present the concept of a multiverse rather than a universe. Music and sociology are themes in my novels, also radical political trends; in particular I've written about
fascism and my fear of it.
Philip K. Dick
On
February 20,
1974, he was recovering from the effects of
sodium pentothal administered for the extraction of an impacted
wisdom tooth. Answering the door to receive a delivery of additional painkillers, he noticed the woman delivering the package was wearing a
pendant with what he called the "
vesicle pisces". (He probably was referring to the intersecting arcs of the
vesica piscis.) After her departure, Dick began experiencing strange visions. Although this may have been attributed initially to the painkillers, after weeks of these visions such a rationale becomes less probable. Throughout February and March 1974 he received a series of visions which he collectively referred to as 2-3-74, shorthand for February/March 1974. He described his initial visions as
laser beams and
geometric patterns, and occasionally brief pictures of
Jesus and
ancient Rome, which he would glimpse periodically. As the pictures increased in length and frequency, Dick claimed that he began to live a double life, one as himself and one as Thomas, a
Christian persecuted by Romans in the
1st century A.D. Despite his past and continued
drug use, Dick accepted these visions as reality, believing that he had been contacted by a god-entity of some kind, which he referred to variously as Zebra,
God, and, most often,
VALIS.
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VALIS
VALIS is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System; he used this term as the title of one of his novels (and continued the theme in at least three more books) and later theorized that VALIS was both a "reality generator" and a means of extraterrestrial communication. VALIS has been described as one node of an artificial
satellite network originating from the star
Fomalhaut in the
Piscis Austrinus constellation. According to Dick, the Earth satellite used "pink laser beams" to transfer information and project holograms on Earth and to facilitate communication between an extraterrestrial species and humanity. Dick claimed that VALIS used "disinhibiting stimuli" to prep the subjects for communication, in one case the symbol of the vesicle pisces. He wrote about this experience and his beliefs that the Roman empire never ended in detail in his essay,
"How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later".
At one point, during an encounter with VALIS, Dick learned that his infant son was in danger of perishing from an unnamed malady. Routine checkups on the child had shown no trouble or illness; however, Dick insisted that thorough tests be run to ensure his son's health. The doctor eventually complied, despite the fact that there were no apparent symptoms. During the examination doctors discovered an
inguinal hernia, which would have killed the child if an operation was not quickly performed. His son survived thanks to the operation, which Dick attributed to the "intervention" of VALIS.
Another event was an episode of
glossolalia. Dick's wife transcribed the sounds she heard him speak, and discovered that he was speaking
Koine Greek, an ancient dialect which he had never studied. As Dick was to later discover, Koine Greek was originally used to write the
New Testament and the
Septuagint. However, this was not the first time Dick had experienced glossolalia. A decade earlier, Dick claimed he was able to think, speak, and read fluent
Latin under the influence of
Sandoz LSD-25.
In his essay, Will the
Atomic Bomb Ever be Perfected, And if so, What becomes of
Robert Heinlein?, Dick mentions that he began seeing pink light during an
LSD experience, eight years before he wrote and attributed the so-called pink lasers to VALIS.
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Exegesis
Regardless of the feeling that he was somehow experiencing a divine communication, Dick was unable ever to fully rationalize the events. For the rest of his life, he struggled to fully comprehend what was occurring, questioning his own sanity and perception of reality. He transcribed what thoughts he could into an 8,000 page, million word
journal dubbed the
Exegesis.
Quotation
If you find this world bad you should see some of the others.
Philip K. Dick
He spent sleepless nights furiously writing into this journal, in some instances high on large quantities of
amphetamines, which no doubt contributed to its eclectic tone. A recurring theme in the Exegesis is Dick's hypothesis that
history had been stopped in the 1st century, and that "The [Roman] Empire never ended". He saw
Rome as the pinnacle of
materialism, which, after forcing the
Gnostics underground 1900 years earlier, had kept the population of the Earth as slaves to worldly possessions. Dick believed that VALIS had contacted him and unnamed others to induce the "
impeachment" of
Richard M. Nixon, whom Dick believed to be the current Emperor incarnate.
As time went on, he became increasingly
paranoid, imagining plots against him perpetrated by the
KGB or
FBI, who he believed were constantly laying traps for him. At one point he alleged that they had been responsible for a burglary at his house in which various documents had been stolen. However, he later stated that he had probably committed the burglary himself, and then forgotten he had done so.
His later works, especially the VALIS trilogy, were heavily
autobiographical, many with 2-3-74 references or influences. Dick was also a voracious reader of works on
religion,
philosophy,
metaphysics, and
Gnosticism, and these ideas found their way into many of his stories. The final novel to be published during his life was
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, though many more were published posthumously, most notably Lies, Inc.
This section contains information that has not been
verified and thus might not be reliable. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please check the section for inaccuracies and modify as needed,
citing sources.
Many writers have subsequently speculated that Dick may have suffered from
schizophrenia; Dick was certainly interested in the topic, and wrote an essay entitled "Schizophrenia and the Book of Changes."
... hmmmm...
On a related note, the dissociative disorder known as multiple personality disorder has only ever been reported in the U.S.
