Consult any reputable list of influential authors and you'll likely see the name of the American novelist Philip K. Dick. Dick was an author known for consistently exploring the many of the same metaphysical themes. Specifically, Dick questioned the nature of reality and explored what it means to be human.

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What is not commonly known about the author (outside of science-fiction circles) is that the last years of Dick's already-colorful life resembled one of his own novels.

How it Began: "2-3-74"

In February 1974, Dick had visited his dentist to treat an impacted wisdom tooth and he received a dose of sodium pentothal. Later that evening at his home, he opened the door to the pharmacy delivery girl who was delivering his prescribed painkillers. She was wearing a necklace depicting a fish, which she described as an old Christian symbol. At that moment, Dick experienced a sudden exposure to a vast amount of knowledge.

This intense, crystal-clear vision was not his last. In March, for example, he experienced a waking psychedelic episode that he described as being visually like "hundreds of thousands of absolutely terrific modern art pictures." He was also visited by a red and gold "plasmatic entity" which shared his consciousness.

Dick's visions continued throughout those two months, during February and March of 1974, a time period that Dick later referred to as "2-3-74."

The Long Aftermath

Dick was convinced that he had been granted access to supreme knowledge. What was missing was an intimate understanding of that knowledge. Dick felt compelled, perhaps obsessively, to explore the meaning of his visions and experiences.

With amazing commitment, Dick began writing about what happened. At night he would delve into some new aspect of the events, or reinterpret that which was already examined. Indeed, Dick's own understanding of the events changed as he further explored his revelation and the days passed into months and even years.

In fact, Dick spent the remainder of his life—eight years—recording his interpretation of events in handwritten pages, typewritten notes, sketches and journal entries. At the time of his death in 1982, there were more than 8,000 pages dedicated to his exploration of the nature of our universe.

The Exegesis

Dick's intense, written examination of "2-3-74" became a significant part of his life that he referred to as his "Exegesis." He never would fully understand what happened to him, nor do we absolutely know today. (One theory is that Dick suffered a temporal lobe epilepsy, a condition often associated with furious amounts of writing and an unusual concern with matters of mysticism, morality and philosophy.) Word of Dick's notes (unorganized and sometimes incoherent as they were) eventually leaked out to the public and they achieved a somewhat legendary status as Dick's posthumous reputations grew.

Realizing the academic and critical value of Dick's Exegesis, editors Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem picked up the long-carried arduous task of bringing these notes to the public. The result is The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, a hefty book being published this month by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It collects the majority of Dick's Exegesis, grouped in the order originally gathered by Dick's friend and then-executor Paul Williams.

Do Philip K. Dick's experiences at the heart of the Exegesis defy believability? Absolutely. But that doesn't erase the fact that the man experienced something he knew to be true. What's truly fascinating and surprisingly intoxicating about The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the intimate glimpse it offers into one man's attempt to understand his reality. In one sense, he became like the characters in his books.

John DeNardo is the editor of SF Signal, a group science-fiction and fantasy blog featuring news, reviews and interviews.