Product Description

In this wildly disorienting funhouse of a novel, populated by God-like--or perhaps Satanic--takeover artists and corporate psychics, Philip K. Dick explores mysteries that were once the property of St. Paul and Aquinas. His wit, compassion, and knife-edged irony make The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch moving as well as genuinely visionary.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #117066 in Books
• Published on: 1991-12-03
• Released on: 1991-12-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From the Inside Flap
In this wildly disorienting funhouse of a novel, populated by God-like--or perhaps Satanic--takeover artists and corporate psychics, Philip K. Dick explores mysteries that were once the property of St. Paul and Aquinas. His wit, compassion, and knife-edged irony make The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch moving as well as genuinely visionary.

Customer Reviews

Philip K. Dick at his psychotic best
Barney Mayerson is a mid-level executive who uses his precognitive abilities to decide what products will be fashionable next in the miniature world of Perky Pat, a kind of Barbie doll of the future. This is of major importance to Perky Pat's devotees, who ingest a drug called Can-D which transposes them into Pat's little world, which is a vast improvement over their miserable existences on colonial Mars. That's the setup for this bizarre, reality-twisting tale from sci-fi genius Philip K. Dick.

Next, enter Palmer Eldritch, tycoon extraordinaire, who has just returned from a trip to a little-known alien civilization with a new substance called Chew-Z. Eldritch claims that Chew-Z actually transports the users into a virtual universe of their own creation. But when he demonstrates this for Barney and his employer, they are left to decide for themselves which universe is real and who's in actually in control.

Fans will love this paranoid ride through different levels of reality featuring Dick's bizarre approaches to precognition, recreational drugs, interplanetary colonization, religion, global warming - this is Dick at his psychotic best. For those not familiar with the work of this off-the-wall genius, this book is pretty far out, but if you aren't afraid to dive right into the craziness that is Philip K. Dick, this is not a bad place to start.

What stigmata do you carry?
This is such a religious novel - it reflects on the nature of God (compassionate, condemning, disinterested?) and the connections we make to God (through the sacrament and lesser rituals). But is there a God at all - a God that isn't just some vast entity in space? And what of our reality - are our experiences as we perceive them at all related to the reality of the physical and energetic world about us?

Of course, like any Dick novel, this book is about common man - all but overwhelmed by the mystery that surrounds them. Sure, there are the power brokers in the story - at least that's what they think they are. But do they achieve anything meaningful, and when their actions do have positive outcomes, is this anything more than luck? In Dick novels people never seem to have any power - perhaps they are no more than a single brushstroke in a masterpiece, say the 'Mona Lisa' (or for me, 'Monk by the Sea' by Caspar David Friedrich).

But ultimately we all carry the stigmata that Chew-Z inflicts on users in the novel. The stigmata of our experiences, of our upbringing, of the religion inculcated upon us, of the religion and mysticism that comes our way during our lives.

Other recommendations:
'A Scanner Darkly' - this is Philip Dick's 'drug' novel - 'The Three Stimata', despite using drugs as a vehicle for the story, is not about drugs
'The Ramayana' - the great Indian Hindu classic that will help dilute some of the stigmata that you might carry, that I certainly do

Highly recommended, however...
This is one of PKD's better books - and in true PKD fashion, it's over before you know it.

The other reviews delve into the subject and presentation, so I will share something that is both not in the book itself and highly valuable:

Purchase "Four Novels from the 1960's." This book is right in the middle - so you will not know when the story ends. I truly believe the best way to read this book is to not know the end is coming - because it will hit you the hardest.

"Four Novels" also has "The Man in the High Castle," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," and "Ubik." All four stories are wonderful.