Rating: Summary: Quintessential Dick. Review: This is the one book I've read in my adult life which can give me nightmares. It's not a horror title, just Phil Dick doing some of his finest, most merciless work.
Rating: Summary: Philip K. Dick is a Master Review: A lot of sci-fi fans know how great a writer Dick was, but this particular book is a masterpiece of humor and vision. I just can't get over how wild Dick's imagination was and how he could so vividly transfer those ideas to paper. It was like being on a freaky acid trip reading this book and visualizing the story. One minute, I was laughing out loud, the next I was in rapture, deep in mental transport, contemplating the nature of divine things. Highly recommended for those that like "out-there" fiction.
Rating: Summary: One of the ten best sci-fi books of all time. Review: It was Ubik and Three Stigmata that got me into reading Sci-Fi in 1974. At the time I would think it was because of the references to "mind-altering" drugs in the stories. Now looking back it was more that they provided me with a kind of "enlightened" experience through reading (I had stopped using mind-altering drugs in 1972). After reading a few pages, PKD would have created a "reality" in my mind and just as quickly pull the rug out from one and start building another, after a few of these I put the book down, looked around the room and wondered if "my reality" was as "plastic." A few years later I was able to explore the Samadhi or isolation tank and continue having fun with reality shifting that PKD introduced me to.
Rating: Summary: Interesting ideas, flawed execution. Review: Dick's central conceit--how do we know what is real and what is imagined?--is an interesting one, and the paranoia (?) it engenders in his protagonist makes for a thought-provoking read. But the use of mind-altering drugs and certain other elements of this novel make it seem dated. More to the point, most of the characters are not persuasively drawn; they are stilted caricatures more than real people. By comparison, Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven covers similar territory, but with more credible characters; as a result it is a much more forceful (and scarier) book.
Rating: Summary: The best sci-fi novel of all time! Review: I first read this book when I was about 14. I've read it, lent it, lost it, bought it, worn it out and most of all been astonished at the brilliance of PKD's imagination. Now I have to buy it again. I preferred the original paperback cover, though. A really cool depiction of Palmer Eldritch reaching out towards you with a metal hand and that eerie metal eye of his. Buy it, you won't regret it!
Rating: Summary: The best PKD starter... Review: I had to read this for a fantasy/sci-fi class I took pass/fail in college. I thought it was mildly entertaining until about midway through the book when Leo is given Chew-Z by Palmer. I love how the book shifts gears in the middle of a paragraph! I couldn't put it down after that (many members of my class put it down instantly) and was hooked ever since. I have purchased every PKD book I have ever encountered (which is quite a few) and although some are definitely better than others, this one has everything which defines a PKD work (namely the questioning of reality) and one of his best sci-fi settings. You get both a run down earth and the struggling unsuccessful martian colonists; a combination of most of his sci-fi bests. Everyone should read this book and "A Scanner Darkly" sometime in their life.
Rating: Summary: A Mystifying, Magical Marvel of a Read Review: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a psychedelic-fueled science-fiction trip - complete with flashbacks and paranoia. Dick paints a ghoulish portrait of the future and, at the same time, illuminates some of the terryfying trends of the present. The first colonists of Mars chew Can-D to relieve the tedium. But the freewheeling Palmer Eldritch hatches a plan to bring the hovelists a more cosmic hit - salvation in a can. What ensues is a swirl of alternate realities and mind trips as the principal characters stumble in and out of the evil one's steely grip.
God perished for man, but the superior being wants us to perish for it.
Read it. It's a gas.
Rating: Summary: Extremely disturbing Review: This book outlines a future so repugnant in and of itself- a world of mass escapism, frantically living and reliving the last paltry moment they remember of planet Earth- that in a lesser story the actual plot would be swallowed. The plot of this book tops the setting. Philip Dick wrote that this book spawned the only real fear that he ever had- that the day he died, the only thing waiting for him would be Palmer Eldritch. I believe that that is recommendation enough.
Rating: Summary: This is PK Dick's most bizzare and wonderful book. Review: I've read 90% of what PK Dick wrote, and this is in the top 3, if not #1. This fun nightmare is so wonderfully strange and brilliant, it embodies his paranoias and fanatsies more densely than his other books. When people ask me what its about, I usually spend 10 minutes on what happens in just the first 50 pages. Put down your drugs, dump your drink in the sink, stop watching television. This is far better. And, like the users of Chew-Z, YOU WILL NEVER RECOVER.
Rating: Summary: beautiful and terrifying Review: One of the few science fiction books that gave me something to think about once I'd finished it. The drug Chew-Z catapults the user into a bizarre universe dominated by the evil Palmer Eldritch, the man who discovered it. But is it really Palmer Eldritch who is in control? If not, who or what is? And is it really all that evil? Either way, an enigma worth puzzling over.
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