Last night, I went to the famed Berkeley, California bookstore Moe’s Books to hear writer Jonathan Lethem and editor Pamela Jackson talk about the new book The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. As the name “Haikasoru” itself hints, we are great fans of Philip K. Dick, and his Hugo Award-winning novel The Man in the High Castle (high castle=haikasoru), and Dicks’ exegesis has been a long time coming. The house was packed with fans!

In 1974, Dick had a religious experience (check out the comic strip summary by R. Crumb) in which he “realized” that the Roman Empire had never fallen. He spent the rest of his life trying to come to terms with his vision, and he left behind nearly 9000 pages of material—letters, graphs, and other writing—trying to come to philosophical and theological terms with his experience. He did this while still being a prolific writer of science fiction novel. The three novels of the VALIS trilogy hint at his religious experience, but the exegesis itself has gone unpublished…until now.

Of course, Lethem pointed out right away, it’s not the whole exegeis. The new book is only about 1000 pages long, and has annotations and remarks from the editors and from scholars as well. So maybe a tenth of the two file cabinet drawers worth of material is represented in the book.

Two of Dick’s daughters were present as well. Laura Leslie and Isa Dick Hackett had conflicted memories of their father, and both only made a few comments, but they were interesting. Leslie noted that her father wasn’t “crazy” or “schizophrenic”, and that the exegesis shows a grasp of philosophy that few people have. Hackett relayed an anecdote in which her father, having described seeing an angel, burst into tears.

It was a very strange night about a very strange book. And that strangeness reminded me of the many joys of science fiction.