DEUS IRAE

1st.EDITION: In the GSM CollectionDoubleday, hb, 04527-1, Jul 1976, 182pp, $5.95 (John Cayea) {Levack: "Bound in black paper boards with red lettering on the spine. Date code 'G 27' (27th week of 1976) appears at the lower left margin of page 181. States 'First Edition' on the copyright page. '1976' on the title page.}

UK 1st.: Gollancz, hb, 02307-4, Jun 1977, 182pp, L3.75 (?)

OTHER ENGLISH EDITIONS:

FOREIGN EDITIONS:

{For the best bibliographic info in French goto: www.multimania.com/ggoullet/pkdick/frames.html Thanks for the cover pix, Gilles}

{The following is from Ken Lopez, Bookseller online catalog, May 1997. As far as I know this manuscript is still for sale}

1. Deus Irae. (Published by Doubleday, 1976). Co-written with Roger Zelazny (author of Lord of Light, etc.). Ribbon copy typescript, 240 pages, typed on three typewriters (two of them Zelazny's), with small holograph corrections in both authors' hands, and a brief note explaining which typewriter represents which writer.

Deus Irae was written between 1967 and 1975, with Zelazny and Dick collaborating mostly by mail. Zelazny had won the Hugo Award in 1967 for Lord of Light, a science fiction novel with threads of Buddhist philosophy woven through it. Dick had expressed admiration for the novel, and when his first collaborator, author Ted White, backed off the project, he began working with Zelazny. The setting is post-nuclear holocaust, and the theme is the pilgrimage of an armless and legless artist, his vision quest. The novel incorporates elements of two earlier stories by Dick, as well as bearing a resemblance to Dr. Bloodmoney. It is most notable, however, as the only collaboration between these two award-winning science fiction writers. Very good condition. $7500

The false god, he repeated in rapture, since normally he was very bad at jokes, cannot survive exposure. He must always be concealed. We have lured him out and frozen his visage. And he is doomed.

PKDS -2 6:

DAW slipped out DEUS IRAE in November '83, following UBIK in September.

PKDS-2 7:

After completing FLOW MY TEARS, which he began before his previous wife had left him, he wrote A SCANNER DARKLY... At this point Doubleday & Co. politely reminded him that DEUS IRAE was overdue. Unable to finish the novel himself he had sent it to Roger Zelazny. When Roger sent it back to Phil, he added a final chapter, and sent it to Doubleday.

PKDS-3 10:

{On Metz 1977}: Later on, I was hanging out with Philipe Goy (French SF writer and scientist) in the bookstore where Dick was signing his books. For some reason, he had been put in a back room together with Zelazny (DEUS IRAE must have been just issued in French), and business was light. Among other things, Philipe Goy asked him if he really believed in what he had been talking about, and in God. Dick simply pointed to the cross he was wearing
{Letter from Pascal J. Thomas > PKDS}

PKDS-6 8:

{Letter to PKDS from Ted White, Falls Church, VA}
Now to put this in context, I must point out that I had met Phil in 1964, lived in his house, had him read the I Ching for me (a startling experience, the validity of which I believe to this day), and had been publicly described by Phil as the man who knew his work and understood it best. In 1965 or 1966 he had given me the first 50 pages and the synoptic essay for DEUS IRAE and asked me to finish it for him. In other words, this was a man who professed admiration and respect for me and wanted me to collaborate with him. (As a jape he gave Penguin a photo of me and it was printed [as a photo of the author] on the back cover of the British THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE).

PKDS-13 5:

(JB:) I had it down that the first thing he started after the long, well, hiatus, was A Little Something For Us Tempunauts, a short story.

(TD:) Not really. He'd gotten the manuscript for FLOW MY TEARS. Doubleday was bugging him; he owed them two novels: DEUS IRAE and FLOW MY TEARS. He'd left the ms of FLOW MY TEARS with his attorney in Marin County, so he wrote for the ms to be sent down to him at Fullerton. The attorney sent it, along with a letter that said, "You'd better be in court, October 21st(1972)!" So he did show up in Court for his divorce.
{Tessa Dick to J.B.Reynolds, 1986}

PKDS-16 2:

Musings From Melbourne by Roger Zelazny.

[This article is condensed from a transcript of a speech given by Zelazny at Unicon, Melbourne, Australia, Easter 1978; the complete transcript was published in Science Fiction Commentary #54, under the title "A burnt-out Case."]

... I will delay for a moment and tell you how I came to know PKD. Some years ago, Phil Dick, who is a very hot writer when he is on top of things, had agreed to write twelve books in a years time -- a book a month. Apparantly he delivered 11 of the books. it got to be December, and the book was a thing called DEUS IRAE, for which he'd written an outline, I thought my outlines were pretty good when it came to faking the action and taking the publisher completely, but this was a masterpiece. It was much longer than those I usually manage, but it said less even. It was basically a philosophical essay, quite lovely, and then there were fifty pages of copy. At that point Phil Dick stopped. He was blocked.

TSR 32:

Dear Carl [editor of Scintillation, in which this piece appeared]

You should have received by now the five-page piece I wrote for you yesterday. Well, I decided to send the carbon off to Germany, to Uwe Anton, who has asked me for something and to whom I'd already sent some fragments of DEUS IRAE, the new novel coming out by me and Roger Zelazny (Anton is putting together a PKD issue, you see). Today I added three more pages to go with the five, to be printed in Germany only, and then I thought, Shit. Why not send you the carbons on these pages and see if you want to add them, perhaps explaining that Phil had originally intended them for the German printing only... although I sort of say that in the pages themselves. It's up to you. In any case, here are three additional pages to the untitled piece I mailed you on May first, and you are welcome to print them or not. Okay? But on second thought it seemed sort of chickenshit for me to say stuff abroad and not here in the U.S. You'll see what I mean when you read the enclosed.
{"The Short, Happy Life Of A Science Fiction Writer", 1976}

Unknown1 {The Mainstream That Through the Ghetto Flows}

(Interviewer:) So you do like to write, and you used to work nonstop. Have you changed that pattern?

(Dick:) Yes. Here's what happened to me. A novel that Roger Zelazny and I wrote, DEUS IRAE, took twelve years to write. I signed a contract with Doubleday in 1964, and this is 1976, right? Well, that's how long it took the two of us to write it. I got maybe a third of it done and discovered that I didn't know anything about the subject matter, which is Christianity. I could sing a few hymns, you know, and I could cross myself, but that was about all. Anyway, I had embarked on a theological novel without knowing anything about theology. So when I ran across Zelazny in 1968, I'd been working for four years on the novel, and I said, "Zelazny, do you know anything about theology?" He said, "You better believe it, Jack," and I said, "How would you like to collaborate with me? I got one-third of this thing done, and it's all about Christianity." So he took it. And then eight years went by, and I didn't hear from Roger until I got a postcard one time from him from the East Coast. Roger's in over his head just like me, but he's doing research. We each got four hundred dollars apiece or something like that. We'll never be able to earn back what we put into that book in the way of research and work. Now I, too, spend my time doing research before I do a book; I'm not going to get burned like that again. I'm working on another theological novel called To Scare the Dead, but I've done two years of research, and when I sit down at the typewriter, I'm gonna know what I'm talking about.

SL-38    ?

{...} One other item of interest. Roger Zelazny & I are going to collaborate on a novel. The basis of it is an outline I did back in 1964 which Doubleday bought. I was never able to actually write the actual damn book, and had Ted White take a look at the outline. He in turn, having decided (I guess) that he couldn't do it either, or didn't want to, gave it to Zelazny, with whom I was already discussing a possible collaboration. I did not remember the outline, however (it's called DEUS IRAE and deals with a future religion). But when Zelazny wrote to say he had possession of the outline and LIKED IT, I went mad with joy. You see, I think very highly of his work and evidently he thinks the same about mine. {...}
{PKD > Andy, May 21, 1968}

SL-38  238:

{...} I attended the Baycon and met Roger Zelazny. He and I got together in an abandoned room and talked business for many hours -- e.g. our collaboration on DEUS IRAE, which he has told me he likes very much. I am reading "Lord Of Light", by the way, and find ample reason for it winning the Hugo; it is a superb book, and the religious elements convince me -- if I wasn't already convinced -- that he can do quite right on DEUS IRAE. {...}

{...}

As to DEUS IRAE, which I know you want to know about, Roger wants to do the next fifty or so pages, and I agreed, because as you know I myself am stopped dead. However, contractual obligations have him tied up until January, but at that time he will begin on it; he will carry on where my initial fifty pages left off. I am sorry that we can't do it sooner, but I can't do it at all and Roger is committed for the remainder of the year. But consider: a novel by me and Roger Zelazny. Shouldn't that be quite something? God help us if it isn't. I know it will be good. I think that ultimately everyone will be glad that I pooped out after the first fifty pages because that gave Roger a chance to enter (I typed "end" a Freudian slip!). {...}
{PKD > Lawrence Ashmead, Editor, Doubleday & Co., Sep 7, 1968}

BGSU ?

Dear Roger,

{...}{...}

After reading LORD OF LIGHT I can see that you will have no trouble with out collaboration, DEUS IRAE. By the way -- an idea came to me about that ({...}). Maybe the viewpoint -- and locale -- could shift, at about page 55, to the God of Wrath himself. That's something that didn't occur to me until today ... and it's been four and a half years! Shifting viewpoint is a method I always use... but for some reason this never occured to me. Any good? Yes? No? In-between?

{...}

    With love,

    {Philip K. Dick  {PKD > Roger Zelazny, 11-13-68}    {Thanks to Patrick Clark and the PKD Trust}

IPOV 268

In chapter 18 of {...} DEUS IRAE, the vision of Dr. Abernathy -- which was written by PKD alone -- is that of the Palm Tree Garden {Sutin.ed}

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