The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, written by a psychologist, investigates the inner world of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. In 1974, Dick was beset by religious visions, and warned police he was an android. The book explores whether Dick's experience was a spiritual awakening or caused by mental illness.

Widely recognized as one of the most imaginative writers of the 20th century, Philip K. Dick helped to shape science fiction into the popular genre it is today. His stories, renowned for their sophisticated philosophical themes and startling portrayals of simulated realities, inspired numerous television and film adaptations, including the 1982 cult classic Blade Runner. Dick's personal life took on an otherwordly quality when, in 1974, he famously had a series of bizarre visions. According to Dick, a pink light beamed psychic information into his brain, awakening memories of a past life as an ancient Christian revolutionary and granting him contact with time-traveling extraterrestrials. He witnessed scenes from ancient Rome superimposed over his California neighborhood, and warned local police he was a dangerous machine programmed to self-destruct. After the visions faded, Philip K. Dick spent the rest of his life trying to fathom the meaning of what he called his "divine madness." Was it schizophrenia? Or a genuine religious experience? In The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, clinical psychologist Kyle Arnold probes the fascinating mystery of Dick's heart and mind, and shows readers how early traumas opened Dick to profound spiritual experiences while also predisposing him toward drug dependency and violence. Disputing the myth that Dick had schizophrenia, Arnold contends that Dick's well-known paranoia was caused by his addiction to speed. Despite Dick's paranoia, his divine madness was not a sign of mental illness, but a powerful spiritual experience conveyed in the images of science fiction.

Widely recognized as one of the most imaginative writers of the 20th century, Philip K. Dick helped to shape science fiction into the popular genre it is today. His stories, renowned for their sophisticated philosophical themes and startling portrayals of simulated realities, inspired numerous television and film adaptations, including the 1982 cult classic Blade Runner. Dick's personal life took on an otherwordly quality when, in 1974, he famously had a series of bizarre visions. According to Dick, a pink light beamed psychic information into his brain, awakening memories of a past life as an ancient Christian revolutionary and granting him contact with time-traveling extraterrestrials. He witnessed scenes from ancient Rome superimposed over his California neighborhood, and warned local police he was a dangerous machine programmed to self-destruct. After the visions faded, Philip K. Dick spent the rest of his life trying to fathom the meaning of what he called his "divine madness." Was it schizophrenia? Or a genuine religious experience? In The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, clinical psychologist Kyle Arnold probes the fascinating mystery of Dick's heart and mind, and shows readers how early traumas opened Dick to profound spiritual experiences while also predisposing him toward drug dependency and violence. Disputing the myth that Dick had schizophrenia, Arnold contends that Dick's well-known paranoia was caused by his addiction to speed. Despite Dick's paranoia, his divine madness was not a sign of mental illness, but a powerful spiritual experience conveyed in the images of science fiction.

"A great and calamitous sequence of arguments with the universe: poignant, terrifying, ludicrous, and brilliant. The Exegesis is the sort of book associated with legends and madmen, but Dick wasn't a legend and he wasn't mad. He lived among us, and was a genius."-Jonathan Lethem Based on thousands of pages of typed and handwritten notes, journal entries, letters, and story sketches, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the magnificent and imaginative final work of an author who dedicated his life to questioning the nature of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the relationship between the human and the divine. Edited and introduced by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, this will be the definitive presentation of Dick's brilliant, and epic, final work. In The Exegesis, Dick documents his eight-year attempt to fathom what he called "2-3-74," a postmodern visionary experience of the entire universe "transformed into information." In entries that sometimes ran to hundreds of pages, Dick tried to write his way into the heart of a cosmic mystery that tested his powers of imagination and invention to the limit, adding to, revising, and discarding theory after theory, mixing in dreams and visionary experiences as they occurred, and pulling it all together in three late novels known as the VALIS trilogy. In this abridgment, Jackson and Lethem serve as guides, taking the reader through the Exegesis and establishing connections with moments in Dick's life and work.

n The Divine Invasion, Philip K. Dick asks: What if God--or a being called Yah--were alive and in exile on a distant planet? How could a second coming succeed against the high technology and finely tuned rationalized evil of the modern police state? The Divine Invasion "blends Judaism, Kabalah, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity into a fascinating fable of human existence" (West Coast Revew of Books). From the Trade Paperback edition.

This e-book only edition brings together the three novels of Philip K. Dick's VALIS trilogy. VALIS What is VALIS? This question is at the heart of Philip K. Dick’s groundbreaking novel, the first book in his defining trilogy. When a beam of pink light begins giving a schizophrenic man named Horselover Fat (who just might also be known as Philip K. Dick) visions of an alternate Earth where the Roman Empire still reigns, he must decide whether he is crazy, or whether a godlike entity is showing him the true nature of the world. The Divine Invasion God is not dead, he has merely been exiled to an extraterrestrial planet. And it is on this planet that God meets Herb Asher and convinces him to help retake Earth from the demonic Belial. As the middlie novel of Dick's VALIS trilogy, The Divine Invasion plays a pivotal role in answering the questions raised by the first novel, expanding that world while exploring just how much anyone can really know -- even God himself. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer The final book in the VALIS trilogy, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer brings the author’s search for the identity and nature of God to a close. The novel follows Bishop Timothy Archer as he travels to Israel, ostensibly to examine ancient scrolls bearing the words of Christ. But, more importantly, this leads him to examine the decisions he made during his life and how they may have contributed to the suicide of his mistress and son.

From Hugo Award–winning author Philip K. Dick, A Maze of Death is a sci-fi murder mystery set on a mysterious planet where colonists experience unexplained shifts in reality and perception. Delmak-O is a dangerous planet. Though there are only fourteen citizens, no one can trust anyone else and death can strike at any moment. The planet is vast and largely unexplored, populated mostly by gelatinous cube-shaped beings that give cryptic advice in the form of anagrams. Deities can be spoken to directly via a series of prayer amplifiers and transmitters, but they may not be happy about it. And the mysterious building in the distance draws all the colonists to it, but when they get there each sees a different motto on the front. The mystery of this structure and the secrets contained within drive this mind-bending novel.

A mind-bending, classic Philip K. Dick novel about the perception of reality. Named as one of Time's 100 best books.

Philip K. Dick was a writer who drew upon his own life to address the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia and transcendental experiences of all kinds. More than 10 major Hollywood movies are based on his work including Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, Minority Report and The Adjustment Bureau. Born in 1929 just before the Great Crash, Dick's twin sister died when she was a month old and his parents were divorced by the time he was three. In his teens, he began to show the first signs of mental instability, but by then he was already producing fiction writing of a visionary nature.

Valis is the first book in Philip K. Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being are The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). This disorienting and bleakly funny work is about a schizophrenic hero named Horselover Fat; the hidden mysteries of Gnostic Christianity; and reality as revealed through a pink laser. Valis is a theological detective story, in which God is both a missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime. "The fact that what Dick is entertaining us about is reality and madness, time and death, sin and salvation--this has escaped most critics. Nobody notices that we have our own homegrown Borges, and have had him for thirty years."--Ursula K. Le Guin, New Republic From the Trade Paperback edition.