OMAC YOUR ENTHUSIASM (15)
By:
May 24, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… Seventies (1974–83) sci-fi novels and comics! Series edited by Josh Glenn.
THE TRANSMIGRATION OF TIMOTHY ARCHER | PHILIP K. DICK | 1982
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is a novel of ideas that plants its feet on the ground via the unlikely host of Timothy Archer, the Episcopalian Bishop of California who has somehow returned to life as one of the voices in a schizophrenic’s head after perishing on a quixotic trip to the Dead Sea, where he went to seek an ancient mushroom that he believed was the actual Jesus. So far, so Philip K. Dick.
The story’s engine is revved by the discovery of some ancient scrolls, where the fragmented texts seem to tell of a resurrected savior hundreds of years before Jesus, and a psychedelic mushroom which may or may not be what some pre-Christian sects referred to as “God.” Tim hatches a scheme to go to the Dead Sea and seek the mushroom, a grueling trip for which he is characteristically underprepared, and where harsh conditions result in his death. This leaves Angel Archer, Tim’s daughter-in-law, sparring partner, and confidante, in the lurch back in Berkeley, going through the motions like a machine… until the day of John Lennon’s shooting, that is, when Tim suddenly reappears as a kind of conscious plasma inside her friend Bill’s head, at least according to Bill, who’s been released again from the institution. Angel, confronted with the continuation of her and Tim’s old debates on theology even to correctly parsed Latin, which Bill does not know, both does and does not believe this. What is she to make of these words?
In Transmigration, despite detailed passages about cars and vinyl records, the main technology is language: both words, and “the” Word, i.e., the Word of God. Language bridges the “in here” and the “out there” by being both internally coherent (to an extent) and referring to something real (to another extent). In this way, language is probably the most categorically complex technology that PKD’s world-building wrestles with.
But for us more than Angel, there is another angle to wrestle here, pseudo-homophone intended. When technology is language, it does not remain on the page. That tech reaches out of the scrolls and into Tim’s mind, but also reaches out of Angel’s story and into the reader’s mind, making us complicit in the story’s existence, and connecting the fiction to the real by that same act.
In typical PKD fashion the ending is left open. Will Angel take Bill in and help him get engaged with the world again, perhaps back to his job detailing cars? Will she be able to deal with the part of Bill that is now “Tim”, without losing her mind as well? Will she further be able, via either or another of these routes, to engage with ideas again, and start to reinvest her life with meaning? She’s not sure, and neither are we. But I will say upon reaching the end I found myself both heartbroken and a tiny bit optimistic. Which seems, both “in there” and “out here”, to be the exact right stance to take on the unknown future.
OMAC YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on RIDDLEY WALKER | Carlo Rotella on THE FACE | Sara Ryan on DREAMSNAKE | Matthew Battles on THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST | Ramona Lyons on HIGH-RISE | Adam McGovern on SHADRACH IN THE FURNACE | Deb Chachra on THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY | Tom Nealon on DHALGREN | Michael Grasso on FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID | Stephanie Burt on BRIGHTNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR | Nikhil Singh on SABRE | Gordon Dahlquist on VALIS | Miranda Mellis on THE DISPOSSESSED | Marc Weidenbaum on SOFTWARE | Peggy Nelson on THE TRANSMIGRATION OF TIMOTHY ARCHER | Josh Glenn on ENGINE SUMMER | Mimi Lipson on A SCANNER DARKLY | Douglas Wolk on THRILLER | David Hirmes on ARZACH | Anthony Miller on THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER | Annie Nocenti on JIMBO | Seth on MR. MACHINE | Alex Brook Lynn on JUDGE DREDD | Joe Alterio on THE INCAL | Jason Grote on JOSIE AND THE ELEVATOR.
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