Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Divine Invasion” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Divine Invasion (VALIS Trilogy #2)

Philip K. Dick

3.81 · Rating details · 6,609 Ratings · 337 Reviews

In The Divine Invasion, Philip K. Dick asks: What if God - or a being called Yah - were alive and in exile on a distant planet? How could a second coming succeed against the high technology and finely tuned rationalized evil of the modern police state? The Divine Invasion "blends Judaism, Kabalah, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity into a fascinating fable of human existence ...more

Get A Copy

Or buy for

Paperback, 238 pages

Published July 2nd 1991 by Vintage (first published 1981)

More Details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Divine Invasion, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about The Divine Invasion

Lists with This Book

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

Best of Philip K. Dick

54 books — 375 voters

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

Best Reality Warping Fiction

280 books — 135 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30)

Rating details

Sort: Default

Filter

Jan 03, 2013 Lyn rated it really liked it

The Divine Invasion is a sci-fi alternate reality version of the second coming of Christ, told as only Philip K. Dick could.

More serious than VALIS and one his more serious works overall, PKD demonstrates his deep erudition of the Bible. Fundamentalists may be put off, and the reader looking for pure science fiction may be overwhelmed with his frequent references and quotes from the Bible, but this is an important work and one that must be read by a true student of PKD.

Dick also weaves a firm ...more

flag 72 likes · Like · see review

Mar 25, 2013 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi, 2017-shelf, fantasy, reality-bending, worldbuilding-sf

This happens to be my third read and like the one that immediately precedes it, it's well worth the extra effort.

Absolutely amazing is only a part of what it is. It's also a complicated exploration of comparative religions, a roaring tale of a battle between God and the Devil, and it's also about totally re-writing reality because it's all a hologram... or is it?

It has the Living Torah, it has the Kabbalah, it has Zoroastrianism and Maat and the Fairy Queen and Palas Athena. It has a brain dama ...more

flag 57 likes · Like · see review

Apr 09, 2009 Will Byrnes rated it really liked it

Shelves: religion-and-sprituality, religion

There is the usual time-tripping here. Pay attention. It is like a LOST episode, and indeed probably inspired some of the concepts used in that estimable show. You need to keep track not only of where you are in space, but in time. The Divine Invasion (no, not a John Waters film) posits a scenario in which god, Yahweh, was essentially booted off planet Earth after the unfortunate events at Masada. Now resident in an alien hill and renamed Yah, (so much classier than Yo!) the big guy is looking t ...more

flag 51 likes · Like · see review

Nov 20, 2015 Stuart rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantastic-weird, magic-realism-reality-as-illusion, religion, dystopian

The Divine Invasion: A dense gnostic allegory about salvation
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Before his death, Philip K. Dick wrote several books about suffering, redemption, and the divine in the contexts of Christian Gnosticism, Jewish Kabbalism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, anamnesis, and the dualistic nature of the ultimate divine being. After writing two books that explored his personal religious experiences in 1974, Radio Free Albemuth (written in 1976 but not published until 1985) The Divine Invasion: A dense gnostic allegory about salvation
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Before his death, Philip K. Dick wrote several books about suffering, redemption, and the divine in the contexts of Christian Gnosticism, Jewish Kabbalism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, anamnesis, and the dualistic nature of the ultimate divine being. After writing two books that explored his personal religious experiences in 1974, Radio Free Albemuth (written in 1976 but not published until 1985) and VALIS (written in 1978 but published in 1981), he wrote The Divine Invasion (written in 1980 but published in 1981), The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (written in 1981 but published in 1982), and an unfinished novel called The Owl in Daylight. Radio Free Albemuth was the first version of what was rewritten as VALIS, and The Divine Invasion and The Owl in Daylight were intended as a thematic trilogy. However, after PDK’s death in 1982, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer was substituted for the unfinished The Owl in Daylight and grouped together as the VALIS TRILOGY.

The Divine Invasion is dense religious allegory that begins with some of the familiar SF elements frequently in PDK’s earlier novels but quickly delves into his ideas about gnosis (finding knowledge, enlightenment or salvation by recognizing a higher spiritual realm separate from the material world), anamnesis (the process of “losing forgetfulness” or regaining knowledge), and the dualistic nature of the divine Godhead, which was separated in the Fall into a superior supreme being and a lesser creator god (a “demiurge”) who shaped the material world that humans live in.

The plot is very complex, but here goes. Herb Asher lives a solitary life on a planet called CY30-CY30B, where colonists live in isolated domes. Herb is contacted by a local deity named Yah, who contacts him in a vision and demands that he help his neighbor Rybys Rommey, a woman who is sick with multiple scleroisis and also is pregnant with Yah’s baby via immaculate conception. Herb has been a recluse content to listen endlessly to the pop music of star Linda Fox and handling communications for the colony.

With the help of a bearded beggar named Elias Tate, who is the immortal incarnation of the prophet Elijah, Herb agrees to serve as husband to Rybys (like Joseph to Mary), and they travel to Earth along with Elias, ostensibly to cure her illness. However, the Earth is ruled by a Christian-Islamic Church and a Scientific Legate who are warned of the arrival of this reincarnation of Yahweh (by an A.I. system humorously named the Big Noodle) and consider this a “Divine Invasion” and threat to their dominion of the planet. But in reality, it is the fallen angel Belial who rules this world and enslaves humanity in the prison of the material world.

The authorities pursue Herb and Rybys, seeking to kill the unborn child who will be Yahweh. They escape various attempts but finally are involved in a fatal car accident which puts Herb in a coma and kills Rybys. Herb’s body is placed in cryogenic storage while waiting for a spleen replacement, and the child Emmanuel survives but suffers a head injury that causes amnesia. Meanwhile, Elias Tate manages to save the child and smuggles it to safety. Emmanuel grows up in a special school with another girl named Zina, and she gradually helps him remember his divine origins through the process of anamnesis. It becomes clear through a series of dense philosophical discussions that Emmanuel and Zina are both aspects of the divine Godhead that was split asunder in the Fall, and that it is up to both halves to unite again and heal a sick and corrupt world.

Zina reveals to Emmanuel a more idyllic parallel universe in which both Herb and Rybys are still alive. Even more strangely, Belial is nothing but a baby goat in a NY zoo. Feeling bad for it, they innocently free the goat, but Belial seizes the opportunity to regain control of this parallel world. In this world, Herb works at a high-end electronic sound system store, and encounters a beautiful young aspiring singer named Linda Fox, who he knows will become a huge star in the future. He falls in love with her, but is tricked by Belial the goat into confronting her. Eventually, Linda Fox fights and defeats Belial, freeing the world of his evil and saving Herb in the process.

Though very dense and confusing at first, The Divine Invasion reveals itself as an allegory of how the two separate aspects of the divine being, in the form of the creator Yahweh (reborn in human form as the child Emmanuel) and the feminine aspect that remained in the material world to look after and protect mankind (represented by the girl Zina Pallas and Linda Fox). The two riven parts of the Godhead must recall via anamnesis that they are one entity, and thus united confront the fallen angel Belial, who controls the material world and keeps mankind subjected to his corrupt vision of reality. The conflict between the divine and Belial also represents the struggle for salvation of individual human beings, who must live in the corrupt material world and choose between the baser pleasures of the material world ruled by Belial and the higher spiritual plane of existence beyond our world of illusions ruled by the ultimate divine being, whose various aspects include Yahweh the Creator, Christ the Savior, the feminine goddess Diana, etc.

It’s difficult to view The Divine Invasion as a SF work, because it’s really an attempt to put PKD’s extremely complex and convoluted religious and philosophical beliefs into fictional form. And unlike the more auto biographical Radio Free Albemuth and VALIS, this book takes a much broader and more allegorical approach to his still-evolving Gnostic ideas about suffering and evil in the material world, the dual nature of the divine, and the possibility of salvation through gnosis. If you are interested in these ideas, especially as they relate to PKD’s own religious experiences and life story, then you will be able to appreciate how many of his early stories questioning the morality and reality of our world evolved into his much more convoluted thinking after his religious experiences of 1974. And while he flirted with madness and schizophrenia in Radio Free Albemuth and VALIS, he seems to have found a more coherent philosophical framework for his thoughts in The Divine Invasion. It is still a difficult book to understand, and may be very unsatisfying as a work of fiction, but it remains an essential read if you are a serious PKD student who wants to achieve ‘gnosis’ by diving down his rabbit hole.

There are also several biographies of PDK that would shed more light on his life and ideas, and I will have to make time for them someday. These include Lawrence Sutin’s Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (2005) and Emmanuel Carrere’s I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick (2005), and of course the rambling, obsessive notes of PKD himself, meticulously edited and boiled down by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem in 2001 as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. If you have read all these books, consider yourself a truly dedicated scholar of the most complex, troubled and fascinating personality to have ever been part of the SF genre. ...more

flag 27 likes · Like · see review

Aug 17, 2013 Darwin8u rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2013, scifi, fiction, american

“I chose God over the material universe.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion

description

Book 2 of Philip K Dick's VALIS Trilogy (Gnostic Trilogy [God Trilogy]), 'The Divine Invasion' is a funky PKDesque exploration of good and evil, God and Belial, gnostic truth, etc. In this short novel, Emmanuel (God) is smuggled back to Earth via the womb of a Jewish woman with MS. She is accompanied by Herb Asher, a DJ protagonist of sorts (Jesus as a DJ's son) who marries Rybys (read Mary) to assist getting her and ...more

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

May 17, 2012 JSA Lowe rated it really liked it

DAMN Philip K. Dick you have got some PROBLEMS, a great many of them with women. And you're so fucking brilliant and so messed up and weird. Did you realize there is ZERO feminist criticism of you? That's about to change, my new dead crazy fucked-up friend.

flag 14 likes · Like · see review

Jul 01, 2017 Linda rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017, audio

I liked it, although I was confused a good part of the time and a stronger background in religious matters would have helped. But still, great classic PKD scenes and dialogue.

I'm enjoying the audio of the PKD novels I've listened to so far, and Dick Hill did a great job with this one.

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

Feb 16, 2016 Gray rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016-reads, philip-k-dick

"When has the government ever told anyone the truth?” (p.76)

The Divine Invasion was published in the same year as VALIS. It is the second book in the VALIS Trilogy, although there is only a brief mention of VALIS in the story. Like VALIS it addresses religion and philosophy, but it’s not as tightly structured or plotted as the first book. In fact, some parts of The Divine Invasion feel like they belong to a completely different story. According to Jonathan Lethem, one of the editors of Dick’s Ex ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Aug 17, 2016 Maria Dobos rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Dacă ar trebui să descriu cartea astea într-un cuvânt, acela ar fi halucinantă.

Alungat de pe Pământ în urma unui război, Dumnezeu încearcă să se întoarcă sub forma unui embrion în pântecul unui femei însărcinate. Ca de obicei, nimic nu se desfășoară cum ar trebui, Pământul este controlat de Belial (Diavolul) prin intermediul unei inteligențe artificiale și, în urma unui accident, Manny (Emmanuel, Yah, Dumnezeu) își pierde memoria. Așadar, lupta finală ce are ca miză însăși existența Universului ...more

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

May 16, 2007 Andrew rated it it was amazing

Now my favorite book in the so-called "Valis Trilogy," The Divine Invasion takes the heady gnostic concepts of Valis and truly presents them in an unabashedly "sci-fi" context - the infant Christ has been reborn on mars to a woman with M.S. after a divine conception, and must be smuggled back onto earth, which is completely under Satan's control via artificial intelligence and totalitarian government. And that's merely the setup for a book that ends up in a completely different place than you'd ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Apr 14, 2008 Jonathan rated it really liked it

the internal battle for reality, the good vs. the evil, the light vs. the dark, children vs. goats -
its a throwdown for all of humanity. its intergalactic and its terrifying, its your soul and its winner take all. Sunday, sunday, sunday - BE THERE!!!

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Nov 11, 2013 Tom Bensley rated it really liked it

I feel sorry for Philip K Dick. I mean, before he died. It's probably a good thing he didn't live to see Hollywood steal all of his ideas and completely debase and dumb them down to make crappy forgettable movies, not mentioning his name anywhere for their inspiration.

But really, the guy didn't get the credit he deserved. He ate dog food and he only had time to write 200 pagers rather than the Infinite Jest-sized mega-beast I know he wanted to write. And then just as he was getting some money an I feel sorry for Philip K Dick. I mean, before he died. It's probably a good thing he didn't live to see Hollywood steal all of his ideas and completely debase and dumb them down to make crappy forgettable movies, not mentioning his name anywhere for their inspiration.

But really, the guy didn't get the credit he deserved. He ate dog food and he only had time to write 200 pagers rather than the Infinite Jest-sized mega-beast I know he wanted to write. And then just as he was getting some money and respect, he died due to his shitty lifestyle. Luckily before that he wrote a helluva lot of those 200-pagers and most of them feel connected, so reading his works feels like piecing together a huge novel with no order but clear development of thought. In some ways it's more fun like that.

Mostly my pity for him has come reading VALIS and now The Divine Invasion. I pity him because he was very disturbed in his later years and his entire foundations about reality and existence had been completely shaken by a strange divine experience he had. It sounds cool and the fiction he came up with is certainly awesome, but I don't think anyone would wish for what happened to Dick. Whether drug-induced or just crazyness or real divine intervention, Dick stopped believing that this world was the real one, because a pink beam of light told him and showed him otherwise. I feel sorry for him because after reading the scrawling, desperate madness of VALIS, I realised how much the experience fucked him up. But he wasn't crazy enough to go completely crazy. That book shows that he thought he was probably crazy but might not be, caught in a cage match with his own rationality and the experience he had, poking fun at himself for his readers but on an exhausting quest to find the truth.

But the 2nd book is different. Here, Dick seems to be entertaining the idea that the experience definitely happened and through protagonist Herb Asher, a strange paranoid fantasy comes through. Without spoiling too much, which is why I'm talking about the author and not the book, Dick wonders whether God or Gods were playing games with him. As if divine beings had chosen him to make bets with one another, to test the fabric of reality and to challenge human perception and faith. The Divine Invasion is much more controlled in its writing than the series' first, but the outrageousness of the story suggests Dick was completely on his own in discovering the secrets of the universe. Of what I've read, this for me is his most impenetrable work because it's too difficult to read the message he was trying to communicate to readers, but also because there is so much in here that needs further exploration. You know, like, more than 200 pages or so. And unfortunately the ending sucks. Hopefully the third book in the series will answer some of my questions. Whatever they are. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Nov 18, 2009 Tony rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

Dick, Philip K. THE DIVINE INVASION. (1981). ***. Dick experienced (suffered?) a psychic event on 2/3/74 that completely changed his thinking and his approach to life. In today’s terms, he would have become a rabid born-again Christian. His epiphany resulted in a significant change in his writing. Although he still wrote in the science fiction genre, his books become more and more about religion and his characters more and more like cardboard cutouts for religious figures. His last three books c Dick, Philip K. THE DIVINE INVASION. (1981). ***. Dick experienced (suffered?) a psychic event on 2/3/74 that completely changed his thinking and his approach to life. In today’s terms, he would have become a rabid born-again Christian. His epiphany resulted in a significant change in his writing. Although he still wrote in the science fiction genre, his books become more and more about religion and his characters more and more like cardboard cutouts for religious figures. His last three books constituted a trilogy, of which this one was the middle one. The first one was VALIS (see blurb in Q3-09); the succeeding one, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. In this book, we learn that Yaweh is coming back to Earth to battle Belial. He has to sneak in, though, as the foetus of Rybys Rommey, a former occupant of a colony on a distant planet of a different star system. She is being taken to Earth – aside from the hidden reason of bringing Yaweh – to be treated for muscular distrophy while she is six-months pregnant with what will soon become Manny (Emmanuel). To facilitate matters, a neighbor of hers on the colony, Herb Asher, pretends to be her husband so that they can get through inspection at immigration. When she is examined at immigration, they find that even though she is pregnant, she is still a virgin. The forces that be on Earth catch wind of her arrival and do everything in their power to keep the foetus from being born. These forces include the various religious organizations that run the world. A government airship is sent out and collides with an airtaxi that the couple is taking to Bethesda Hospital and knocks it into a building. Herb is severely injured; his spleen is ruined and has to be removed. He is then placed into cryonic suspension until a replacement organ can be found. Rybys is killed, but they manage to save the baby. All of these adventures thus far are narrated with lots of supporting quotes from the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Rabbinical Commentaries, and vague references to pre-Christian works. Much of it comes across as a mass of psychobabble about religion and right vs. wrong. It’s a story about the contest between God, under various names, and his fight with Evil, also under various names. I get the feeling that Dick’s “event” was drug induced, and that his thinking became non-linear after that. Reading this novel should be required as part of the curriculum in the study of abnormal psychology. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Feb 08, 2011 Em Grove rated it it was amazing

One of my favorite Philip K. Dick books. It explores the theme of parallel universes that sneaks into most of his work, and gives a nail-biting account of Yahweh's, and creation at large's, struggle to survive in a world with harmful religious leaders and stifling bureaucracy. All of the characters really come to life for me, from the strong and grounded Rybys Rommey to the Scared-of-the-World Herbert Asher, who would prefer to live in his fantasies than reality, to the eerie and truly scary Bel ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Jul 03, 2017 John rated it liked it

Meh. Not bad, but definitely not as good as VALIS. In that book, PKD seemed to care about the narrative just as much as he cared about pouring the kooky ideas out of his head. Not the case with this second book, unfortunately.

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Dec 03, 2014 T4ncr3d1 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, sperimentale, statunitensi, strano-forte

"Questo mondo, questo pianeta, tutto quanto, e tutta la sua popolazione: tutto qui dorme".

Secondo episodio della visionaria Trilogia di Valis. Dopo un primo episodio praticamente privo di elementi fantascientici, i cui tratti surreali sono giustificati da un narratore/protagonista inattendibile, Dick ritorna alla fantascienza più classica, quasi un ritorno alle (sue) origini, che strizza l'occhio al suo giovanile mito delle utopistiche e felici colonie oltremondo.
Nuova variazione sul tema, Dick "Questo mondo, questo pianeta, tutto quanto, e tutta la sua popolazione: tutto qui dorme".

Secondo episodio della visionaria Trilogia di Valis. Dopo un primo episodio praticamente privo di elementi fantascientici, i cui tratti surreali sono giustificati da un narratore/protagonista inattendibile, Dick ritorna alla fantascienza più classica, quasi un ritorno alle (sue) origini, che strizza l'occhio al suo giovanile mito delle utopistiche e felici colonie oltremondo.
Nuova variazione sul tema, Dick ripropone la vicenda autobiografica dell'esperienza mistica, questa volta sovrapponendovi un intreccio tipicamente sci-fi: così, in ordine sparso, ritornano il mistico "raggio rosa", l'idea del tempo che si è fermato al 70 d.C., il concetto di Dio come informazione e Valis, la divinità aliena che in questo nuovo capitolo manda nel mondo umano un figlio. E per non rendere le cose più facili, questa volta il figlio in questione è privo di memoria.
La storia è così sdoppiata in due filoni: da un lato il tentativo del piccolo Emmanuel di ritrovare la memoria perduta, dall'altro il racconto (tra passato e presente e pure tra realtà alternative) della coppia umana cui era stata affidata la seconda venuta di Dio.
La prima parte del romanzo sembra un'ottima sintesi delle diverse esperienze letterarie di Dick: l'omaggio (parodistico?) alla sua fantascienza giovanile, il conflitto sonno/veglia e vita/morte ripreso direttamente da Ubik, la cospirazione mondiale (questa volta religiosa). Poi, improvvisamente, l'intero romanzo si sgancia dal suo percorso e vira verso direzioni impensate e impensabili, mentre Emmanuel, ritrovata la memoria e tornato in possesso delle sue divine facoltà, comincia a modificare la realtà a suo piacimento.
Ciò che distingue fortemente Divina invasione da Valis è (oltre all'evidene diversa fonte religiosa: qui l'ebraismo, lì il cristianesimo gnostico) il punto di approdo della ricerca. Se Valis è il tentativo (fallito) di accostarsi a Dio seguendo voci interiori che sono o non sono deliri mistici di un pazzo, Divina invasione parte dalla seconda venuta di Dio che è raffigurato come un bambino capriccioso che gioca con le realtà come se fossero dadi, ma il vero protagonista è Belial, l'invisibile antagonista di Emmanuel, il Male-nel-mondo.
Il finale è brusco e lascia tutto in sospeso, ma è chiaro che NON troveremo risposte nel romanzo conclusivo della trilogia. Del resto, la vicenda del primo sembrava risolutiva, sembrava presentare un'imminente fine del mondo; e invece, è un ricordo lontano che riecheggia in Divina invasione, ambientato in un futuro molto più lontano. Chissà cosa accadrà nell'ultimo e (non) definitivo romanzo di Philip K. Dick! ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Aug 24, 2008 Jim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi-geek

Philip K. Dick did exactly the right thing with his encounter with the divine (or psychotic break, depending on who you ask). He /kept writing/. Divine Invasion is the second of the VALIS tetralogy, which includes VALIS, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, The Divine Invasion, and Radio Free Albemuth. (RFA was published posthumously, but it still addresses the same themes. The Divine Invasion is probably the most coherent of the "VALIS series". VALIS was groundbreaking, and it shattered any pr ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Apr 07, 2018 spikeINflorida rated it liked it

A potent and heady stew of Judaism, Kabalah, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity...all cooked-up from Phil's bizarre 1974 religious experience. Of the thirteen PKD novels I've read to date, THE DIVINE INVASION was the most difficult and least humorous. It is the second book in the Valis trilogy. Heavy on theologic and apostolic ruminations, it's an alternate reality version of Jesus Christ's return to Earth. Three stars for my favorite character Herb Asher and his zany wife Rybys Rommey and preache ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jun 30, 2016 Mariana Orantes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Es una gran novela que mezcla cristianismo con la cábala, teorías psicoanalíticas con mitos fundacionales, perspectivas del cuerpo y una extraña combinación de tiempo y espacio. En la novela mínimo se superponen, como capas, cuatro realidades: La "realidad" en la cual Emmanuel sobrevive y está en la escuela donde conoce a Zina; luego, en la mente de Herb Asher que recuerda la vida vacía e inútil en las cápsulas del planeta CY30-CY30B donde pasa los días escuchando cintas de Linda Fox hasta que Y ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Apr 22, 2011 David rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, religion

This story is an amalgamation of various religions and philosophies, along with a bit of science fiction and fantasy. God finds that he needs to be smuggled back to earth, in the womb of a virgin woman, Rybys. God's mission in returning to Earth is to battle against Belial, a sort of Satan in the guise of a caged animal at the zoo. Rybys is very sick, and is granted permission to return to Earth for medical treatments. However, Earth is ruled by tyrannical religious leaders who try their best to ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jul 06, 2007 Travis Johns rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: People on busses.

... Dick can do better. While Valis was an incredible novel that fully explored Dick's enlightenment/mental collapse via a lifelong addiction to uppers and his views of the divine, electronic music and pink lasers, this book seems to be more os a scifi thriller that really fails to go anywhere, despite the fact that it's set on both intergalactic exploration outposts, as well as parts of NY and LA. The climax was weak, the whole concept of the divine as an illegal "alien" being aided by the phys ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Dec 20, 2011 Travis Todd rated it it was ok

It's baffling to me that this is considered to be part of a trilogy with Valis and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Sure, they all contain religious themes, and underlying each of them you can see the struggle of Dick to interpret his mystical experiences. But beyond that they have very little, if anything, to do with each other.
I consider The Divine Invasion to be much less satisfying than Valis. None of the characters come alive on the page. Emmanuel and Zina are profundity-spouting cip ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 24, 2015 Jimmy Ele rated it really liked it

Shelves: foundation

This book is great for the dialogue between the characters. PKD takes a little bit from the various religions of the world and creates a science fiction story based very loosely on the second coming of Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him). The novel is brilliant in it's depiction of two alternating realities (or worlds) at the same time. One world being more real than the next, and in the end creating a sort of amalgamation of both. The book is very epic in its prose and dialogue as mentioned before ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 08, 2016 Dan DalMonte rated it liked it

This novel was a difficult read. It contains a lot of profound meditation on theological issues like divine omnipotence and the reality of evil. It is so abstract though and there is not much of a plot, just a lot of wordy and artificial dialogue. It is based on a mystical experience that Dick had and it seems like he didn't spend much time integrating these experiences into a novel. Part of the problem could be that this novel is a part of a trilogy, which I did not know before I started readin ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 27, 2009 zim rated it it was amazing

"The Evil One in a cage at the zoo- what, with his own temperature and gravity and atmosphere, and imported food? An exotic life form?'
'He's angry as hell about it.'"

"You beguile me. You lead me from the path with sparks of light, dancing, singing, and the sound of bells; always the sound of bells."

"Do not make war on it but bring flowers."

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Dec 13, 2012 Sentimental Surrealist rated it it was ok

Shelves: would-you-look-at-this-mess, science-fiction, religion, theology, philosophy, how-much-acid, losing-my-religion, who-are-you-calling-paranoid, good-but-nothing-special, 1981

I'm not sure if the Divine Invasion is a good book or not, but I like it just the same. I like it because I have a taste for the bizarre and the out-there, and conceptually, this novel is as out-there as they come. This is the one where Philip K. Dick swan dives off the deep end, building on the metaphysical, theological, and philosophical mind-warp VALIS. I guess you can say it explains the events, what with the Empire and the pink dot and all, but it's the sort of explanation that might leave I'm not sure if the Divine Invasion is a good book or not, but I like it just the same. I like it because I have a taste for the bizarre and the out-there, and conceptually, this novel is as out-there as they come. This is the one where Philip K. Dick swan dives off the deep end, building on the metaphysical, theological, and philosophical mind-warp VALIS. I guess you can say it explains the events, what with the Empire and the pink dot and all, but it's the sort of explanation that might leave you with more questions than answers.

Luckily, it's a fascinating explanation. Dick was fascinated with Gnostic Christianity, which holds that the real god was exiled and a false one presides over a false universe; only the return of the true god will restore reality. Even before you factor in his own religious experience (better documented elsewhere), you can probably see why this might interest the man behind Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. This novel is best when it deals with its Gnostic aspects. It walks the reader through a blend of that, ancient Judaism, and Egyptian religion in a stunningly plainspoken way, bolstered by the guy's dry wit. It's almost a can't-miss concept, but it's made all the more fascinating when you place it within the broader framework of Dick's earlier novels - not just VALIS and Radio Free Albemuth, but plenty from even before his religious experience in the early '70s.

The problem is, it's not much of a novel. Granted, VALIS flips between philosophical discourse and bizarre plot, and I gave that five stars. But the genre roulette approach it takes is all sorts of fun, the metafictional narrative technique is at once completely badass and a remarkably original way to get the story across, and its occasional fits of paranoid anti-government lunacy (which are made 100% more paranoid and kookier when you consider the events of this book) are entertaining. It's a hard book to put down, in other words, which is probably why I blazed through it in an afternoon.

This doesn't offer us anywhere near as much to keep us going when hte discourse ain't flowing. There's a dystopic church-cum-political organization that just sort of hangs out; there's a "multiple timelines at once" plot which is more clumsy and confusing than anything else; there's a messy, urgent rush towards a massive anticlimax; and there are irritatingly flat characters who aren't much more than mouthpieces for the aforementioned discourse, which often swoops in at the last minute and saves the day for me.

Man, I don't even know what to do with this one. It seemed to me like, in an effort to process his religious practice, Dick crammed more than he should have into these 260 pages. Maybe if he had written one novel about exiled God Yah's attempt to communicate with Herb, Elias and Rybys and a second novel about their attempts to reinstate the true god on Earth, he could've solved this novel's issues with character development and pacing; besides, nothing wrong with a VALIS tetralogy. Or pentalogy, because why not let Radio Free Albemuth join the fun? As it stands now, it's an uneven mess with too many intriguing ideas for me to slap it with the two-star rating I imagine it objectively deserves. Shame - there were two good novels waiting to be developed here. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 04, 2017 Theo Logos rated it liked it

Shelves: philosophy-religion, scifi, series

If you were amazed by Valis, you likely will find The Divine Invasion disappointing in some degree. This second book of the thematic Valis trilogy lacks the emotional power of the semi autobiographical first entry, and is a narrative nightmare, even by Dick's standards. Still, it engages fiercely with the author's lifelong questioning of reality and identity, and mixes these themes freely with the obsession of his final decade - the line between spiritual gnosis and madness. If you have the pati ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 27, 2018 Kayla rated it really liked it

Again, another thought-provoking book. I enjoyed the mix of theological and science fiction. The book ended rather too abruptly for my liking.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 14, 2012 Jeremy rated it liked it

The Divine Invasion is Philip K. Dick’s penultimate novel. It is also the second novel in a trilogy based on his 2-3-74 experiences and the concept of VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System). Having come back into Dick’s orbit once again, seeing the Radio Free Albemuth film and reading Sutin’s Divine Invasions (1989), I was ready for some more Dickian tomfoolery.

Dick’s body of work is inconsistent, but on the whole very good to brilliant. He really churned them out at times and on occasio The Divine Invasion is Philip K. Dick’s penultimate novel. It is also the second novel in a trilogy based on his 2-3-74 experiences and the concept of VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System). Having come back into Dick’s orbit once again, seeing the Radio Free Albemuth film and reading Sutin’s Divine Invasions (1989), I was ready for some more Dickian tomfoolery.

Dick’s body of work is inconsistent, but on the whole very good to brilliant. He really churned them out at times and on occasions it showed. Conversely Dick took some time writing The Divine Invasion, as revealed in Sutin’s book, however it is slightly disappointing in that it is unfocussed and too theologically heavy. Actually heavy is a good term to use as Dick really wrestled with his religious obsessions, many of them originating from the ontological insights and visions of 2-3-74. The book really strains under the weight of an incredible brain trying to frame its thoughts and experiences into a fairly typical Philip K. Dick narrative.

The Divine Invasion begins on Earth with Manny, a six year old boy and his guardian - Elias, talking about his deceased mother and the “zone of evil that lay over everything”. Manny was conceived on the colony planet of CY30-CY30B, a catchy name that’s for sure. Manny has memory problems and his father - Herb Asher, is in cryonic suspension due to an accident when they arrived on Earth. Herb is mentally stimulated to relive his life, giving him the impression that he’s still alive. In a typical Dick joke poor old Herb is driven to distraction within this cryonic dream-like state because the equipment used to keep him going is picking up transmissions from a nearby radio station that is constantly playing all string versions of Fiddler on the Roof. From here the tale of how and why they’ve all ended up on Earth is retold, giving the reader the impression that they are merely privy to Herb’s cryonic replay. Whether this is the case or not, typically, becomes unclear. Of course being a Philip K. Dick book I’m giving absolutely nothing away here.

Manny is divine in origin and Earth is under the rule of a religious and secular coalition of which Dick portrays as being evil, or at least inferior to the true god. Such concepts actually mirror some of his own experiences and beliefs. The occluded truths of his novels weren’t that far from how he actually viewed reality. Perhaps this is the most interesting aspect of this book, at least if you are familiar with Dick himself. His obsessions are made manifest here, including his infatuation with Linda Ronstadt in the form of singer Linda Fox, who, of course, is not what she seems.

The average reader may be perplexed or put off by the theological ruminations of the principle protagonists. There’s a great deal of dialogue in The Divine Invasion and much of it is about obscure theological notions. The novel really gets bogged down and doesn’t adequately recover. Despite this there is still much to enjoy here, including Herb Asher’s conversation with an air traffic cop (they get around in flying cars of course), in which he argues that he should be let go because the cop himself is not real, and he gets away with it.

The Divine Invasion is probably not the best place to start if you are a Philip K. Dick novice. To seasoned Dick readers it is fascinating, darkly funny and typically ultimately hard to fathom, which is what you want from a Philip K. Dick book really. It’s kind of sad, as Dick died only a few years after he wrote this and one year after it was published. I’m yet to read his last book - The Transmigrations of Timothy Archer (1982), so I don’t know whether he ended on a high note. Had he lived I have no doubt that he would have kept writing, continuing his efforts to shape his religious experiences into great science fiction narratives.

From my blog http://excelsiorforever.blogspot.com.au/

...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 22, 2017 Christian Lipski rated it really liked it

(audiobook) If you know the Bible somewhat, you'll get a lot out of it. It's kind of a reboot of the Nativity story, with some gnosticism and Dick's own personal theology added. It's a good twist on the story, set in more relatable times so the reader can understand the stresses and risks at play.

A lot less of the philosophy than other novels, with more focus on plot. Definitely a good read alongside the other VALIS novels: VALIS, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, and Radio Free Albemuth.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Sci-Fi Group Book...: The Divine Invasion	2	19	Mar 09, 2015 06:39PM
Philip K Dick: The meaning of Anamnesis	8	43	Dec 10, 2013 06:56PM

Readers Also Enjoyed

Genres

Science Fiction

339 users

Fiction

155 users

Religion

44 users

See top shelves…

About Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick

12,725 followers

Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. In 1952, he began writing professionally and proceeded to write numerous novels and short-story collections. He won the Hugo Award for the best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Philip K. Di ...more

More about Philip K. Dick

Other books in the series

VALIS Trilogy (3 books)

Books by Philip K. Dick

More…

Trivia About The Divine Invasion

13 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from The Divine Invasion

“What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.” — 22 likes

“Sometimes I think this planet is under a spell," Elias said. "We are asleep or in a trance, and something causes us to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it wants us to remember and think. Which means we're whatever it wants us to be. Which in turn means that we have no genuine existence. We're at the mercy of some kind of whim.” — 11 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick

The Divine Invasion (VALIS Trilogy #2)

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers Also Enjoyed

Genres

About Philip K. Dick

Other books in the series

Books by Philip K. Dick

Trivia About The Divine Invasion

Quotes from The Divine Invasion