The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
by Philip K. Dick

After watching A Scanner Darkly a while ago I made a mental note to find some of Philip K Dick's novels. To my surprise none of the local bookstores had any so I promptly forgot about it. But alas, it popped back into my head a couple weeks ago so I ordered a beautiful little hardback collection of PKD entitled Four Novels of the 1960's.

The first one I read was The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and if his other stuff is this good I think I will be reading a lot of his work
This fairly short unimposing novel is quite a psychedelic little mind bending adventure. I'll refrain from explaining much of it so as not to detract from the experience of reading it but here's a little introduction.

The setting is a future (actually around the present, but future when it was written) and global warming is reaching a point where earth will soon no longer be habitable. Colonies on mars and a few moons are being set up as an out for the human race, but being a colonist is dreary and soul crushing so the use of a drug becomes widespread among colonists to whom the drug's experience is considered by many to be a sort of religious experience. The drug allows them to sort of dissociate and live out fantasy lives of being back on earth in it's heyday. However a new drug is coming onto the market that proves to be much more than meets the eye...

Trippy book, two thumbs up from this ape