Name: Radio Free Albemuth
ISBN: 9780358449034

Radio Free Albemuth

Science fiction novel, a wild and visionary alternate history of the United States. It is 1969, and a paranoid president has convulsed America in a vicious war against imaginary internal enemies. As the country slides into fascism, a struggling science-fiction writer named Philip K. Dick is trying to keep from becoming one of that war's casualties. Meanwhile, Dick's best friend, a record executive named Nicholas Brady, is receiving transmissions from an extraterrestrial intelligence, which he dubs Valis, who apparently wants him to overthrow the president.

What Hacker News says

jauntywundrkindDec 2025

I've asked AI to help some, and maybe it's me who hallucinated it, but something that's super stuck with me from reading Philip K Dick's VALIS trilogy/Radio Free Albemuth were two dual modes: of the scorching mid-day heat of the Palm Tree Garden, a sweltering heat of the sun/that red even with your eyes closed, then at night, a sort of relief, an un-watched-over state. I enjoyed VALIS the first time a lot, but going back and finding these specific sections has a strong lure to it.

At the time it felt cute, a nice flourish. But over the years, the idea has sort of grown into me. I find that during the day, my critical mind is quite active & wants really exact precise things. Expectations can be large & slow down just letting things pour out of me. Now, this isn't the same in-between sleep/waking state as the article, but at night a lot of my concern goes away, and I can just enjoy things, work on things, uninhibited. Let it flow. Some level of tiredness can help.

I would like to be better about the flip side. I think the morning is another interesting, that a lot of people use well & love. Before the world is really awake, seizing the moment. Ursala Le Guin wrote about her daily routine, which involves waking prompty & writing writing writing. I feel like there's likely strong similarity. But also it sure feels good to have a bunch of work under your belt at the beginning of the day, right away. https://www.openculture.com/2019/01/ursula-k-le-guins-daily-...

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prependMay 2023

I love the VALIS trilogy and like to recommend Radio Free Albemuth as an intro book to new PKD readers.

It’s basically a rewrite of the trilogy in a single, short novel.

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r721May 2023

Did you read something about him as a person? He was a profoundly weird person (one example from wiki: "Dick alleged that Stanisław Lem was probably a false name used by a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party to gain control over public opinion, and wrote a letter to the FBI to that effect"), and that weirdness seeped into his novels. I think you could try one of his semi-autobiographical novels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Albemuth) to see where this weirdness in the more known novels comes from.

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ttctciyfOct 2022

As a long-time reader and fan I broadly agree with the highlighting choices. My only further suggestion would be, maybe for the final "body and soul" category or maybe for those who already have some familiarity with the author, Radio Free Albemuth.

This has an interesting history: PKD declined to make changes requested by the publishers who appeared unhappy with the novel's political content - it is in part a biting satire on Nixon era politics - and it languished until Dick's friend Tim Powers made a MS available which was published posthumously in 1985.

The novel itself was written in 1976 and was PKD's first attempt to process the unusual experiences which inspired his later "VALIS" fiction. As such it contains autobiographical elements: some of Dick's real-life experiences happen to protagonist Nick Brady, who swaps theories about them with his scifi author friend "Phil".

Because of this, apart from its value as a novel, there's lots to interest those curious about the author himself. For example, one episode in particular puts the existence of PKD's letters to the FBI condemning Stanislav Lem as a commie agent of some kind, which I read somewhere were retrieved by the FBI from his garbage, in an entirely new light!

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cturnerOct 2022

I have read a fair bit of pkd and found Valis an unsatisfying struggle. Radio Free Albemuth is an earlier attempt at similar ideas and is accessible.

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rektideApr 2022

Reading VALIS trilogy & latter Radio Free Albemuth was a lifechanging experience, about a core lifechanging PKD encounter. The idea of the BIP is a super strong idea among tbis, an atemproal archin dogging us. Very gnostic to me.

There's some Discordianism tie in too I think but Im forgetting exactly where.

Anyhow, highly recommend. Wish this had gotten more votes & traction, oddball as it is for this place.

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