I love Valis and it's probably his most mind bending, but I wouldn't recommend starting there. That book works best when you've already been exposed to his bizarre mind-bending style, and also understand a bit of the context of Dick himself (since Valis is semi-autobiographical).

My recommendations are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly. And then reading a bit about Dick's life -- in particular, his experience with the "pink light", and his belief in the real life instantiation of VALIS. After that, the book Valis will make a lot more sense, but also be even more mind bending.

Dick likely suffered from some sort of undiagnosed mental illness. But having the discussion end there sort of discounts the core themes of his books -- mainly, the recognition of the paper-thin nature of reality, and the impossible task of ever knowing with a certainty the true state of things.

All good picks! I was thinking of mentioning Ubik myself. I’d add A Maze of Death also.

Thinking about it, yeah, Valis is probably best saved for much later. That’s the same order I read Dick, and knowing a bit of his background and having seen his recurring tropes in fictional form, it added a whole new dimension to see them crop up in... pseudo-autobiographical form? I’m not even sure what to call it!

> pseudo-autobiographical form? I’m not even sure what to call it!

For sure! Trying to describe what Valis actually is, is about as difficult as pinning down what reality in a PKD novel is.

The fact that PKD's real life experience basically turned into one of his own novels is something I find endlessly fascinating. And also kind of sad, since whatever mental health issues he was dealing with seemed to cause him quite a bit of pain. I have a copy of "The Exegesis of Philip K Dick", and while it's too tedious to just read cover to cover, I'll often just pop it open and read a few pages here and there. Really interesting stuff.