Rating: 
Summary: P. K. DICK'S GLORIOUS TRASH AND TERROR ART
Review: THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH is certainly one of Dick's most important books. It casts a stronger, clearer and more unsettling light on a certain aspect of Dick's vision than perhaps any other of his books. I am referring to Dick's deep interest in the peculiarly post-modern experiential blend of banality and terror. This is one of the most important and least appreciated or correctly understood aspects of Dick's artistic vision and accomplishment. If you take the time to examine it, you will see that banality and terror form the poles between which the content of THE THREE STIGMATA moves and it is important to understand that this banality and terror are inseparable from the high-tech nature of this imagined future world. For Dick, the predominant effect of pervasive technological advancement has been that it intensely magnifies the banality of ordinary consciousness which, confronted then with its excruciatingly boring self, demands to be entertained, amused, ( 'Perky Pat' is only a futuristic extension of ordinary post-modern society) to the point of a sort of addiction and so the chief function of technology becomes to create a world that is a diversion from reality and then to protect that world from any possible threat. Let us note before going any further that for Dick ordinary consciousness is a sort of artificial consciousness in the sense that its main thrust is not toward a connection with the challenging mystery of reality but toward diversionary false 'realities' and this is ultimately why Dick so often blurs the line between ordinary humans and various forms of androids. They are both forms of repeatable, artificial life. The sort of open, genuine exploring of reality that was so important to Dick is alien and even taboo to ordinary consciousness. Dick saw this exploring as absolutely necessary for maintaining sanity, that is, being in touch with reality. This is a sort of law of life and the consequence of violating it is that doing so eventually leads to the manifestation of dominating monsters and terror. In a very real sense, Palmer Eldritch is nothing more than a high-tech fascist monster and the terror that he represents has its roots in the very banality of the lives of most of the people he comes to dominate. If my view of this book seems to neglect its sci-fi nature, please remember that for Dick technological advancement, however expansive, does not in itself entail any advancement in awareness or understanding in human beings, it rather only magnifies what they already are and Dick's entire body of sci-fi work is a radical rebellion against that common sci-fi fantasy. THE THREE STIGMATA is a truly visionary book of a very frightening nature.
Finally, I would like to comment on the fact that one often hears and reads statements on Dick's work claiming that it is unfortunate that he was not more conscientious about the quality of his writing, the implication presumably being that if he had been he might have produced some real literary masterpieces instead of the flawed but interesting works he did create. I believe this attitude reveals a serious lack of understanding of what it is that makes Dick's work so important, far more important than that of the majority of his contemporaries who have a more 'polished' style. It is well known that Dick wrote very rapidly, sometimes entire works gushed out of him in a very short time and it is often stated that he should have taken the time to re-write and produce a more'literary' work. I believe that Dick's gut feeling was totally against this and I also believe that his feeling was absolutely correct. Dick knew that he had a rare and deep connection with and feel for certain crucial characteristics of post-modern civilization and their implications for the future. One of these characteristics was its chronic, unique and deadly type of banality and trashiness which is so rawly present in his work. He saw it for the deeply rooted disease that it is, so deeply rooted that the common reaction to it is to try to make a virtue of it rather than face the seemingly impossible operation of trying to dig it out. He had the same deep feel for the possible fantastic terrors of the future and he sincerely struggled all his adult life to find a reality that could genuinely liberate him from, take him beyond these things. Dick's approach to writing was his way of keeping immediately in touch with his own deepest sense of things and for him to attempt to be more 'artistic' in any conventional sense of that term would only have weakened his work by turning it back toward the past and would not have improved it. Dick's work is inevitably imperfect, but it is a bold and beautiful step forward that none of his contemporaries can match.
Rating:
Summary: The first mind-whack SF writer
Review: Don't feel bad if you can't figure out what exactly is going on in this novel, and if you find the ending ambigious. I did, too, and I've been warping my brains with SF since I was 11. Let's just say it's about Dick's favorite subjects: God/Lucifer (maybe the same thing,
to Dick), precogs who can predict the future, although imperfectly, drugs, and what is real and what is not. Don't try to read much at
one time. I guarantee it will make your head hurt. But taken in little
bites, it's definitely worth it. And probably, you'll never look at
reality the same way again.
Rating: 
Summary: CREATE YOUR OWN ILLUSION
Review: No man is an island. Loneliness kills by exposing man to his own death wish. The theme of this story is the inherent loneliness that comes attached with an individual life. This is dramatized by placing his main characters on the bleak planet Mars. In THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH it became a battle over whether to ingest the drugs distributed by two competing companies, Can-D and Chew-Z. The decision facing the colonists was to use or not to use? How badly did they need the drug induced illusion? Both drugs would relieve their unbearable loneliness. The Can-D taker would shrink to inhabit a doll house size world that reminded them of their lost lives on Earth. Chew-Z use could give one the godlike ability to control hallucinated portions of their past life on Earth -- to make the bleak Martian environment disappear. But once you used Chew-Z the effects could stay with you forever.
The religious, like his character, Anne Hawthorne, were no more immune from loneliness than anyone else. Dick substituted the two drug illusions for the religious-philosophical illusions that keep the reader intact. The horror that the phantasm, Palmer Eldrich, exposed was the sin of man's desire to perpetuate himself. Dispensing his drug, Chew-Z, was Eldrich's form of reproduction.
By undergoing E therapy, the rich, who didn't mind becoming bubbleheads, could greatly increase their brain power. The artificial acceleration of human evolution was a secondary theme. Way ahead of his time, Dick foresaw the current day rush to implement gene therapy.
Rating:
Summary: Like reading a Dali painting
Review: This is easily one of the weirdest books by PKD I have read - I've read 6 others and a collection of his short stories. If you've read anything by PKD, you will know this is saying a lot. Someone described this book as being the literary equivalent of a Dali painting and I agree 100%. Like most of PKD's work (and Dali's) the line between reality and irreality is extremely blurred. Also like Dali, there is a strong emphasis on the dream world, or artificial hypnogogic hallucinations. TTS starts of fairly easy to digest (for an SF novel) before becoming incredibly visionary, in a world plagued by global warming and what is probably overpopulation, with the people run by one government, the UN, who are trying to colonize the entire system. Notice I said easy to digest, not ordinary. PKD's worlds are never a utopia though, as evinced in this book by the deteriorating of life on Earth due to daily temperatures in the 180s and incredibly dreary life on colonized planets and moons. Our basis begins with the drug Can-D, which is in illegal use on the colonies, and seems to be the only thing preventing the colonists from dying of pure apathy. PKD is not one to give a direct explanation of anything, and it takes several pages to comprehend what this drug does.
Akin to most of his books in this period, PKD does not have one main character in his book. The main character is the reality he has created, and what better way to develop this character than through the use of several characters, each with a unique perspective, as opposed to the study of one particular character and life as seen through him or her. Of course, PKD isn't going to chose purely random people from his created environment, but ones that end up created a network of relationships throughout the story (think Pulp Fiction). We have a "Pre-Fash precog" working for P.P. Layouts who uses his precognitive powers to decide if a proposed manufacturers' products will become fashionable, and thus profitable to his company - Barney Mayerson. His boss, Leo Bulero, has undergone E Therapy - a vogue and elitist medical procedure that triggers the inert evolutionary capabilities of the human mind (don't tell Darwin). Mayerson's ex-wife is a potter now married to a salesman trying to sell her pots to Mayerson. There is Sam Regan, an ordinary colonist who gives the reader his first taste of Can-D, whom Mayerson encounters later in the book. There are two other women that Mayerson becomes involved with during the book; one his secretary whose precog powers threaten to outshine his own, and the other a Neo-Christian colonist who adds some theological insight to the story. And let's not forget our title character, Palmer Eldritch, an industrialist returning from the Prox system to push his new product - a legal and more powerful competition for Can-D: Chew-Z. But don't think that tells you anything about Eldritch.
What I like about PKD is that he can create these decidedly SF attributes of a society, but doesn't base his story on them. They are, in my opinion, more of an added bonus or, more commonly, a tool to develop his underlying philosophical ideas. This is what I think the best SF is made of. Of course, you will have always have your pulp SF that is really an adventure story that takes place in the future, or with aliens, or with robots. Don't read this book expecting an orthodox adventure or mystery with a completely tangible solution. A lot of PKD's book end with more of a catharsis for the characters than an ending to the storyline. Remember that the real main character is his world, or his altered reality, in many of his books, and to have a real ending would be to end with the society in a state of utopian equilibrium. PKD is generally not interested in this, although this book did seem to have a stronger "ending" than some of his others.
I think so far I've really told you more about PKD's style than his themes or philosophy. I'm really not sure how to do that, given that it is all very visceral, and it also took PKD the whole book to do so. The topics include the usual reality, plus realized heavens and hells, survival on a grand scale, and very importantly - what I can only think to describe as psychotheological thought. I won't tell you exactly what he says about these things, partly because, again, it's too visceral (he's really an artist not a scientist), and partly because this isn't SparkNotes and I'm not going to give away the whole book. For that reason I also don't want to delve into the plot, although I will say it is very fascinating, unique, and it puts your brain through a centrifuge inside your skull.
To give a starter to the plot that might entice you, I should give a vague description of what Can-D is supposed to do. P.P. Layouts makes miniature creations of what looks like an ordinary place on earth. The pre-fash precogs assist in selecting items to "min" (miniaturize) to act as accessories. What you get is some kind of replica of a part of Earth, which is legally distributed. Illegally they traffic Can-D which "translates" the characters onto the layout or really onto Earth or whatever (it's still up for debate among the characters within the book), as a convenient escape from the desolate colonies which they were forced by the UN to inhabit. Don't even ask what Chew-Z does. Try not to spend all your time understanding exactly how everything works. It's ridiculously complicated and it's really not the point anyway.
Rating:
Summary: Downright eeeeerie
Review: This is one of my favorites by PKD. Very similar elements to a lot of his other work, but, with Three Stigmata, I feel that he was far more successful in wrapping everything together into a cohesive whole than with some other PKD books. The actual three stigmata of Eldritch become downright eerie when they start manifesting themselves in this book.... very twisted and fully image inducing.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite of the 10 PKD novels that I have read
Review: There are many great descriptions of this book's narrative in other reviews below- so I won't repeat what has already been well-explained. However, I would like to add why I think this is such a great book.
(NOTE: I am NOT about to give anything away)
In this book PKD posits the idea that if we could choose our own afterlife/paradise/eternity, then we would all choose the SAME thing/event/idea. Of course, to know what THAT "thing" is, then you will have to read the book. ... ENJOY !... it is really, really great - I have read it three times...
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Summary: What is Palmer Eldritch?
Review: God, Satan, Maya, the Id, Drugs, Evolution, Communism, Religion, Postmodernism, the Future, Reality, Unreality...all of the above, none of the above? What does Eldritch and his precious Chew-Z represent to you?Dick's masterpiece about a creeping threat(or is it the salvation of man?) that is borderline supernatural feeds off the audience's paranoia of the "Other". This is a common theme in PKD's work, and this may be his best on this topic. We have no control over it, it's coming, to eat us, to savor us, to incorporate us into his mind. I've always felt that PKD was in ways an heir to horror-master H.P. Lovecraft, another writer who wrote about the inevitability of man's annihilation at the hands of the supernatural. I'm tempted to drop the rating a half star, because this book does tend to get repetitive towards the end, and possibly confusing if you're not paying attention, but that seems to always be PKD's point--the swarming of Palmer Eldritch in the characters' minds. It works well as an idea, but, in execution, you kind of want the story to move along. PKD's strength wasn't in his plotting or characterization (although this book has some of his better character arcs), but in his mind-blowing creativity. Even his weakest books are a joy just because you run into concepts and ideas that you probably never could have thought of yourself. Finding out what little mundane development PKD envisions for the future is as much as a page turner as the plot itself. Evolution treatment, suitcase psychiatrists? The normality of the weird, a PKD trademark.
Rating:
Summary: Further proof of genius.
Review: This may well be Philip K. Dick's most brain-frying book, and I mean that as a complement. I put it down feeling overstuffed, as if the book were a rich cheese I'd had too much of. There is so much going on here, thematically, conceptually, and literally, that it's hard to keep track. The plot is... too much to describe, so I'll direct you to what Amazon has already provided. It's perhaps best not to know too much about what's going on beforehand anyway. Ultimately this is a story that works on many levels. Alongside questions about the divine, about the nature of reality, about the nature of happiness, there are some wonderfully simple human elements, such as Barney Mayerson's attempt to cope with failure, and his gradual redefinition of himself at the colony. This kind of character transformation- breaking down, then building up- seems central to much of Dick's work, and it is handled with a breathtaking emotional subtlety. I am not sure whether I consider this the best of Dick's work, but it certainly demonstrates why he was perhaps science fiction's most literary author- one whose efforts stand as a validation of the genre's worth. Here is a sci-fi novel that is also a brilliant piece of postmodernist literature, a study of faith and the human psyche that deals with the increasing (or simply continued) complexity and uncertainty of the world around us, and the need to find something to hold on to, be it illusion or reality. More thoughts will probably come with time. Right now I don't think the digestion process has finished.
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