Acts of Paul a synopsis Read online

  The Philip K. Dick Trust is excited to present these rare or unpublished writings from Philip K. Dick.

  The Acts of Paul, Brief Synopsis for Alternate World Novel

  by

  Philip K. Dick

  This is a rare 2-page treatment for a novel written by Philip K. Dick in 1982 and recently rediscovered by his agent, Russell Galen. This treatment was released as an insert for 400 limited-edition novels, but has not been published elsewhere.

  Brief synopsis for Alternate World Novel

  THE ACTS OF PAUL.

  Philip K. Dick

  Premise: Paul of Tarsus does not have his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, is not converted to Christianity, continues to persecute it as Saul, never writes his Christian letters but instead leaves a canon of anti-Christian letters. This is what caused an alternate world to branch off.

  Plot: An alternate world (set in the present) in which although Jesus was crucified, Christianity died out in favor of Manichaeism in the third century (called, of course, the first century based on the birth of Mani). The New Testament doesn't now exist. The books of the New Testament (excepting Paul's letters) are known to contemporary scholars to have once existed, since they are mentioned In early Manichaean writings. Mani is known as the "Apostole of Light" and supreme "Illuminator." Like Jesus he was crucified. These mentions of Christianity are in a defamatory form, hence only garbled quotes and accounts about Jesus are extant. The narrator of this novel has been trying for years to reconstruct the actual Christ story. He has gotten it all wrong; essential parts are missing, and totally absurd spurious interpolations abound in his exegesis. The narrator (as he tells us), having studied the extant references to Jesus, has come to the conclusion, which he expresses in the novel, that Christianity was the true religion, and because Ahriman (the evil deity of dualistic Manichacism) rules the world, it follows from Manichaean doctrine itself that the true religion would be suppressed (the narrator has fed this problem to a computer and derived this answer). And if it is the true religion, and Jesus was God or the Son of God, then Christianity must still —-but totally secretly-— exist (so agrees the computer). The narrator decided to seek out the secret Christians, and with the help of the computer analyzes where he will find thorn if his hypothesis is correct. He looks there —place "C"— and finds nothing. So, disappointed, he abandons his search and retires in scholarly defeat. At the end a true secret Christian finds him; the Christian, shining like an angel, hands him a book. It is the Fourth Gospel, intact; it contains the Logos Doctrine. The Christian, as if a supernatural being, vanishes without a trace. The narrator feeds the Fourth Gospel into the computer's permanent memory banks and then instructs the computer to print it out at every one of its terminals throughout the world.

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  Philip K. Dick, Acts of Paul, a synopsis

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