Philip Dick had a very certain kind of mind.  You either relate to him or you don't.  It was a mind that turned ever increasingly in on itself during a lengthy career that began in 1954 with turning out science fiction stories and novels at a frantic pace and ending with a sort of quasi-relgious mysticism attempting to ground itself in hard science.  To say Dick lived life on the edge is putting it mildly, and in February and March of 1974 he experienced a multi-episode revelation that changed the course of his life for its remaining eight years, and The Exegesis is, more or less, his attempt to understand it.  The Exegesis is an investigation of the process of thought itself and so involves being self-aware and self-watching as the investigation proceeds knowing that the investigation ultimately transpires in the mind and so must itself be investigated at the same time that it proceeds.  Dick believed that it is precisely this delicate oroborosian, mobius strip highwire balancing act of consciousness watching itself which germinates the seed of discovery.  It is fascinating and frustrating in equal measure as Dick spent years pouring his thoughts out onto thousands upon thousands of pages (the introduction states that the unedited total length of The Exegesis is an estimated two million words).  Thus what we have in this published volume is only a sampling of the whole, but it is a sampling that is the result of (thirty!) years of work by the people best suited for the job – including Paul Williams, Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem – and so brings you, the reader, the best possible version that could be presented in under 1000 pages.  Hardy souls, prepare to venture forth!