<DIV>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></DIV>