VALIS
- 271
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
- Kurd Lasswitz Award for Best Foreign Work
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Our view
“VALIS” turns Philip K. Dick’s own unexplained religious experiences into science fiction that is intense, odd and surprisingly focused. Set in 1970s California, it mixes autobiography with gnostic theology, and some readers enjoy it all the more for knowing how seriously he took these ideas. Others treat it as the approachable way into his vast private writings on the subject. It was planned as the first of three books.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Valis is a 1981 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, intended to be the first book of a three-part series. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of God. Set in California during the 1970s, the book features heavy auto-biographical elements and draws inspiration from Dick's own investigations into his unexplained religious experiences over the previous decade.
Reading order · VALIS trilogy
Full order & progress →- ValisThis book
7.77.7 / 10 - The Divine Invasion
–Not ranked yet - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 185 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 56% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.7 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.4 | 19 | 10% |
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 166 | 90% |
Frequently asked
How long is VALIS?
It has 271 pages — shorter than 83% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Science fiction — with scores between 7.6 and 7.7, closest to this book.
