The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch was the kind of book that Kilgore Trout, the fictional recurring character in Kurt Vonnegut's novels (based on science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon) would have been proud of – deftly original, scathingly satirical, wildly entertaining – and funny in the kind of subtle way that would have pleased Vonnegut. It is good in many different ways, and works well on different levels. First published in 1965, this is one of Dick's earlier works that deals both dir...

Reading this book felt a bit like dreaming, after a while it became like a dream within a dream, soon after it became full on Inception!. Without going into the synopsis in any detail, this novel features a drug induced virtual reality, initially with the aid of Ken and Barbie-like dolls in their nicely furnished dollhouse. The VR sessions are called "translations", a very popular past time in the hellish Mars colony. The drug is caled Can-D, later on a new type of drug called Chew-Z comes on th...

Searching for meaning in drugs, god, corporate culture, human evolution. And then searching for meaning directly from and of a god -- of sorts. Completely berserk in terms of pacing and plotting, and borders on incoherency in the second half, but totally worth it anyway. Dick's conceptual reach exceeds his grasp by a decent margin but the reach is broad and esoteric and stimulating nonetheless.Incidentally, the covers for the old editions of his are so much better than the one I've got:I mean, i...

My first encounter with the fiction of Philip K. Dick is his 1964 novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I was looking for something a bit challenging to read that wouldn't give me an ice cream headache. At my library, found a beautiful, barely read edition of this novel printed in 2011. PKD fans might fault my decision to make this title my introduction to the man's mind-bending tales of technological perversion, ecological disaster and the search for identity. I understand that he's writ...

Phillip K Dick is the gift that just keeps on giving. I was pretty disappointed with the VALIS books I've read so far, not because they are bad but because people say they are soooo crazy and insane... but to me they weren't, they were just political literature with a spiritual bent. I'd still not read any truly "crazy and insane" Phillip K Dick books... I'd not felt warped yet... but after Palmer Eldritch I finally felt warped, the last quarter or so of this book is unputdownable. It's like Bei...

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - A Philip K. Dick novel so crazy I found myself laughing out loud on every page. Here are a dozen key ingredients PKD mixes in his hallucinogenic science fiction roller coaster:The illegal hallucinogenic drug Can-DDrug of choice for those colonists on Mars and other remote planets, a drug enabling its chewers to inhabit the same body and mind-stream and then travel together to an appealing illusory reality in another dimension.The legal (sort of) hallucinog...

An incredibly prescient satire on multimedia* addiction - losing oneself in artificial environments to escape (or at least muffle) an undesirable reality. The picture PKD paints of the sad Martian colonists taking drugs and playing with dolls (becoming one with the dolls) reminds me of the...stereotypical...image the world has of the American nerd stuffing himself with junkfood and playing Sims, losing track of the time, of the day while living a better - or at least dynamic - life on a more vib...

Shortly after Martin Luther’s death, the heads of the papal Church, then widely challenged by the Protestant movement, felt the need to beef up their positions on several doctrinal points. In October 1551, the Council met in Santa Maria Maggiore church in Trento, to discuss the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. In the end, and after a lengthy thirteen-sessions deliberation, the bishops concluded, borrowing from earlier theological debates and Aristotelian metaphysics, that “by the consecration of

"Choosy Chewers Choose Chew-Z"This is my fourth Philip K. Dick experience... and this one was a trip.How the hell do I review this book? How is it even possible to get across the feeling this book gives? This book frankly seems like a dark downward spiral into insanity... and yet inside that it offers both hope and despair. I'll start this off bluntly. I don't fully get the novel. I don't think it is possible to fully get the novel. If you claim to fully get the novel, I question both your perce...

As usual, Phillip K. Dick has left me with spirally eyes and a whirring brain. I'd like to give a plot summary, but I'll let someone else do that and egotistically save this space for my own musings: http://www.philipkdickfans.com/ttsopa... There are summaries I found that I like better, but this one provides a useful foil against which to formulate my own thoughts about this book, which rather has my mind tied in knots. To start with, I don't see the book's theme as revolving around drugs and h...

4.5 stars. The Kingdom of Palmer Eldritch is inside you and all around you.

I don't know Dick.I've read some of his work and enjoyed it. But this was a deep philosophical dive on top of the classic psychological-warping mind games that PKD is famous for. All the tropes are here: a bevy of unlikable characters, each flawed in their own way; a scathing side-wise attack on the supposed values of 1950's America including rank capitalism, political subjugation of colonized peoples (or in this case, the colonizers themselves), and plastic-surgery-enhanced beauty; religious ze...

In 1963, while walking to his shed to do some writing, Philip K Dick experienced a ‘devastating vision of a cruelly masked human face in the sky’. Two years later, he published this book, so you, too, can experience a psychotic breakdown – from a relatively safe distance.I really enjoyed Palmer Eldritch purely on the level of weirdness – it's one of the weirdest novels I've read for some time. Although there is a lot that doesn't add up in the plot, and some irritating flaws in the characterisat...

CRITIQUE:Chew-Z Versus Can-DFor about 70% of this novel, it is as fluently and playfully written as Kurt Vonnegut's fiction from the same period (the mid-sixties).However, as it moves to some kind of conclusion in the last 30%, it becomes more enigmatic.The plot takes place variously on Earth and on Mars, and in the imagination of its characters. For the last 30% of the novel, it's often difficult to understand where it is taking place.This is largely because the characters are taking hallucinog...

I'm a fan of Philip K. Dick, but I read his stuff years ago. I eagerly sought this book out because I heard from a couple of people that this one was one of his best. Maybe I merely disagree, maybe my affection for PKD has waned, maybe I need more now than he can give.Dick is famous for his drug use and for taking speed before cranking out an entire novel in fifteen hours flat. This book, to me, feels like his most drug-influenced book. Not because of his crazy ideas, those are to be expected. I...

Oh goodie another PKD novel, Lets go through the checklist.Dystopia: Catastrophic global warming and the UN sending people against their will to off-world colonies. Check.Capitalist Satire: One of the greatest life goals is to live in an apartment building with the lowest address number possible. Check. Drugs: Look at the book description in the back. Check.Religious iconography: Look at the title at the front. Check.Reality: It's PKD, so... Maybe.Protagonist with petty concerns while facing cos...

“It takes a certain amount of courage, he thought, to face yourself and say with candor, I'm rotten. I've done evil and I will again. It was no accident; it emanated from the true, authentic me.” ― Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Enter into PKD's drug-infused, gnostic future. All his entheogens are belong to us. PKD is at his high point when he infuses his dark futurism with his gnostic explorations and his drug-fueled moral investigations. In 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer

Unfortunately this suffers from what we may call the Citizen Kane syndrome. (Someone somewhere must have given this thing a proper name.) It's when a groundbreaking original work of art gets ripped off so many times by lesser mortals (not necessarily out of malignant plagiarism, mostly because the original art introduces various techniques which become part of the lexicon) that when you actually get round to seeing/reading/hearing the original thing, your reaction is "okay, is that it?". Pity th...

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch: What if god were a lonely drug-pushing alien?Originally posted at Fantasy LiteratureThis was the 10th and final PKD book I read last year after 40 years without reading any. I always felt as a teenager that I would get more from his books as an adult, and I think I was right. This one is a real mind-bending experience, deliciously strange and tantalizing with its ideas.The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) is one of the earliest PKD novels that deals...

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch [1964] – ★★★★1/2 This is my fourth Philip K. Dick novel (previously, I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [1968], A Scanner Darkly [1977] and Ubik [1969]). This story is set in future and follows Barney Mayerson, an employee of P.P (Perky Pat) Layouts, a firm which specialises in providing layouts which can be used for drug experience when customers (those in space colonies) take illegal hallucinatory drug Can-D, which can recreate a perfect life when...