Philip K Dick's Exegesis to be published

It has been announced that the late Philip K Dick's memoirs are finally to be published in two full volumes. The Exegesis is essentially a collection of Philip's hand written notes which include his infamous visions, his ideas on religion and what the visions could have meant along with comments about his writing and autobiographical information.

In 1974, while receiving a delivery of pain medication for recently removed wisdom teeth, Philip K Dick experienced a vision, that he believed was religious in nature and thought to be triggered by the delivery person's necklace (an early christian symbol). Since that time Philip received a number of visions and until his death in 1982 he spent an enourmous amount of time and effort trying to understand what he saw. He wrote endlessly and could sometimes be known to complete as much as 150 pages in one sitting about his experiences. In total over 8000 pages of notes were completed.

These visions also influenced his later novels including VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System, named from one of his visions), Radio Free Albemuth, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer and even a short passage in "A Scanner Darkly"

There have been enticing excerts released previously in the novel "In pursuit of Valis" which deals primarily with Philip K Dicks visions, his beliefs and struggles to understand what he saw, along with a variety of mental and emotional challenges (many believe he was schizophrenic). In his later life he suffered much mental turmoil but as an exceptionally gifted and intelligent author, he documented much of his feelings and state of mind.

These are essentially his own personal thoughts and feelings and there are many fans who believe this documentation was never meant for public consumption. Little has been done to edit "In pursuit of Valis" and "The Exegesis" and in a way this is often seen as a positive move allowing the reader a raw uncut glimpse into the mind of a genius.

The first volume of Exegesis is expected to be released sometime in 2011 and is likely to be around 350 pages long, the second volume (expected to be of a similar length) will be published in 2012.