VALIS: God Debate Mirroring Real World

While reading VALIS, I noticed how close in absurdity the debate about God's existence mirrors the real world. Full disclosure: I'm a practicing Catholic, but I have difficulty accepting things about the actions of God, or his presence, as absolute fact. I feel bad, and scared every so often, about my failure to believe in full. I hold a cautionary view: I hope God is real, because death and ceasing to be for eternity sounds like absolutely the worst thing in the world.

After revealing myself as someone who is not entirely convinced or unconvinced about the existence of God, it annoys me to see the fully convinced Christians (and other religious types, I suppose) and atheist spouting off about how right they are and why the other side is stupid.

We see this reflected in VALIS, with Fat and Kevin representing the sanctimonious Christian and the stubborn atheist, respectively. Fat talks endlessly about how he has seen God and must broadcast it to everyone who will be damned if the don't believe, while Kevin makes a flimsy argument about his dead cat disproving God. The absolute head-smashing refusal of either side to acknowledge the other mirrors the real world, both with the Bible verse-quoting people who do not practice what the preach to the counterculture arrested adolescent atheists who make unoriginal jokes about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

In the end, it is best to just tune everyone out and read a book, until you see this debate in a book like VALIS.

An Introverted Perspective

As I was reading A Scanner Darkly, I developed quite a likeable disposition toward Bob Arctor (a.k.a. Fred), which is more than I can say about the other characters we encountered in the other novels so far. I connected with Arctor because of his want to not be bothered by all the matters and people in the world, only doing so because it is part of his job. For instance, after he receives his assignment to spy on himself from Hank, he goes home and just lays down, trying to find quiet moments where no one can bother him or tell him what to do, before he succumbs to the work.

In less dramatic circumstances, that is my natural response to undesirable tasks. Some of my more pleasant memories are coming home or getting back to my dorm room after getting through a rather unpleasant day where I thought I either embarrassed myself or I got annoyed at a superior, much like Arctor/Fred was annoyed at Hank. After all, no matter how unpleasant the outside world may be, there is always a place that is reserved just for me and no one else.

Arctor's behavior is the mark of a true introvert, which allows him time for self-reflection and reflection on others. In these times, we not only get a deeper understanding of his views, but we also receive hints on how he may react to solve his issues. It'll be interesting to see if his character continues to progress from just another jaded man to a game-changing character. (And yes, it is nearly 1:40 in the morning, so please ignore the probably incoherent mess of ideas established in the last two sentences. Consider them talking points to develop much further.)

More Overt Religious Tone

In reading the second part of The Three Stigmata, I thought it conveyed the religious tone that others said was present in the first part but that I apparently mostly missed. We got a sense of the god or devil (my interpretation, which contrasts with Barney's) metaphor that Eldricht was as he seemed to control more of the events and more omnipresent than I thought he was in the first half, where he was mostly an off-screen character.

I also never got the religious object that Can-D was supposed to have correlated with. Instead, I thought it was more in line with being a drug like was discussed on one of the discussion posts because it delivered a high and experience that narcotics also do. Chew-Z, on the other hand, seemed to make more sense as a metaphor to a religious object, as those effects lasted long after a first dosage of it, to the point that it was reasonable to wonder if it may have been a transport to a new spiritual plane. I likened it to a cult drinking the purple Kool-Aid on my discussion post. But while those people are dead in the real world, this is a fictional story. As such, it can establish as fact that a substance like Chew-Z may not be a gateway to death rather than a gateway to become stronger than what was thought possible before the drug, like an alternative to E therapy.

But there are many holes in my theory of Chew-Z, so I'd be happy to read whether someone agrees and wants to expand or disagrees and provides a small counterargument.

Eldricht, Bulero, and The Simulacra

While reading The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldricht, I kept on thinking Eldricht and Bulero was similar to the power structure. There is the political intrigue practiced by Eldricht and Bulero and how they operate in the shadows directly competing for the people's will with their drugs. I thought this was similar to The Simulacra's power struggle between Nicole, the council, and the rebels and how each side in this story and that story had their pros and cons.

With Bulero, it seems like you know what you're going to get. You're going to get a heartless businessman who doesn't have the best interests of the people at heart, with him seeing people as vehicles for profit in exchange for the Can-D he's peddling. But on the other hand, he hasn't done anything so drastic as something like a mass killing. Here, he seems similar to Nicole and the council, where they may have oppressed people, but they haven't gone completely off the deep end.

In contrast, Eldricht presents himself as kind of a savior for the people against Bulero, but his forcible drugging of Bulero with Chew-Z signals that Eldricht has a dark side that Bulero does not possess. This is similar to the Rebels in The Simulacra, where they were presented as saviors throughout most of that novel but it turns out they may be worse than the established government should they get power. Eldricht also seems to hold the political sway that the Rebels lacked, bribing the UN to be allowed to peddle his product even though it is directly competing with the illegal Can-D. No doubt I will have a clearer picture of these two characters when I finish the novel by this time next week.

Vague Endings

I enjoy the post-apocalyptic setting. When done right, there is always a gritty aspect about it that cannot be translated well to other genres most of the time. But for all the post-apocalyptic shows and media that I enjoy, I have always been irked at the incomplete endings they so often employ in regards to the characters.

Dr. Bloodmoney suffers from this. Sure, Hoppy is dead and Dangerfield is apparently not about to be, but questions remain unresolved. Is Edie essentially an orphan, considering her real mother and father are all too willing to pretend she doesn't exist? Or does she end up being raised by someone like George? If that's the case, George must be a saint of a guy. If not, well, Edie's life sucks despite the fact she played a major hand in stopping Hoppy.

What was Dangerfield's condition? Is he really suffering from a physical ailment, or is it all in his head? Also, isn't it disturbing to think that he is destined to die alone because there seems to be no physical way of getting to him? Also, I don't want to imagine how his wife's rotting corpse has impacted the shuttle. One must think Dangerfield must be slightly insane to carry out a lively show with his wife decomposing. Not being an expert in body decomposition, it could be that maybe seven years is enough time for that to go away.

Also, despite being a main character, Bonny seems to have done nothing of consequence except abandon her child and husband at the end. I suppose hiding Bluthgeld may qualify as something, but even that seemed to have no overall impact on people's attitude toward her.

Dr. Bloodmoney and Fallout

As I mentioned on the discussion board, I kept thinking of the Fallout games while I was reading Dr. Bloodmoney. While I mentioned in particular Fallout New Vegas, I actually had fonder memories of Fallout 3 (which is set in post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. instead of New Vegas' more applicable California and Las Vegas setting).

In both Bloodmoney and the Fallout games, government plays a secondary role as people are trying to survive locally rather than worry about the country. It only makes sense, as a post-apocalypse life adjustment would only bring humans back to their basic survival skills of forming small alliances if it serves your own survival. Everyone is competing for a limited number of resources, so one can understand why the Keller clan would turn to murder someone if that someone was trying to compromise them by exposing one of their own.

However, unlike in the Fallout games, there seems to be a conspicuous absence of guns and other weaponry. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I suppose adding guns to the story can take away some of the story's focus on survival and the relationships between each character.

Nicole the Matriarch

As is made clear in the novel, Nicole is the ultimate matriarchal figure throughout the novel, despite her youthful appearance. For most of the novel, she plays the authoritative voice, to the point in which the reader believes she is evil. Later on, the reader sees the doting side of her, thereby penetrating our guard against her, as scornful mothers can often do.

Perhaps the best example of her showing both sides comes with her relationship to Kongrosian. Even at the end of the novel, we see a microcosm (and shortly before the climax of the story) of both sides of her matriarchal relationship with Kongrosian. As her reign crumbles all around her, Kongrosian enters to wail his problems. At first, Nicole coldly tells him to leave, as she's been wanting to do throughout the novel. But, seeing that she can replace Pembroke with Kongrosian, she significantly changes her attitude, and offers him the top security post.

In return, after Pembroke looks like he is about to execute Nicole, Kongrosian steps in and kills him with his ability, and then uses that ability to send Nicole to a safer place (his house out in California). Within the novel, culminating with this action, we saw the typical mother-son bond play out through time. Nicole went from being the protector of Kongrosian to being protected by him, much as young child transitions to the role his mother occupied as he gets older and stronger while she gets frailer and needs someone to look out for her as time goes on. Of course, Nicole is not as helpless as that quite yet, but she does have a target on her back.

The Simulacra

As I commented on the discussion board, the themes of government control and interplanetary travel have been consistent throughout Dick's works. In a way, that's kind of annoying, as it feels like a simple copy and paste job, just with different characters and plot lines. Yes, the government is bad, but does it have to be a theme in every story? Same thing goes with interplanetary travel.

If we got more of a glimpse in traveling to Mars than we've had so far in these works, it would be more interesting. Instead, Mars has always appeared as merely an option in which select people go to. The setting is never explored, preferring instead to focus on the dystopian Earth climate, this time with the threat of Nazis! All right, I'll admit, if Nazis appear in this book, that will be interesting. I just hope they aren't merely alluded to as a possible option, just like Mars.

Beyond Lies the Wub

"Beyond Lies the Wub" tells the story of a man having an intellectual conversation with a pig-like creature called a Wub. The Wub discusses how his culture also has a variation of The Odyssey like the humans do. Then, the Captain kills and eats the Wub, thereby allowing the Wub to express itself through the Captain.

In my opinion, the point of the story is Dick establishing the ideas that, however abstract, science fiction has roots in classic mythology. Many of the elements that may seem futuristic do in fact have some roots in the classical. For example, the themes of government control can be traced back to Machiavelli's philosophies in The Prince. In Machiavelli's work, he sets the ground rules for an effective leader who has the ability to carry out violence to solidify his rule, yet should appear compassionate to his subjects in order to carry out this violence and not risk a revolution.

The nature of interplanetary travel can be traced back the Odysseus' journeys from island to island, where he encounters creatures he has never seen before. So far, Mars in Dick's works hasn't been explained too thoroughly, yet we get a sense that it is quite foreign to Earthlings, as the islands were to Odysseus when he traveled to them.

Tyranny in PKD

If there was a dominant theme that connected the short stories, it's the idea of systematic tyranny perpetuated by the government. In The Golden Man, a remarkable man gets abducted by an organization in the vein of the CIA. There really is no basis for his abduction (not really an arrest), other than the fact that there may be a miniscule chance he may use his powers to disrupt the order of things in this manufactured society. Obviously, the government is presented in a very negative light, as Dick has so far presented a very bleak future in all of his stories. Even though I did not read Minority Report, I have seen the movie a couple of times. Again, Minority Report goes back to a shadowy government agency practicing tyranny under the guise of good. But it's not just Minority Report that we see this in Dick's works. The Golden Man has been well covered. But we also see a variation of it in If There Were No Benny Cemoli. Here, we see the government in a shadow state inciting fear among the people by spreading propaganda about the big bad invading force. This keeps them in power even though they are a faceless entity. It is hard to deduce why Dick always presents such a bleak world in his writings. I suppose it is a product of the times, where distrust of the government really started to take hold in his era. And also, everyone loves a good conspiracy story.

Electric Sheep Part II – Cylons

Last week, I got flashbacks to A.I. Artificial Intelligence when reading about the androids and their personalities. This week, with the establishment of Pris and Rachael Rosen being the same model, I immediately flashed back to watching Battlestar Galactica (the cool new version, not the weird 1970s version). Specifically, Rachael/Pris reminded me of Cylon No. 6 (a hot blonde) from Battlestar. On one hand, you got Pris, who does not seem completely evil, although she is kind of off-putting. But she is still a contrast to her clone, Rachael, who is a seductive woman (although her body is described as flawed) who tries to bend men to her advantage. About the same scenario played out with No. 6, although she was more likeable. For the reason in which I get to think of Battlestar, which is perhaps the best thing on TV (well, Netflix, since the series is not airing new episodes anymore), instead of A.I. (a bad movie), I much enjoyed the second half of Electric Sheep more. Now I'll have to see Blade Runner, but not before I get some nice sleepy time in a few minutes.

Electric Sheep – First Impressions

When I first began reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I was initially discouraged. For one thing, it starts on page one. I like books better in class if they are so kind as to start on page three or five, but I digress. From there, it is about becoming familiar with the characters. John Isidore is a special (a term for a disabled person) but a very sweet guy. Rick is a cop whose morality is in the grey while he's hunting androids in a manner similar to Elmer Fudd hunting rabbits (although Rick is much better at his job). In a way, it all sounds cliche now in that the disadvantaged man is secretly better than the cop or any privileged sort, but it probably was more original back in 1968.