Originally posted by Astyanax
Valis was published about the time (maybe shortly after) its author died. It was published as fiction, but it wasn't a novel: more a documentary of Dick's final surrender to the paranoia and suspicion of perceived reality that dogged his life and were the key elements -- endlessly fascinating ones -- in his work. Novels like Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch left the reader disoriented and confused within nested unrealities, uncertain of which direction, if any, 'true reality' lay. Note ATS book-lovers, especially NWO, Illuminati, etc. enthusiasts: Dick's The Penultimate Truth describes the final result of the ultimate conspiracy of that kind. A fun read.

Alien satellite.

"Writer and explorer Erich Von Daniken made mention of the time delay phenomenon in his book In Search of Ancient Gods, commenting: "Apart from a few experts, no one knows that an artificial satellite has been revolving in our solar system for 13000 years!" According to Von Daniken the answer to this mystery was of alien origin! He quoted that in 1960 a Professor RN Bracewell of the Radio Astronomic Institute of Stanford University, "had said that if an alien intelligence had wanted to get in touch with us it might possibly do so by the delayed return of radio signals!"

Star Chart.

An even more bewildering twist to the saga was soon to be revealed! Studies made by the president for the Association in Scotland for Technology and Research in Astronautics, revealed that the signals could be broken down and decrypted in a manner that seemed to show the outline of a star chart. When this outline was converted onto a detailed map of the sky the bewildered researcher found to his amazement that it corresponded to a region in the constellation of Bootes! The evidence seemed to focus on the star Epsilon Bootes, and a delighted Professor Bracewell of Stanford University is on record as claiming: " The maps produced.... can be adduced as a possibility of communication with another intelligence!"

Bracewell also went on to add that such a satellite camped in orbit around our world would want to communicate with us in a pictorial method of digital origin! In this way the decrypted picture - like the star map - could furnish important information in the universal language of science - numerical evidence!

Decoded Intervals...

Strange cries and voices:

The dawning of the space age brought with it more strange phenomena. On May 16 1963, in his Mercury capsule above Hawaii, astronaut Gordon Cooper was talking to mission control on a special frequency channel when extraneous voices broke in. Later examined on tape, these were found to correspond to no language known on earth. The phenomenon was repeated on the Apollo Vlll Borman - Lovell - Anders mission on December 21st, when UFOs were seen in the lunar orbit and more voices broke into the communications channel with mission control.
This, not unnaturally, caused some consternation back on Earth. The frequency channel they were using is such that it is virtually impossible for any amateur operator to intrude. Controllers were left with a problem they could not explain, but at the same time could hardly ignore - the security risk was too great.

But as far back as 1927, two Americans, Taylor and Young, had taken such phenomena seriously enough to try to locate the source of the radio signals. They had identified an echo-periodicity of 0.01 seconds originating from a distance of between 1800 and 6250 miles (2900 and 10, 000 Km), and were comparing their observations with those of Marconi. By December 1928, a number of scientists were interested - Jurgen Hals of Phillips Einddhoven laboratories in Holland had discussed his findings with Professor Carl Stormer of Oslo, mentioning three-second delays he had experienced with an experimental radio transmitter. After another year, on October 28 1929, Dr Van der Pol, also of Phillips, confirmed that he had noted further odd echoes from a planned emission of impulses at the same time every morning. It was van der Pol's analysis of the delay between emissions and the reciept of their echoes, always on the same wavelength, that effectively excluded ideas that they may have been bouncing off the Moon, or inner Van Allen belt, or that theyt might have been somehow stored and reflected from layers of ionised gas.