Saturday, December 2, 2017

Divine invasion

In a previous post, Valis,
I prophetically wrote that I will go after continuation of Philip K. Dick's
"Valis", after I recover from the bull-shit of the 1st book. I am a certified
masochist, and I like PKD's writing, really, even when it shows he used too
much of illicit chemistry at the time of writing.

So, there I was, "The Divine Invasion". As usual for PKD, it kicked off
magnificently, with humans living on another planets as a senseless
guardians of the senselles colonization of the extrasolar worlds across
the Galaxy. And yes, they are dead, as PKD liked to have them. Or almost
dead, as they are held in criogenic suspension until organs for replacement are found.

In "Valis", God, who was a girl, Sophia, dies. Here it is reborn, in a
virgin conception which happens on another planet. Emmanuel, the boy, is
folloved closely by Elias, who is a beggar even in the alien planet. The
conception happened under the auspicion of the local alien god of a small
hill, Jah. Did we hear the story anywhere? But PKD, helped with tonnes of
good psychodelic, produces a well informed and, yes, readable version of the
story from The Scripture. It is definitely one of the best rendering of it
which I read. Halleluyah, Philip.

Emmanuel the kid devised a way to forget his own godly plans, so he could
exist in the real world, but is permanently having flashes of reminding, as
do the people around him. He is guided around by a little girl-Athena,
Diana, he guesses, but it shows to be his own adversary-or angel-a less
known Talmudic being. Belial himself appears as a small stinky black goat-and
is killed by a Linda Fox, pop singer, who is the angel, appropriately.

Still, even if less than it was the case with the first part of the trilogy,
the book is full of references to the Old Testament, and reads for long pages
as a Jehova Witness text. Not that lenghty and disturbing the flow of the story
as in "Valis", but still, unnecessary. A pity PKD, or his editor, did not
remove that.

I was asking myself what to hell do I get from this reading, should I not just
throw it away. No, I am a masochist, obviously.

I acquired the third part, and the beginning reads really well. Good for me and
the world that PKD did not produce more of it!

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