But through all of his wrangling, one fundamental fact emerges plainly: 2-3-74 served as a soul-shaking inspiration for Dick as a writer and thinker. The pratfalls and paradoxes of his SF plots had begun to seem to him -- after two decades of prolific exploration -- mere entertainments. Not that Dick did not wish to entertain. On the contrary, it was one of his paramount concerns as a writer: He loved the excitement of a good SF plot, as is amply testified to in his essays on SF included in this volume. But one of the strongest facets of his character -- and one that sets Dick aside from the abundance of writers who dabble in metaphysical puzzles out of sheer amusement -- was his conviction that answers could be attained by those who persisted in asking questions. Imagination, intelligence, and yearning insistence could prevail. Now, in his final years, there was a new passion: the driving necessity of getting to the truth of what had happened to him in those months.

Was "2-3-74" a case of genuine mystical experiences, or a contact with "higher" (or simply "other") forms of intelligence, or a conscious manipulation of his mind by unknown persons, or a purely private outbreak of psychotic symptoms? Dick considered each of these possibilities, as well as others too numerous to summarize here, in his eight-thousand-page Exegesis (subtitled by Dick Apologia pro Mea Vita, to emphasize its central importance). The Exegesis was a journal -- handwritten, for the most part -- at which Dick labored night after night for eight years, until his death in 1982, in an attempt to explain 2-3-74 to his own satisfaction. He never succeeded. The Exegesis is, at times, a wild and wayward human record: Eight years' worth of impassioned journaling through the dead of the night (Dick's preferred time for creative effort), with no expressed intention of publication in his own lifetime, could not but result in highly uneven streaks of writing.