[VALIS Trilogy 02] • The Divine Invasion

Philip K. Dick’s latest novel starts out on a lonely planet in the star system CY30-CY30B and ends up in Hollywood on a future Earth which is not quite ours. Along the way we encounter God, His Son, Elijah the Prophet, and the demon Belial, who controls Earth. Through the course of the book we have an opportunity to deal with the problems of Good versus Evil, reality and illusion, and how it feels to listen to canned music for ten years without being able to turn it off.

Herb Asher, selfish and indifferent, lives alone in a dome on a planet where he operates a microwave relay transmitter/receiver and spends much of his time watching 3-D holo tapes of his favorite superstar singer, Linda Fox. One day a local deity interferes with his tapes and sends him on a reluctant mission of mercy to visit a dying woman in a nearby dome. They are joined by Elias, a wanderer, who turns out to be (literally) the Prophet Elijah and who explains to them that Rybys, the woman, is pregnant with the Son of God and that they must return to Earth as a married couple for the birth of the child to prepare for Armageddon, in which the powers of evil will be finally and completely defeated and Earth will be saved.

Accidents ensue as they reach Earth and Rybys dies, Emmanuel is born brain-damaged and Herb spends ten years in cryonic suspension listening to Muzak. Emmanuel is put into a special school, where as a child He meets a girl named Zina, who is, in fact, a supernatural being. She reveals to Him His own suppressed knowledge of the purpose of His existence and her involvement in it. By the combination of their powers we are transported to a different world, an alternate version of Earth. Rybys is alive there and married to Herb, who runs a music store and is falling in love with an obscure singer named Linda Fox.

There Herb is captured by Belial, who appears in the form of a baby goat, and in a powerful and moving scene Herb discovers his salvation, and Earth’s, in the strength of his love for Linda.

In this book Philip K. Dick brings together many of his thematic concerns expressed over the years. With roots in the Torah and the Cabala and with a sense of deeply felt mystical vision, he combines an interplanetary setting and a gritty social realism to produce a book that challenges the normal definitions of science fiction and our notions of what science fiction is and is not supposed to be. He makes a compelling personal statement about belief, humanity, and life—and again tells an irresistible, fascinating, entirely unique and real story about people living humanly in a world which they cannot control but in which they ultimately triumph.