Rach's Reading Club 2024-And Beyond!

The Divine Invasion

For my second story from the category of "New Beginnings", I picked a book by my favorite author, Philip K. Dick.

The Divine Invasion is a strange Science Fictional rethinking of the Christian Story. The hero, is a guy named Herb Asher who has been living in a colony on a planet of the CY30/CY30B star system at a time when Earth has fallen into the hands of a dystopian government which is actually a merging of the Communist superpowers and the Catholic Church. That may seem like an unlikely coupling, but when they actually show us the Earth, it is revealed that those two entities have a very uneasy alliance.

Anyway, Asher meets another colonist, a woman who has become pregnant under mysterious circumstances. And another guy named Elijah. Also, on the planet there is a native life form who may be. . .God? The story implies that God has been banished from Earth, but is now working to return.

Asher and his virgin girlfriend return to Earth to have the baby there. Upon arrival, their ship meets with an accident. The baby is born, and cared for by his uncle, Elijah. Asher is seriously injured and forced to stay in cryonic suspension where he has dreams and memories of his life.

What follows are several chapters in which we don't what's real and what's the dreams of Asher. It's entertaining in a crazy way, which is what you expect from a Philip K. Dick novel.