by Philip K Dick.jpg)
Published: 1981
Episode: Eggtown
Reference: a book that Locke takes to Ben from Ben's own bookshelf, also seen in The Other Woman
The main character in VALIS is Horselover Fat, an author surrogate. "Horselover" is English for the Greek word philippos (Φίλιππος), meaning "lover of horses" (from philo "brotherly or comradely love" and hippos "horse"); "Fat" is English for the German word "dick".
Even though the book is written in the first-person-autobiographical, for most of the book Dick treats himself and Fat as two separate characters; he describes conversations and arguments with Fat, and harshly if sympathetically criticizes his opinions and writings. The major subject of these dialogues is spirituality, as Dick/Fat is/are ostensibly obsessed with several religions and philosophies, including Christianity, Taoism, Gnosticism and even Jungian psychoanalysis, in the search for a cure for what he believes is simultaneously a personal and a cosmic wound. Near the end of the book the messianic figure, incarnated by the child Sophia (a name associated with Wisdom in many Gnostic texts), cures him (temporarily), and the narrator describes his surprise that Horselover Fat has suddenly disappeared from his side.
Wiki Link