I have been carefully constructing a little stack of Philip K. Dick books in the middle of my room. The latest addition to that pile is Radio Free Albemuth. I finished it this morning.

The main reason I was interested in it was that it was supposed to be the original version of the novel that later became VALIS. And it turns out that it really is an excellent companion piece to that book, because it takes the same themes and events and tells them in a completely different way. There isn’t really a redundancy between the two books either, which is a testament to him as a storyteller, I think. Both books center around a series of mystical experiences he had, in which he believed that he was receiving communications from a super-intelligent entity equivalent to both the Holy Spirit and an extraterrestrial satellite.

If you’re new to the subject and want a quick run-down of Dick’s divine contacts, I recommend checking out the 8-page comic R. Crumb did on the subject. If that tickles your fancy, you should then check out my favorite essay in the world where Dick himself goes into the whole thing in greater detail, and talks about hiw work in general. And for the truly dedicated, I just found this other essay by Dick which deals with the whole thing in an even more obscure esoteric way.

Also, I discovered today the movie which they go to see in VALIS, is supposed to be a stand-in for the movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring David Bowie. This is the movie where he believed was buried hidden messages from the divine which proved to him that what he had experienced was real. I definitely want to try and see it now. There is also a book which it is based on by Walter Tevis. I found an essay which talks a little bit about the connections between both novels and the movie.