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Hello readers,
Radio Free Albemuth is the first attempt by Philip K. Dick to deal with his exegesis in fiction, which would become a fantastic series of books based around his story VALIS. In this book, Nicholas Brady tells his sci-fi author friend Phil about the dreams he has about a communist conspiracy party called Aramchek and a satellite named “Vast Active Living Intelligence System A”, the later of which Nick and Phil believed to be Nick’s future self helping him, but we come to learn is really a low-level ‘AI voice’ from the universal group-mind.
Through VALIS, Nick meets Saddasa Sylvia, who was born with the name Aramchek, and who knew that Ferris F. Fremont had become the US President through effortless political sabotage and that the current totalitarian regime was really a hostile takeover; later on, one could imply that VALIS had assisted Ferris with the greater good in mind. Nicolas was literally being beamed this information in the form of pink-orange light that even his wife Rachel could see and verify.
The novel is only really gripping when one digs into the religious philosophy a bit; Nick was experiencing a microcosmic version of what may happen during instrumentality, with two minds instead of multiple, where the individual had to read in sequence the information that was beamed all at once; Philip K. Dick was taking the metaphors of the Bible in a literal light during his then-modern times.
Unlike Horselover Fat in the later VALIS novel, Philip K. Dick masked his experience through the character of Nicholas Brady and a fictionalized American Berkeley and Orange County, featuring the classic sci-fi twisting of real-life politics one expects from his other novels. According to Nick’s dreams, VALIS was working through alternate histories and parallel universes in order to disrupt the media and its government agents, melding all of his best tropes.
I liked how the point-of-view of the narrative bleeds between Nick’s and the fictional Phil’s through the Radio Free Albemuth’s three parts, something that later books lean right into.
Despite this list of pros, the book does have its cons due to its nature. Characters are prone to making assumptions that are just told to be true. Narrators indulge in long-winded rambles (this, however, is remedied through masked anxiety in Timothy Archer) and employ excessive metaphors, where the dramatic exposition is often only thematic with good wisdom hiding in the rough.
Here is the quick and dirty of it; the Roman Empire had only changed faces and its hierarchical rules still existed through Ferris, while VALIS fought against the hindering forces of the black iron prison through a plan spanning over multiple thousands of years into the past and future. Ferris symbolized events such as Phil being burglarized, having drugs planted in his home, the forced spying on friends and compulsory questionnaires. VALIS stood for rebelling against literal impossible odds, where one knew one would experience actual failure, but doing good anyway because the alien satellite would invade one’s mind and enact exactly what was needed to do for what it wanted to do.
Radio Free Albemuth is heavy with Gnostic themes, but also universal idealistic messages, really the entire story could be seen as an American group-mind protecting itself in an abstract way.
A quote from the book; “To an infant, when its parents leave the room they cease to be. But as he grows older he understands differently. They are there whether or not he can see them or touch them or hear their voices. It is an early lesson. But sometimes perhaps not completely learned.”
The necessity of suffering is highlighted as well, where the good can always be taken from the bad, that the work must always be done; mindlessness versus mindfulness, where leaving oneself defenseless to even minor threats is akin to sloth.
This sci-fi book managed to be one of the scariest stories I have ever read or will write about and it is not even in the horror genre; it is evident that the book is fictional, but the subject matter and the events taking place should be perceived as real to at least the author. Perhaps I am just a philosophy-kook, a paranoid and anxious believer of our literary history, but Philip K. Dick’s exegesis shakes me to my core, and the stories based on his experience continue to disturb my foundation to this day. Power equates to fear, and that is the force that fights against the universe itself. Though, it has a message of hope and for that reason the books of the VALIS series are among my favorite pieces of literature.
Thank you for reading.
Allen W. McLean
P.S.
P.P.S. The page for "Together in Forever" has been updated with information about its book: https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/together-in-forever.html
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