The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

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1. TrasmattaJan 2024
   Tangential, but I recently read The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K Dick. It was one of his last books (and one of his best) and has a character inspired by Alan Watts. There's an interesting sequence where that character suddenly grasps the conceptual nature of reality at a deep level. He goes home to write it down, but sees two children playing in the street. He tries to explain to their mother that they're in danger, but she doesn't speak English. So he spends the rest of the afternoon watching the kids, and then forgets the epiphany he had.

   > What I had acquired, there on that walk, out of my apartment where I had no access to pen and paper, was a comprehension of a world conceptually arranged, a world not arranged in time and space and by causation, but a world as idea conceived in a great mind, the way our own minds store memories. I had caught a glimpse of world not as my own arrangement—by time, space and causation—but as it is in itself arranged; Kant’s ‘thing-in-itself.’”

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2. rantwaspJun 2020
   if we’re into this, Valis, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, A Maze Of Death, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch are all facets of the same diamomd.

   IMHO, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is by far the best PKD book.

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3. selimthegrimNov 2018
   You might want to check out the Philip K Dick book “The Transmigration of Timothy Archer”
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4. 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.

   ---

   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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5. bookofjoeApr 2025
   >... terrible at titles...

   I disagree. Here are some that retain their power all these decades later and will likely do so for the foreseeable future:

   Time Out of Joint

   The Man in the High Castle

   Martian Time-Slip

   The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

   Clans of the Alphane Moon

   The Simulacra

   Now Wait for Last Year

   Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)/Blade Runner (1982)

   Ubik

   We Can Build You

   Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

   A Scanner Darkly

   The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

   Radio Free Albemuth

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6. shervinafsharApr 2025
   Most of the above are his titles. Some which were published in serialized form before being published in a single volume (Martian Time-Slip and We Can Build You) had different titles. Letters, manuscripts, and publication notes are helpful to shed some light on this matter; e.g. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer was regularly referred to as the "Archer novel" or "Bishop Timothy Archer".
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