Deus Irae
First edition, 1976
Deus Irae (1976) is a collaborative post-nuclear novel by Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny, following a limbless artist on a pilgrimage across a ruined landscape to paint the human incarnation of a new religion's God of Wrath. First edition, published in hardcover by Doubleday. Commonly found with a purple remainder spray on the bottom edge, not present on this copy.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, black paper boards with red lettering on spine. Date code "G 27" appears at the lower left margin of page 181. New York: Doubleday, 1976. Levack 10a. Wintz & Hyde SF5.1. ISBN: 0385045271. #10077.
A title commonly found with a purple speckled remainder spray on the bottom edge, not present on this copy. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, black paper boards with red lettering on spine. Date code "G 27" appears at the lower left margin of page 181. New York: Doubleday, 1976. Levack 10a. Wintz & Hyde SF5.1. ISBN: 0385045271. #10077.
A title commonly found with a purple speckled remainder spray on the bottom edge, not present on this copy. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
Additional Details
Deus Irae (1976) is a collaboration between Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny that took nearly a decade to complete. Dick began the novel in the mid-1960s, working from his short story "The Great C," but struggled with its theological weight and left the manuscript unfinished. Zelazny, who had read the partial draft, offered to complete it, and the two writers worked on it in turns through the early 1970s before finally delivering it to Doubleday.
The novel is set in the aftermath of a nuclear war that has shattered industrial civilization and given rise to a new religion centered on the God of Wrath, the Deus Irae, whose human incarnation is Carlton Lufteufel, the scientist most directly responsible for the catastrophe. Tibor McMasters, the church's artist-in-residence, is limbless from birth and travels in a motorized cart drawn by a cow. The church has commissioned him to paint a mural of the Deus Irae, which requires him to embark on a pilgrimage across the ruined landscape to find Lufteufel and observe him directly.
The pilgrimage structure allows Dick and Zelazny to move Tibor through a world of vivid post-apocalyptic strangeness, with mutated creatures, scattered survivor communities, a malevolent artificial intelligence called the Big C that has survived the war and preys on travelers, and competing theological factions whose grip on meaning is as fragile as everything else. The novel raises, without cleanly resolving, the question of whether a god of destruction deserves worship simply because destruction is what happened, and what it means to render such a figure in devotional art.
The collaboration is an interesting one. Dick's metaphysical anxiety and Zelazny's mythic sensibility sit somewhat uneasily together at points, but the novel is stronger for the tension. It is dedicated to Stanley G. Weinbaum, whose story "A Martian Odyssey" both authors admired.
The novel is set in the aftermath of a nuclear war that has shattered industrial civilization and given rise to a new religion centered on the God of Wrath, the Deus Irae, whose human incarnation is Carlton Lufteufel, the scientist most directly responsible for the catastrophe. Tibor McMasters, the church's artist-in-residence, is limbless from birth and travels in a motorized cart drawn by a cow. The church has commissioned him to paint a mural of the Deus Irae, which requires him to embark on a pilgrimage across the ruined landscape to find Lufteufel and observe him directly.
The pilgrimage structure allows Dick and Zelazny to move Tibor through a world of vivid post-apocalyptic strangeness, with mutated creatures, scattered survivor communities, a malevolent artificial intelligence called the Big C that has survived the war and preys on travelers, and competing theological factions whose grip on meaning is as fragile as everything else. The novel raises, without cleanly resolving, the question of whether a god of destruction deserves worship simply because destruction is what happened, and what it means to render such a figure in devotional art.
The collaboration is an interesting one. Dick's metaphysical anxiety and Zelazny's mythic sensibility sit somewhat uneasily together at points, but the novel is stronger for the tension. It is dedicated to Stanley G. Weinbaum, whose story "A Martian Odyssey" both authors admired.
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