The Owl in Daylight is a novel Philip K. Dick was writing at the time of his death in 1982. He had already been paid an advance for the book by the publisher and was working against a deadline. After his death, his estate approached other writers about the possibility of someone completing the novel based on his notes, but that proved to be impossible, as he had never formally outlined the story. Dick viewed the novel as his Finnegans Wake. The idea was inspired partly by an entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica on Beethoven that referred to him as the most creative genius of all time, partly by traditional views of what constitutes the human heaven (visions of lights), and finally by the Faust story. However, Andrew M. Butler's alternative plot summaries seem to suggest that he might have become fascinated by Dante's Divine Comedy as a form of theophany. In his final completed work, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, his narrator, Angel Archer, shows similar appreciation for Dante's masterpiece, which suggests that this argument may have some merit. Source: Wikipedia (en)