Name: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Rating: 4 (49 reviews)
ISBN: 9781407247427

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

ikkychan

Long after i read it i find myself still ruminating with the ideas in the book. It's nothing like i've read before.<br /><br />The design of parallel universe is common place now, but parallel reality is something else. True, we can see it throughout different famous pop pieces like The Matrix or Ghost in the Shell (machine-induced type), Inception (in the realm of unconsciousness), or Perfect Blue (psychological viewpoint), but the idea of parallel reality in 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch' is something else entirely.<br /><br />Imagine, you're going to be connected with other people through one Entity, and this Entity keeps on multiplicating itself through you to every other people that you've encounter, like a highly contagious virus, and it will soon be really, extremely hard to tell what's real and what's not because this Entity can drown you within layer of layer of hallucinations and put you in different set of reality that at some point you can completely forget about who you are. Man, life is already this hard and Philip wants to make it even more hellish? Sign me up, Eldritch.

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.

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

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

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