We chose chronological ordering, yet this is a text that defies chronology. Dates were frequently determined only by internal clues or references and so should be regarded as approximate and open to revision by future scholarship. We kept folders intact, despite recognizing these as an artifact of Paul Williams’s archiving rather than Dick’s own ordering. In places where this led to conflict with chronology, we relocated parts of folders; these are noted. Excerpts are identified by bracketed numbers at the top [folder number: page number in folder]. In folders where Dick’s own page numbering suffices, we retained these; in folders with multiple discontinuous numbering sequences, we have renumbered the pages to create a single pagination for the whole. Note that folder numbers do not reflect chronological order; they represent the order in which Williams picked up the pages. Inventive inconsistency is our hallmark here: we were affixing numbers to chaos. Bracketed ellipses indicate some of our excisions and elisions, providing a glimpse of the scope and nature of our editorial choices. Other excisions go unmarked in favor of readability.
The Exegesis began in 1974, with letters and short pieces, and grew steadily. The early pages form an epistolary detective novel, plunging the reader into the 2-3-74 revelation: Dick began his interpretations even as clues in the form of dreams, voices, and visions poured in. Soon, his letters grew longer and denser, some accompanied by enclosures of further typewritten “notes”; short pieces with recognizable beginnings and ends gave way to the extended theoretical speculations and open-ended meditations that characterize the Exegesis proper. By the end of this period, Dick was typing twenty-plus pages at a go—single-spaced, with minimal margins and paragraphing. We have largely offered the earliest entries in full; as longer, more meandering entries begin, in early 1975, we transition to the method of excerpting used for the remainder of the book: selecting discrete chunks of varying lengths, from a single paragraph to several pages (with or without some internal trimming).
Dick’s text is given interpretive, personal, and unsystematic annotation by the editors and these others: Simon Critchley, Steve Erickson, David Gill, N. Katherine Hayles, Jeff Kripal, and Gabriel Mckee. These annotations are identified by their author’s initials. Following the text and an afterword by Richard Doyle, we offer two aids to a reader’s comprehension: a series of individual notes on nomenclature, translation, sources, and editorial interventions; and a glossary of some of the most frequently seen terms, including Dick’s neologisms. This glossary was prepared by the editors, annotators, and the Zebrapedia Group, under the guidance of Erik Davis, but it includes material developed by Lawrence Sutin for his 1991 volume. A modest index follows the afterword.
Let us be the first to say that the notes, glossary, and index are incomplete: nothing short of a Vast Active Living Intelligence could sort all of Dick’s avenues of reference and citation. For one small example, among many, of the challenges in an annotator’s path: Dick often quoted English sources from memory or altered sources as he hurriedly copied them out; his use of German and Latin is willful and imaginative. In consideration of sanity (our own) and time and space (which are after all the same thing), we have offered the gist of his intentions, as we understood them, rather than unraveling his errors. A few names have been disguised in these pages to ensure the privacy of persons not wishing to be named.
Acknowledgments
Editors’ acknowledgments: The Zebrapedia Transcription and Research Group, spearheaded by Richard Doyle: Lisa Boren, Scott Boren, Alex Broudy, Gerry Canavan, Devin Daniels, Rob Daubenspeck, Eric Furjanic, Carl Hayman, Jesse Hicks, Shane Leary, Jesse Rafalko, and Jennifer Rhee, as well as others who went in before us; the Paul Williams transcription team, some of their names now lost; Andy Watson, Jay Kinney, Gregg Rickman, and Lawrence Sutin. Also: Rebecca Alexander, Will Amato, Cindy Lee Berryhill, Steven Black, David Brazil, Tessa Dick, Frederick Dolan, Michael Domeracki, Bob Gamboa, Ted Hand, Owen Hill, Frank Hollander, Mark Hurst, Babette and Bruce Jackson, Shelley Jackson, Jeremy Menzies, and Rob Miotke. Thanks to all the annotators and to Gabriel Mckee for above-and-beyond attention to notes and glossary. And to the estate: Isa Hackett, Chris Dick, and, above all, Laura Leslie, for transcription, for biographical research, and for her ceaseless support.
Laura Leslie’s acknowledgments: Isa, Chris, and I would like to recognize and express our appreciation for the following people who were instrumental in overcoming the daunting hurdles along the journey from eight thousand disorganized journal pages to the book you hold in your hands: Tim Powers for saving, protecting, and hiding these pages immediately after our father’s death; Paul Williams for his leadership in preserving the Exegesis, and all the volunteers who organized the material; Jonathan Lethem, who knew publishing the Exegesis was possible, who encouraged us, shared his vision, advocated for this project, enabling others to understand and embrace its potential, and connected us with Pamela Jackson; Pamela Jackson, who worked with us and who, in balancing responsibility to our father’s legacy with sensitivity to his living family members, was able to more than satisfy both; and Andrew Wylie, our father’s literary agent, without whose support this book would not have been published at this time.
PART ONE
Folder 4
[4:1] In Ubik the forward moving force of time (or time-force expressed as an ergic field) has ceased. All changes result from that. Forms regress. The substrate is revealed. Cooling (entropy) is allowed to set in unimpeded. Equilibrium is affected by the vanishing of the forward-moving time force-field. The bare bones, so to speak, of the world, our world, are revealed. We see the Logos addressing the many living entities.* Assisting and advising them.† We are now aware of the Atman everywhere. The press of time on everything, having been abolished, reveals many elements underlying our phenomena.
If time stops, this is what takes place, these changes.
Not frozen-ness, but revelation.
There are still the retrograde forces remaining, at work. And also underlying positive forces other than time. The disappearance of the force-field we call time reveals both good and bad things; which is to say, coaching entities (Runciter, who is the Logos), the Atman (Ubik), Ella; it isn’t a static world, but it begins to cool. What is missing is a form of heat: the Aton. The Logos (Runciter) can tell you what to do, but you lack the energy—heat, force—to do it. (I.e., time.)
The Logos is not a retrograde energetic life form, but the Holy Spirit, the Parakletos, is. If the Logos is outside time, imprinting, then the Holy Spirit stands at the right or far or completed end of time, toward which the field-flow moves (the time flow). It receives time: the negative terminal, so to speak. Related to the Logos in terms of embodying word-directives and world-organizing powers, but at a very weak level, it can progressively to a greater degree overcome the time field and flow back against it, into it, impinging and penetrating. It moves in the opposite direction. It is the anti-time. So it is correct to distinguish it from the Logos, which so to speak reaches down into the time flow from outside, from eternity or the real universe. The H.S. is in time, and is moving: retrograde. Like tachyons,1 its motion is a temporal one; opposite to ours and the normal direction of universal causal motion.