The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch: What if god were a lonely drug-pushing alien?Originally posted at Fantasy LiteratureThis was the 10th and final PKD book I read last year after 40 years without reading any. I always felt as a teenager that I would get more from his books as an adult, and I think I was right. This one is a real mind-bending experience, deliciously strange and tantalizing with its ideas.The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) is one of the earliest PKD novels that deals overtly with drug use, hallucinations, and his thoughts on religion and the divine in our mundane lives. As usual, his near-future world is fairly dystopian, and his characters are everyday people trying to muddle through life. There are no superheroes, and his characters are filled with flaws. PKD was a champion of the downtrodden everyman, which makes sense since he himself was always struggling with poverty, mental illness, multiple divorces, and pervasive paranoia. He also had a religious experience in Feb 1974 with a mysterious girl with a fish-shaped gold pendant, from which a pink beam of light went straight into his mind. He attributed it to a communication from a completely rational alien mind that imparted a series of hallucinations and visions of early Rome and Christians. These experiences led him to write the VALIS trilogy (1978-82), which really dives deep down the rabbit hole of his religious explorations.Three Stigmata came before this stage of his life, and the book evokes the usual Dickian paranoia, disorientation, and melancholy that infuses all his best works, and done with very simple, unadorned prose. In fact, the book defines the Three Stigmata as alienation, blurred reality, and despair, symbolized by a mechanical arm, artificial eyes, and steel teeth.In his story, Barney Mayerson is a precog who works for Perky Pat Layouts. His job is to use precognition to predict which accessories will become popular for users of the illegal drug Can-D, which allows users to escape into the world of Perky Pat and Walt, two Barbie and Ken-like characters who live an easy and bourgeois existence. The drug is used pervasively by off-world colonists, who live grim and miserable lives trying half-heartedly to establish human settlements, since the Earth is suffering from severe global warming. What’s interesting is that users of Can-D think of the drug as a religious experience, and argue whether the “translation”, which lasts only a short time, is an actual physical transportation to another world, or merely an illusion. It’s also strange that the actual activities of Pat and Walt are fairly prosaic and superficial, like going to the beach, shopping, having casual sex, etc. The unique aspect of Can-D is that multiple users can occupy the person of Pat (women only) and Walt (men only), so the drug does serve as a shared communal experience, whether or not the experience is “real”.Meanwhile, Barney’s boss Leo Bulero, a gruff and arrogant man, learns that Palmer Eldritch, a man who left the solar system 10 years ago to explore the Prox System, is coming back with a mysterious lichen that will allow him to produce a new and more insidious drug named Chew-Z. Although the details are initially not clear, it turns out that Chew-Z allows the user to be transported to an entirely different universe, one which the user himself can control and shape.Leo Bulero, threated by this new rival drug to Can-D, decides to visit Palmer Eldritch where he is recuperating from the crash of his ship in an off-world hospital. Leo has been told by Barney and another precog that he will eventually kill Eldritch, but he decides to confront Eldritch anyway. Upon meeting him, Eldritch kidnaps Leo and forces him to try Chew-Z, and Leo discovers that Eldritch can control every aspect of the experience, even to the point of seemingly allowing Barney to go back to Earth. The illusion of reality in Chew-Z is exponentially more powerful than the brief and tawdry experience of Can-D, so Leo quickly recognizes that his business empire will be crushed if Chew-Z takes over on the off-world colonies.Back on Earth, Barney Mayerson refuses to help Leo out when he is kidnapped by Eldritch, and as a result Leo fires him. Barney has also been romantically involved with his assistant and fellow precog Rondinella, but begins to regret separating from his former wife, who now designs pottery and has a new boyfriend. As his life on Earth deteriorates, Barney decides that he needs to do penance for past wrongs and volunteers to be sent to the Mars colony by the UN (most people do everything possible to avoid this fate).Here Barney encounters other colonists using Can-D, but cannot bring himself to use it. Instead, he is there when Palmer Eldritch’s pushers come and try to get the colonists to switch to Chew-Z. In the meantime Leo Bulero has convinced him to serve as a double-agent and wants him to try Chew-Z, then develop a medical condition (epilepsy) as a result of the drug, thereby discouraging others from switching.At this point the plot gets extremely convoluted (yes, more so!) as several characters get caught up in Chew-Z hallucinations, during which they frequently encounter the ominous Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, the mechanical arm, artificial eyes, and steel teeth. Both Barney and Leo start to travel in time and space and it’s not clear what is real and what is induced by Chew-Z.In the middle of it all, the mysterious figure of Palmer Eldritch continues to manifest himself in the characters lives, seemingly all-powerful and yet trapped within the confines of his fate. It seems that Palmer Eldritch is no longer human, but instead may have become a god in the Prox system, or been taken over by something alien and powerful. Palmer’s motivations for spreading the use of Chew-Z in the solar system are unclear. In many ways, his existence seems a lonely one, and he actually tries through elaborate means to switch bodies with Barney to avoid his predestined death at the hands of Leo Bulero in the future. Why would this powerful alien being, perhaps a manifestation of a much greater and more inscrutable god-like figure, need to avoid a death it can already foresee, and would prefer to have the dreary existence of Barney on Mars? PDK never answers this question, but instead throws out the sacrilegious idea that god may not be all-powerful, may indeed be lonely and lacking in purpose, but is still driven to manifest himself in the lives of humans, even if they do not want his intrusions. The way that PKD parallels drug-induced hallucinations with religious experiences is also quite bold, but would have found a ready audience in the tumultuous social upheavals and iconoclasm of the 1960s.In the end, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a very strange reality-bending book that spins off more ideas in 240 pages than many novelists conceive of in their entire careers. And while the reader is not spoon-fed any answers in the end, he is given plenty of food for thought, which makes this an excellent introduction to one of SF’s greatest minds.
What I would give for a dick I don't know, but I'm perfectly willing to pay 2 pounds a piece for them. Review of 'Saint Maybe' and 'Stigmata'There were clues in the titles, I realise retrospectively, that these were both books about God: ‘Saint’ in one, ‘Stigmata’ in the other…a complete coincidence that I read them back to back.But what different takes – well, they would be different, wouldn’t they? Tyler and Dick. Not two authors one would typically mention in the same breath.Saint Maybe deals with a person who needs God. He has planned a hot date with his girlfriend, when suddenly he is asked to babysit his brother’s children – two older step, one just born, arguably not his brother’s either. His brother’s at a bucks night, his wife has supposedly gone out with a friend, but he knows better. His brother’s wife is cheating on him. He has put all the evidence together over a period of time, it is circumstantial, but. So, when his brother turns up drunk he insists on his driving him to his girlfriend’s place and tells him along the way what he thinks about the wife. His brother drops him off and drives into a wall, killing himself. Then the wife goes downhill and dies soon after as well. He finds out that the wife wasn’t two-timing his brother, but it is all too late. He has created this situation and it determines the rest of his life. God, in the form of the pastor of a very odd little church, the kind that are dotted all over the US, saves him. He seeks God and God comes to him.The Three Stigmata also deals with people who need God, but they take drugs instead. In a complete turnabout of how we usually see the Human-God relationship, typified by Tyler, Dick considers the notion that God’s been on his own since the beginning of – well, you know, the beginning of whatever he created – and he’s sick of being a lonely fucker. So he seeks others, in a radical role-reversal. The stigmata show that a person is inhabited by God….Of course these books are about other things, the things that preoccupy each author’s work. Tyler writes again of ordinary lives, ordinary events – and she does make what happens in this book utterly ordinary, there is nothing the least melodramatic about it. Dick is again concerned with the nature of reality. Again he makes a future world setting incredibly believable, not least because although written in the early sixties, this one describes an Earth in its last throes due to global warming. The physical setting, the socio-economic setting, rich people getting to spend time in the coolest places on Earth, rich people getting to speed up evolution so that they create physical defences to the impact of life in a place that is too hot. It isn’t just believable, it is real.Rich people go to Antarctica as a sanctuary, of course. Rushes off to check – thank heavens Australia owns a big chunk of it. English friends who wish to prevail upon my generous nature, please drop me a line. I expect there’ll be a queue soon enough.Meanwhile, there is a draft system to force humans to live on Mars, a desolate life made bearable by drugtaking, a substitute for God. Rich people can be drafted too, but they are more likely to have ways to dodge it. Nothing changes.But the backdrop to both is always there. God and his relationship to humankind. Tyler does one of those jobs – not prosletysing, she never does that – that make you see what can be good and necessary about God. Dick opens up your eyes to an incredible vision of a God which could not be more different to Tyler’s. I read them in that order, Tyler and then Dick. I recommend that, but would be curious in the impressions of anybody who did the opposite. One might ask who on earth WOULD be reading these chalk and cheese authors? But maybe they aren’t. Maybe for both of them the really big preoccupation is ordinary people struggling through life. Maybe it is only the settings of Dick that obscure this. Maybe they are more alike than one might first think….
What do You think about The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch (2015)?
I wanted to read this for a long time, but had so many other P.K. Dick novels to get through, I kept putting it off. Even the title didn’t seem to make sense, or give any idea what might lie within. Having finally read this, I have to say that this is one of his best mind bending stretches of imagination ever. A total mind f@&k (excuse my French).It was somewhat difficult to get into from the first few pages. I kept asking myself ‘what the hell is going on here?’ Ideas are discussed in the first chapters, which are quite confusing, just because they are not explained. I like this style; I don’t like to be spoon fed. But to give you an idea of the confusion; we are dealing with pre-cognitive company directors, artists designing miniature household items, CAN-D, Chew-Z, Perky Pat Layouts, Martian colonies, evolved humans, alien technology, divorce, kidnap and... a God-like man named Palmer Eldritch.Now all I have to do is explain how the heck this all fits together, and make a story. Well believe me it works, but your mind may be dragged through a mincer before you’re finished.I can tell you that human colonists, particularly on Mars, are so bored with their awful life on desolate outposts, that they are all totally dependent on mind altering drugs. The current ‘approved’ drug is named CAN-D. This is taken by groups of friends together, usually all sitting around a P.P. layout. The P.P. comes from ‘Perky Pat’, a mass produced doll who epitomizes an ideal woman with a perfect lifestyle. (Barbie for adults). The ‘layout’ is like a doll house, into which the ‘users’ can place purchased ‘miniature’ items, like sofas etc. The drugs, dolls, layouts and miniature items all supplied by the same corporation. When the CAN-D is chewed, the users will transfer their minds into the layout, and begin to live the life of Perky Pat and friends, linked together as a group. This perfect escapism lasts an hour or so. This is just one example of the kind of thing that is ‘normal’ in this messed up future.That was hard enough to explain, so I shall leave it there. Just to say that this is an amazing book, full of satire, paranoia, strangeness beyond belief. P.K. Dick's usual study of human desire and desperation shines through every page. I love his work and this is no disappointment. Be prepared to have to do the brain work on your own.But be warned, drugs can seriously damage your reading ability.
—Bill Wellham
This is a trippy novel about reality altering drugs with not too subtle religious references.Palmer Eldritch, an elusive industrialist, has crash landed on Pluto. His wounded body is taken away to a hospital. During his recovery rumors flourish that Eldritch has smuggled out illegal lichen for producing a translational drug called Chew-Z. Chew-Z produces a shared altered reality when taken. No one has seen Eldritch and it is not sure if he is alive or if some alien life form inhabits his body. “God promises eternal life. We can deliver it.”, is the blasphemous slogan for the reality altering drug Chew-Z. This drug will be a big hit on Mars colony where life is dreary. Religion and alcohol are passé. Only a few still believe in Christianity and those that do are shunned. Can-D is the old mind altering drug produced by P.P. Layouts is not enough to satisfy them. With Chew-Z you can be born again into another life. What are only moments in the real world can feel like a lifetime with Chew-Z. The problem is, can you get out of the altered reality and who is altering it?Leo Bolero the CEO of Perky Pat’s Layout, the company that manufactures Can-D, wants to kill off the competition and he tries to visit Eldritch in hospital. Instead of killing Eldritch, Bolero is tied down and given Chew-Z and Bolero ends up in a nightmarish altered reality controlled by Palmer Eldritch, although he never sees Eldritch just the transubstantiation of him in a small girl. So Bolero doubts that Eldritch is really alive or that he inhabits his body. Bolero is so mortified at this experience with Chew-Z, he promises Eldritch that he will stop making Can-D. Bolero is also angry that his 2nd in command, Barney Mayerson does not rescue him he fired him. Barney Mayerson, fired from his job, decides there is nowhere else to go, enlist in the army and goes to Mars, knowing he will spend the rest of his life on the dreaded planet. Mayerson takes Chew-Z, at first in a lame attempt to start a lawsuit against Eldritch for his old boss Bolero but later he uses the experience to patch up the relationship with his ex-wife. But what happens to Mayerson and Bolero is that they keep seeing Eldritch in themselves and Eldritch in other people. This happens long after they wake up from the drug. Is Palmer Eldritch God or the Devil, inflicting nightmarish visions? There are a lot of direct and indirect religious references. Well written in an avant-garde style and imaginative and even funny in parts without feeling dated. Of course this was written long before "The Sims", cable TV reality shows or other media based mass hysteria. The book does make fun of the need of the masses latching on and follow any new fad. Dick takes this a step further from other drug mind altering concepts by making it a shared experience but also one in which an outside entity can alter. At first I thought this book would be a preachy sermon on the evils of drugs but it turned out to be something quite broader. Very dark and nightmarish but enjoyable and at times hilarious. Where else are you going to have a psychiatrist in a suitcase or a company named P.P. Layouts. I laughed every time I read this.
—Carol
I'm a fan of Philip K. Dick, but I read his stuff years ago. I eagerly sought this book out because I heard from a couple of people that this one was one of his best. Maybe I merely disagree, maybe my affection for PKD has waned, maybe I need more now than he can give.Dick is famous for his drug use and for taking speed before cranking out an entire novel in fifteen hours flat. This book, to me, feels like his most drug-influenced book. Not because of his crazy ideas, those are to be expected. It's because you get the feeling that he throws things into the story as they occur to him and made no effort to smooth things over in a subsequent draft. He switches gears on a whim and those whims come at the rate of about fifteen to twenty per scene.If you're a big fan of PKD, go ahead and check this out. If not, you'll probably want to avoid it.
—Matthew
