The first book in Philip K. Dick's final trilogy (followed by <i>The Divine Invasion</i> and <i>The Transmigration of Timothy Archer</i>), <i>VALIS </i>encapsulates many of the themes that Dick was obsessed with over the course of his career. A disorienting and bleakly funny novel, <i>VALIS</i> (which stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System) is about a schizophrenic man named Horselover Fat (who just might also be known as Philip Dick); the hidden mysteries of Gnostic Christianity; and reality as revealed through a pink laser. <i>VALIS</i> is a theological detective story, in which God is both a missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime. </p>Taking place in the same universe as Dick's soon-to-be-published <i>Exegesis</i>, <i>VALIS</i> is a dense novel, but one that is absolutely essential to understanding the author's off-kilter worldview. Much like Dick himself, the reader is left wondering what is real, what is fiction, and what the price is for divine inspiration.</p>