6.29.2008

The Divine Invasion

It took me about five minutes worth of reading The Divine Invasion and a serious bout of deja-vu to realize that I had, in fact, read the book years before. The second book in Philip K. Dick's gnostic trilogy (for lack of a better descriptor) is a continuation of the themes of the first book, VALIS, but set far in the future. Now I recall reading it (admittedly out of order because the subject was really interesting to me, and VALIS was not) and I remember being pretty confused about the whole thing. Surprise, surprise that actually reading the books in order (shocker) sheds some helpful light on the rather complex religious themes.
In a nutshell, The Divine Invasion is what it sounds like: "God" was kicked off the planet around 73 AD and has been living on a mountain on a distant planet. Now, he wants to come back to Earth, which is heavily influenced by his adversary. His attempt to come back in the womb of a virgin succeeds, but evil forces caused her shuttle to explode. He survived, but is brain damaged. I can't imagine this book going over well in the midwest, not to pick on a particular part of the country. For me, however, it puts a spring in my type and I chuckle aloud at the outrageous, unique, and clever audacity of the book.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stop reading so fast, dammit! I can't catch up. I just picked up Our Man... at the library and had to get The Third Man as well.

Matt said...

Don't blame me, blame my Metro commute that has me reading 1.5 hours per workday (and using zero gas, meh heh heh). Of course, during the summer, my attendance has sloughed off to an average of 3 days / week. To make up for it, I am travelling to Hawaii next week. Expect even MORE reading!