Valis

What Hacker News says

1. polytelyJul 2026
   yeah for me it's all about specificity, like no one else but Philip K. Dick could have written VALIS, it is so tied to his life and psychology. Its difficult for me to imagine something which is is build on huge amounts of various cultural output to retain the specificity of a singular limited human life-perspective.
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2. piltdownmanApr 2026
   If you want the druggy, high-concept, ersatz-reality version go with Philip K. Dick - namely The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, A Scanner Darkly, VALIS.

   If you want the intellectual take go with A Canticle for Leibowitz (Miller), Oryx and Crake (Atwood) or Solaris (Lem).

   If you want the 60s hard-science rooted societal outlook from an ex-Naval Engineer with strong views on gender roles, it's all about Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers etc..

   If you want something to share with the young adults in your life, or simply some of the finest writing in the contemporary British YA canon, then Philip Pulman's magnificent homage to 'Paradise Lost' - the 'His Dark Materials trilogy' - cannot come more highly recommended. Usually categorised as 'fantasy', and heavily indebted to Milton and Blake, this represents a master-class in parallel-universe world building with its own take on a Steampunk Oxford and a number of other science fiction tropes.

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3. 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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4. xkcd-sucksOct 2024
   Moby Dick, Herman Melville

   VALIS, Philip K Dick

   Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance + also Lila, Robert Pirsig

   Naked Lunch, William Burroughs

   Immortality, Milan Kundera

   Catch-22, Joseph Heller (pair with The Deserters, Charles Glass -- In fact a lot of the stuff in Catch-22 is actually toned down from reality)

   Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha, Daniel Ingram (but ignore 80% of it)

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5. iainmerrickMay 2020
   I adore Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but for Philip K Dick at his most mind-bending, I’d instead go for Valis
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6. evo_9May 2020
   VALIS by Philip K Dick. It explores the nature of reality through the lens of mental illness / madness.
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