Philip K. Dick

Palmer Eldritch returns from a distant galaxy with a new drug called Chew-Z, which claims to deliver eternal life. Barney Mayerson confronts questions of loyalty, judgement and love, as well as his own insecurities about his ex-wife. His addictive personality thrusts him in the middle of a mystery as to the true nature of Chew-Z and what it means for the future of the galaxy. Palmer Eldritch is omnipresent throughout the novel as the reader tries to figure out his intentions.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

里森

There was such a thing as salvation. But— Not for everyone.

‘To the primitive mind,’ Eldritch said, ‘the unclean and the holy are confused. Merged merely as taboo.

‘I’m unclean,’ Barney informed him. ‘WHO TOLD YOU THAT?’ ‘An animal out in the desert. And it had never seen me before; it knew it just by coming close to me.’ While still five feet away, he thought to himself.

‘May I eat you?’ it asked. And panted, avidly slack-jawed.

It looks into our eyes; and it looks out of our eyes.

‘An artificial hand. And a distortion of my jaw. And my eyes—’ ‘Yes,’ she said tightly. ‘The mechanical, slitted eyes. What did it mean?’ Barney said, ‘It meant that you were seeing into absolute reality. The essence beyond the mere appearance.’ In your terminology, he thought, what you saw is called - stigmata.

‘That thing,’ he said, speaking to them all, especially to Norm Schein and his wife, ‘has a name which you’d recognize if I told it to you. Although it would never call itself that. We’re the ones who’ve titled it. From experience, at a distance, over thousands of years. But sooner or later we were bound to be confronted by it. Without the distance. Or the years.’ Anne Hawthorne said, ‘You mean God.’

That’s my gift to you, and remember: in German Gift means poison.

‘Okay! I’ll make you a stone, put you by a seashore; you can lie there and listen to the waves for a couple of million years. That ought to satisfy you.’ You dumb jerk, he thought savagely. A stone! Christ!

‘Make me into a stone.’ ‘Why?’ Barney Mayerson said, ‘So I can’t feel. There’s nothing for me anywhere.’

Palmer Eldritch had gone to Prox a man and returned a god.

I’m sorry, he said to himself, apologizing to his somatic part.

he had foresight, almost to the point where it was like what I have now, like hindsight.

Like Shakespeare says, some damn thing about sticking a mere pin in through the armor, and goodbye king.

her mind was not even made up - there was, to her, simply no reality to which he was referring.

The time, then, had come for him to poison himself so that an economic monopoly could be kept alive, a sprawling, interplan empire from which he now derived nothing.

Did you ever read Paul?’ ‘Paul who?’

Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion?

“Think the least gift that he giveth is great; and the most despisable things take as special gifts and as great tokens of love.”

‘I was going to suggest Augustine’s Confessions in the style of Lichtenstein - funny, of course.’

Barney, dutifully, said, ‘You insert one of the Great Books, for instance Moby-Dick, into the reservoid. Then you set the controls for long or short. Then for funny version, or same-as-book or sad version. Then you set the style-indicator as to which classic Great Artist you want the book animated like. Dali, Bacon, Picasso . . . the medium-priced Great Books animator is set up to render in cartoon form the styles of a dozen system-famous artists; you specify which ones you want when you originally buy the thing. And there are options you can add later that provide even more.’

Evidently subject matter had no bearing; he had never realized this before.

‘You learn to get by from day to day,’ Sam Regan said sympathetically to him. ‘You never think in longer terms. Just until dinner or until time for bed; very finite intervals and tasks and pleasures. Escapes.’

Palmer Eldritch returns from the edge of the universe with a drug called Chew-D for the colonists of Mars who are under threat of god-like or satanic psychics that threaten to wage war against the human soul.

Bouke van der Bijl

This book is super weird, the premise is that a wealthy person returns from another galaxy carrying with him a new drug, which ends up controlling people’s minds and altering their reality. The fun part is that the protagonists also undergo this drug, which means that there are a lot of parts in the book where you don’t know what’s real or not. My first PKD read and o really enjoyed it. Also funny was the ‘retro-futurism’ with everyone smoking all the time and the power imbalance between men and women which is different now.

Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman

Not my favorite Dick novel. It kind of lost me there at the end, but still a great commentary on post WW2 society and Mass Culture.

Gabriel H

What a wild ride… PKD is un genio. Unbelievably creative and surprisingly philosophical.

Ben Nathan

It was good, but definitely not for everyone. I've enjoyed the other Dick books I've read more, though this was still very smart and engaging. Had a very trippy vibe to it. If you enjoy his books, give it a shot

Kamil Pomykała

Achraf Benhamou

Alex Stelzhammer

Geese Fish

François Declercq

Count Dracula

Eduardo Marques Correa

“A psychedelic odyssey of hallucinations-within-hallucinations from which no reader emerges unscathed.”—Boston Globe On Mars, the harsh climate could make any colonist turn to drugs to escape a dead-end existence. Especially when the drug is Can-D, which translates its users into the idyllic world of a Barbie-esque character named Perky Pat. When the mysterious Palmer Eldritch arrives with a new drug called Chew-Z, he offers a more addictive experience, one that might bring the user closer to God. But in a world where everyone is tripping, no promises can be taken at face value. This Nebula Award nominee is one of Philip K. Dick’s enduring classics, at once a deep character study, a dark mystery, and a tightrope walk along the edge of reality and illusion.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

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