The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Rating:
Summary: The most scary book ever written?
Review: Once Philip K Dick was walking across a field, when he looked up, and saw "a terrible visage" superimposed on the sky. It was a huge, metal-eyed, metal-jawed face.

This strange hallucination became the basis of one of PKD's greatest works. He began with that terrible face he "saw" in the sky, and invents an entire universe to go around it.

PKD was extremely frightened of the figure of Palmer Eldritch, whom he regarded as the ultimate figure of evil - a god who will take your objective reality away, and trap you in delusory states of mind. Actually, PKD was so frightened by this story, he couldn't stand to check the "galley proofs" when his publisher sent them to him. That could explain some of the weaknesses in the book!

What is the book about? I admit, I am not too sure. But something profound is going on in the wings. Philip K Dick makes a statement about Reality. What is it? It is that which is not private. All of us would dreadfully fear suddenly discovering that we have been living in a dreamworld since we were born. Everything that we take for granted turns out to be 100% subjective - no commonality behind the veil of illusion.

In Palmer Eldritch, the characters believe that taking Chew-Z can cause them to penetrate into some higher level of reality. But if such a reality cannot include other people, then what is the point? One can have eternity in a solitary, delusional state - but if one never awakes, such an immortality would be something worse than hell. At least hell is crowded.

Notice, too, the contrast between Can-D and Chew-Z as mirroring the contrast between Marijuana and Heroin. Marijuana is a party drug, used in concert with other people, and provides a jolly good time.
But then, along comes the pusher of "hard drugs", which are much more powerful - but also have to be taken alone, in a solitary place. One goes to a world of solipsistic solitude when one takes heroin - and of course, if one becomes an addict, one becomes more and more apt simply to STAY there...It is an eternal life, of sorts - nothing is ever experienced again...just pure solitude forever...

Many people I know, including me, have reported strange experiences after reading this book. It is a book that became part of the hippie movement - it was one of John Lennon's favourite books, and became regarded as one of the great LSD novels.

The spooky part of this novel are the hallucinations toward the end, where the characters begin losing their identity, and all start turning into Palmer Eldritch. That is just too scary.

Anyway, take this book with care - as Ubik says, use only as directed...

Rating:
Summary: So much stuff going on in such a short book
Review: This is the first Philip K. Dick book that I have read, but I will certainly read many more. My brain hurts after reading this book in a few sittings. There is just so much stuff going on.

The story starts off simply enough, simple might not actually be the right word, with Barney Mayerson waking up in bed with his new assistant Rondinella Fugate. What does Roni assist Barney with? She is his fellow Pre-Fash consoltany who try to predict what will become good sellers in the future. They work for P.P. Layouts a business that makes a doll named Perky Pat. Before you think that Perky Pat is just another doll. That is far from the truth, Perky Pat and her miniature layouts actually work as a setting for folks in colonies such as Mars or Io to escape their harsh realities. The women enter the body of Perky Pat, the men enter the body of Walt. So this business is pretty lucrative. How do they enter the bodies of the dolls? By taking a drug called Can-D. Illegal on earth, but not illegal on the colonies. The problem for Barney is that he has been drafted to live on one of the colonies. This is just the beginning of his problems.

Along comes Palmer Eldritch a man who ten years in the past had left earth to visit an alien society. He brings back a lichen that he calls Chew-Z. It is supposed to be much more powerful than Can-D, but in the universe that Chew-Z brings the user Palmer is a god.

A wonderful book that should appeal to many. One aspect that really fascinated me about the book was something that Dick just wrote in passing. He mentioned a bit about in Perky Pat's world incest, murder, and other crimes could be committed without threat of retribution. This seems very relevent in this day and age with virtual reality games. When is a murder not a murder?

Rating:
Summary: How do we know who God really is? And is he what we think?
Review: This is the question, it appears that Philip K. Dick is trying to share with his readers, as he switches around the history of Christianity with a science fiction story. The lines between reality and hallucinations are blurred, and God is made out to be a somewhat evil man trying for world domination. PKD touches on all the routines we perform for our religion and transforms them into a 230 page book about a God or Devil that can take over the world at any time.

Now, I'm not the most religious person in the world, and after reading the book I had to sit down and think about the last 20 pages of the book and what they meant as I usually do about PKD books (most of his books get very strange or fall apart in the last few pages), and I frantically began searching the web for a meaning of this book, when it hit me. The true meaning of the book. I am not going to give away anything, but I'm going to tell you that this book is not what it seems, the surface may confuse you (really confuse you), but read the ending over again, and it will come to you. This is no doubt one of the best books I have ever read, and I recommend it to anybody who enjoys the writing of Philip K. Dick.

Also recommended: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, A Maze of Death, A Scanner Darkly, American Psycho.

Rating:
Summary: Fun anarchic romp through the imagination
Review: PKD's "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" disappointed me, especially after reading "Do Androids Dream..." But that's admitting that I have high expectations for Dick's works. He's a visionary, an excellent writer, a first-rate satirist, and fun, fun, fun!

Stigmata's strong points: Character, dialog. Awesome social satire - the colonists huddling in their hovels, chewing narcotics, wife-swapping, hating their dreary lives are a natural allegory to modern-day suburbs. Their narcotic, Can-D, produced a hallucination whereby the colonists inhabit the life of Perky Pat, a rich playgirl living in San Francisco - again, not so far removed from today's penchant for reality shows, or very much like the popular video game, "The Sims," which allows gamers to inhabit and build a virtual life in a computer environment.

PKD effectively comments on the penchant for escapism in modernity, escape from the alien urban environments we have constructed to provide us with comfort and quiet. It's the quiet and comfort that drives us to seek thrill and adventure and wonder in a drug, a video game, in TV, or on line or inline skates.

But PKD takes it further. For him, thrill, wonder, and adventure are all aspects of divinity. Having lost our natural connection to divinity and the aforementioned characteristics thereof in the comforts of modern-day suburbia, our only avenue to God is through our imagination. And this is where "Stigmata" takes off.

Stigmata's weak points: Confusion. Anarchy. PKD lost me in the character of Palmer Eldritch. I know that there's supposed to be a whole lot of symbolism and message in the plot elements surrounding Eldritch and his insidious new drug, Chew-Z. But I didn't get it. Is Eldritch the Son of God? a prophet? hosting an alien parasite?

Like the drug, Chew-Z itself, "Stigmata" takes off on an hallucinogenic romp that's very hard to follow. What's "real"? What happens to whom? When is the narrative tracking actual events, or when is it reporting a vision? Likely that was PKD's intent, to tweak the reality of his narration and bend the rules of reality. It worked, but left the book - for me - a confusing hodgepodge that sputters out instead of burning fiercely to its conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: The World Will Never Quite Seem The Same Again...
Review: A darkly comic, often disturbing journey of self discovery where PKD cleverly gives the reader a literary acid trip. A book which stirs the reader to question the world in which we all live. Maybe, just maybe, things are not quite what they seem! This story haunts you after you read it - when PKD wrote this book he uncovered dark meditations on life which are truly unsettling but (as always with PKD) extremely funny. One of his best!

Rating:
Summary: SF NOVELS OPUS SEVENTEEN
Review: Philip K. Dick's THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH has been published in 1965 and belongs to the masterpieces written by the american author. As in MARTIAN TIME-SLIP, another PKD first-class book of the same period, Dick gives here a tremendous life to the inner visions of his characters.

It's the first time in his literary career that PKD develops religious issues in a book. Only maybe the 1957 EYE IN THE SKY, a book which could be considered as a prelude to THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH had such mystical considerations in its plot. In TSPE, Dick clearly suggests that the illusions provoked by the drugs are similar to the Holy Mysteries revealed during religious celebrations.

Important themes developed in a magistral manner, inner visions described in the unique PKD style and, more important, the ability to create a novel with three or four novelettes linked tightly together, everything indicates that Philip K. Dick, in 1965, is at the beginning of the sumptuous literary career he will develop from the mid-sixties until his death.

A book for your library.

Rating:
Summary: bizarre and original - PKD's trademark
Review: Trying to describe Philip K. Dick's (PKD's) novels is a difficult task. Like his other novels during his peak period (1960s), 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Edritch' is really more a statement on human society than a science fiction novel. And PKD has a tendency to try to explain too much in a short amount of space. These faults aside, this novel is classic PKD territory. That is, it's an enjoyable and thought-provoking read if you don't try to over-analyse it.

For what it's worth, 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch' is a futuristic story where Mars is colonized by draftees from Earth. They are bored silly, and need mind an illegal narcotic "can-D" to make them escape, at least briefly, back to the happy days on Earth. All is fine until a mysterious character, Palmer Eldritch, returns from a far off galaxy with a more powerful (and sinister) drug "chew-Z". Sounds weird? It is, but again it's very entertaining.

Bottom line: PKD fans will love this book. Great fun.

Rating:
Summary: Redeeming the Pusherman
Review: One of PKD's acknowledged classics, and the one where all his more bizarre obsessions - drugs, paranoia, the fluid nature of reality - unite. He wouldn't really bring it all home as powerfully again until _A Scanner Darkly_.

As with most classics, we might find it hard to judge this novel on its own merits. It's tempting to give it high marks just because everyone agrees that it's a classic. Well, it certainly deserves five stars, but why?

For one thing, in _Three Stigmata_ PKD finally mastered the art of story combinations. I've complained in past reviews that some of his previous novels contained so many ideas you couldn't follow them too well - in this novel he got it right. The plot doesn't simply jump, for instance, from a corporate office on Earth to a hovel on Mars; the corporate office produces something that the inhabitants of that hovel actually consume, and eventually one of the corporate employees may have to go there. For another example, that corporate employee doesn't merely have problems, his problems are connected - it's because he might have to go to Mars that he can't handle the pain of his divorce. And so on. The incidents in _Three Stigmata_ form webs of force that drive the characters from place to place, which makes the novel much more involving. And then it turns out that almost all those webs of force are in the control of a boogeyman.

Don't underestimate the power of a boogeyman tale, especially a tale for adults where the boogeyman has a mechanical hand, artificial eyes and steel teeth. His name is Palmer Eldritch, and at first he's simply a new competitor that the protagonist has to deal with; he's pushing a new kind of drug that's much more effective than the one our hero has been selling.

Now, here's where things really start to get interesting. Palmer Eldritch's mere presence forces our hero to confront the fact that he's a pusher. What does he do about this new competition? He calls upon his connections in government to get his competitor's product suppressed, that's what. When that doesn't work, he hunts down his competitor with the idea in mind of killing him. This is a hero?

Well, yeah. Turns out that Palmer Eldritch isn't merely a businessman looking for a big score - he's after something much more insidious. To save the world, our "hero" the pusher has to turn into a genuine hero after all. What's more, to do that, he has to change his entire approach to life. He's been in the business of selling an illusion, and he has to find a way to sell reality to a bunch of people who don't want it, himself included.

All of this is brilliant enough - a character who starts out as the mirror image of the villain and has to turn himself around for the sake of humanity. PKD goes one step further. There's another character here who's looking to rebuild his self-esteem after committing a crime, and he too has a choice; will he use his influence to escape the consequences of his actions, but turn himself into the kind of man his ex-wife despises? Or will he give up all his privileges and accept exile to Mars, never see his ex-wife again but still be worthy of her? He has to decide whether his comfort, or really his life, is worth his ability to look at himself. When was the last time you read an SF story that even bothered to ask that question?

Like I said, _Three Stigmata_ deals with PKD's well-known propensity for drugs, paranoia and illusory reality, but like a lot of his work it's really a book about redemption, those who struggle for it and those who can't have it. It's his stylistic genius that makes the book a classic, but it's his concern with redemption that makes the book worthwhile.

Benshlomo says, Some will find redemption and some will not, but we must respect all who seek it.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant work from a Master!
Review: PKD had a unique writing style that reaches deep into your mind and makes you bond with his characters. He does it quickly and in many cases right at the very first paragraph.

I read this book some ten years ago and yet the story stays with me...even with today's distractions (Internet for instance!)bombarding my fading memory.

If you get a chance, read his works and you will soon thirst for more! It's a fact.

Rating:
Summary: Consider This Sacred
Review: This book made me question reality as we know it. It has a profound impact on its readers as you are not sure what level of reality you are on as you go from chapter to chapter. The characters ingest a drug brought from the outer reaches of out galaxy which affect reality so much that the user is not sure if his lucid moments are indicative of the drug wearing off. Just when the characters believe they are back in real-time there are phenomena which indicate they are still in an alternate universe in which they are mere puppets, such as an Alice In Wonderland type of reality. You will be able to read this book in two nights, maximum. It is an enjoyabe trip.