Name: The Divine Invasion
ISBN: 9780671443436

What Hacker News says

wormiusSep 2026

I hate that it seems the only authors I can really dig into fiction-wise is PKD and Douglas Adams. Something about their fast paced style, loose/weird tech, psychedelic, not too serious (well PKD still has some definite seriousness; but not expressed in a serious way).

I think this might be an indicator of adhd-ness. That these things grab me instantly because either I know something (usually) interesting is coming. The only PKD I've read that I've actively disliked was Timothy Archer which is comparatively tame, and nothing really comes of it compared to VALIS or Three Stigmata or Divine Invasion for example.

I've had other authors recommended based on this, but none of them really grip me the way they do. :( Maybe I just need to stick with it, like the author says - it eventually gets good. It's really hard these days as my attention span is worse than I was when I was even in my 20s (all those years ago).

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selfsimilarFeb 2026

I know nothing about this author, but this reads to me a lot like late Philip K Dick but without the "what is real" element. After his religious event in 1974, he wrote some real bangers - A Scanner Darkly, Valis, The Divine Invasion - alongside his religious exegesis. This feels a bit like an alternate timeline where PKD saw even more drugs as the way to chase this feeling, but somehow came out the other side.

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TrasmattaMay 2023

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer was finished. It was published after his death, but he did complete it.

It's also not really related to VALIS at all. I still don't really understand why people call it "the third novel in the VALIS" trilogy. It explores some of the same philosophical and religious themes, but has no connection otherwise.

The "second book", The Divine Invasion, feels closer to VALIS (and it's pretty good, I'd recommend it!), especially because of the gnostic themes. But even that is distinctly different.

VALIS honestly stands entirely on its own. PKD never wrote another book quite like it -- in fact, nobody has.

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abruzziOct 2022

I don't reccomend Valis for anyone but the most diehard Dick fans. Its an attempt to fictionalize an experience Dick had and spent the rest of his life trying to understand. It has some great moments, but it doesn't hold together terribly well as a story. I much prefer more focused stories like Scanner Darkly, Flow My Tears, or even Divine Invasion.

Supposedly Dick's experience conceived three published novels--Valis, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, and Divine invasion. There is a fourth, unpublished novel--Radio Free Albemuth that came from it as well. Valis seem to be the most personal since it someone named Philip Dick (or Horselover Fat) having the exact same experience then trying to make sense of it. Divine Invasion has more of the feel of a traditional Dick novel with someone forced to live in a hovel on an alien planet. Timothy Archer is borderline non-SciFi, with only a tiny influence of SciFi, IIRC. And Radio Free Albemuth felt a bit like a cross between Scanner Darkly and Valis--i.e. the Valis story in a dystopian future surveilance state.

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GuiADec 2014

I've been on a PKD kick recently, because I had read some of his short stories as a teenager and seen movies based on his work, and kept hearing how much of a genius he was. In the past month or so I've been going through his body of work, and my mind is getting blown at every turn. My goal is to read all that he's ever written over 2015.

Here's a rough progression I recommend for those who want to delve into one of the best writers who has ever lived (of course hardcore PKD fans might disagree with the following, and I'd be happy to debate with them :-):

STARTING POINT:

- Ubik, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, The Man In The High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - those are his most famous novels, self contained, and the most accessible. They're fantastic, and a great entry point into PKD's mind. Most of these are from the later years of his life, when he had developed a pretty consistent, high quality style. You just can't go wrong with these, and if you don't like them you probably shouldn't bother with the rest of his work.

- Movies based on his work, notably Blade Runner (which he himself expressed appreciation for, although he never saw it fully), and A Scanner Darkly, the first Total Recall + the adaptation of Confessions of a Crap Artist. While they're not strictly PKDian, they're a good way to get immersed in his way of thinking as the directors did a pretty good job of conveying his themes. The more recent ones (Adjustment Bureau, Total Recall remake, Minority Report, etc.) are fun as well but uneven in quality - but they can be a completely fine introduction to his mind bending ideas, especially if you want to convince friends who aren't into reading to try out his books.

INTERMEDIATE:

- Stuff from his mid-years: Galactic Pot Healer, Time Out Of Joint, Martian Time Slip, Confessions of a Crap Artist, The Crack In Space. Still very good stuff, but I think you need to be already well acquainted with PKD to fully appreciate them and see how his style and ideas were developing.

- The Valis Tri/Tetralogy (Valis/Divine Invasion/Radio Free Albemuth/The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). That's where you start to get deep into PKD lore, and you should read about his life to get the context in which they were written.

- Most of the short stories from ~1960 and onwards. Some are great, some less so, but they're short so you can easily get through the ones you like less.

FOR THE HARDCORE FAN ONLY:

- all the obscure short stories and remaining novels not mentioned above - they're not necessarily harder to get into, but they're from his earlier years and thus don't have the same level of craftsmanship (a few are not even really sci-fi). Also he wrote so much stuff that you should only spend time with those dozens of works if you're really, really into him.

- The Exegesis of PKD: a selection of about 10% of his personal notes, written towards the end of his life when he was completely {drugged out | schizophrenic | a religious nutjob} (pick one or more, or invent your own). It's basically his interpretations of life, the universe, and everything else, based on (somewhat sound) insights from philosophy, physics, biology, etc. This is an insane book that you can only appreciate (and have the strength to go through) if you already have a solid understanding of his world views and ideas.

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Someone recently wrote on reddit "Nobody writes like Feynman; but luckily he wrote a lot.", which is a quote that I love and would apply equally well to PKD.

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pmoriartyDec 2014

I've read a lot of PKD, though not everything. My top three picks would be:

  1 - Ubik

  2 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

  3 - Martian Time Slip

Honorable mentions:

  4 - A Maze of Death

  5 - Divine Invasion (the 2nd of the VALIS trilogy)

  6 - Eye in the Sky

Of his short stories, I'd recommend "Beyond Lies the Wub" and "Roog".

Regarding movies influenced by his work:

The original "Blade Runner" movie is far better than "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". The original "Total Recall" movie is far better than "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". "The Terminator" is far better than "Second Variety". "The Truman Show" is better in some ways than "Time Out of Joint" (though this is a closer call, and as usual Dick's vision is a lot darker than Hollywood's take on it). "A Scanner Darkly" and "Minority Report" are also minor works, which you would lose nothing by skipping.

I would also avoid prety much all of his later work and his so-called "Exegisis". For me, Philip K Dick was best when he was writing straight scifi (or at least as straight as he could write it).

Later he tried to write more "literary fiction", or things that had little if any scifi in them, and failed utterly. His navel gazing and endless obsessing about a minor mystical experience in the Exegesis could also not be any more dull. Avoid.

Some of his early and mid-career work is fantastic, though. He is definitely one of my top three favorite scifi authors, if not the very top for his best work.

He wrote A LOT, however, mostly due to being incredibly poor and yet insisting on supporting himself and his family exclusively by publishing work that was appreciated by very few people throughout almost all of his lifetime. So overall his work is of very uneven quality, and can be very hit or miss if you insist on reading through much of it.

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