Not too long from now, when exiles from a blistering Earth huddle miserably in Martian colonies, the only things that make life bearable are the drugs. Can-D translates those who take it into the bodies of Barbie-like dolls. But now Palmer Eldritch has returned after a mysterious disappearance a decade ago, bringing with him a new drug, Chew-Z, even more powerful than Can-D. Marketed under the slogan, God promises eternal life; we can deliver it, Chew-Z is as mysterious as Eldritch himself. As the readers learn the true ...
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Not too long from now, when exiles from a blistering Earth huddle miserably in Martian colonies, the only things that make life bearable are the drugs. Can-D translates those who take it into the bodies of Barbie-like dolls. But now Palmer Eldritch has returned after a mysterious disappearance a decade ago, bringing with him a new drug, Chew-Z, even more powerful than Can-D. Marketed under the slogan, God promises eternal life; we can deliver it, Chew-Z is as mysterious as Eldritch himself. As the readers learn the true origins of Chew-Z and Eldritch, it becomes clear that in a world fueled by hallucinogens, nothing can be taken at face value. In this wildly disoreinting 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.
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Seller's Description:
Acceptable. Boston: Gregg Press, 1979. Reprint. 8vo Hardcover. 279pp. Very Good book and no dust jacket. Dark green cloth with red spine device and gilt spine and front lettering. Light soiling to the top-edge. Pink marking to the bottom-edge. Otherwise inside clean. From the library of science fiction and fantasy writer, editor, publisher and prolific book reviewer D. Douglas Fratz. (sci-fi, speculative fiction, drugs) Inquire if you need further information.
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Seller's Description:
Near Fine Minus. No Jacket, As Issued. 8vo., 278pp. Beautiful Stated "First Printing, November1979", with a new introduction by Paul Williams. The text is a facsimile of the original Doubleday First Edition. Bound in green cloth with titles in gilt upon a red spine label and the author's facsimile signature in gilt on front board. Frontis illustration by Hannah Shapiro. Square, tight and clean throughout with little or no wear, Light scattered spotting to end-papers and fore-edges. Some faint, though noticeable, mottling on the rear board. No dust-jacket as issued. A very pretty collectable copy of the one of the scarcer Gregg titles.
I had read only a couple of his novels and these last 4 novels also live up to his reputation.
Haven't read yet "Time out of joint", but I'll come back to tell you if it was as good as the rest.
Joe Z
Dec 6, 2012
Superb reflection on reality
This is one of Dick's best, a disturbing but also funny reflection on the nature of what is real and what is not. With Ubik, Do Androids Dream and Eye in The Sky, among the best novels about what constitutes reality in a complex universe where perception can be manipulated and what we believe can be subtly altered by forces we do not control.
Emrys
Jun 20, 2009
Convoluted and Unconvincing
Even by PKD's standards, this is a convoluted novel. Dick himself wrote in reference to it, "I not only cannot understand the novel, I can't even read it." Understandable, considering that the story revolves around drugs that project the user's consciousness into illusory "realities," and the characters aren't always sure whether they're currently stoned. It starts out straightforward enough - promising, even - but eventually takes a downturn into psychedelia from which it never recovers.
Convolution aside, Dick does a much poorer job than usual here of making his "science" credible. That there are drugs that produce fully realized and realistic illusions I can accept readily enough, but that toking them is a group experience and that they require physical dollhouse props into which they somehow project the user's consciousness is stretching things a bit far. That alone I could handle, but there's also the matter of what Dick calls "E-Therapy," which is described as being a treatment that accelerates the process of evolution. Dick's idea of evolution, however, is not the genuine scientific theory, but the sort of half-formed notion that one might expect a very young child to get out of an explanation of the term: evolution, according to Dick, is a linear, predictable process that progresses not as mutations occur in the reproductive cycle, but as mutations occur in individual organisms over their lifetimes. Even the explanations of precognition aren't as believable as they are in Dick's other precog stories.
