{"id":7341,"date":"2015-10-25T18:35:53","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T22:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=7341"},"modified":"2016-10-06T16:13:21","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T20:13:21","slug":"the-three-stigmata-of-palmer-eldritch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/the-three-stigmata-of-palmer-eldritch\/","title":{"rendered":"The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch"},"content":{"rendered":"

{4.5\/5} “I’ll bet I’m late for work, he said to himself, slid from the bed, and tottered to a standing position with eyes shut, keeping himself from being sick. For all he knew he was several hours’ drive from his office; perhaps he was not even in the United States. However he was<\/strong> on Earth; the gravity that made him sway was familiar and normal.”<\/p>\n

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch<\/strong> by Philip K. Dick, published in 1965<\/p>\n

Leo Bulero is head of P. P. Layouts, which creates the drug Can-D. Can-D isn’t available on Earth but everyone does it on the other planets and moons to escape their not-so-great lives. Palmer Eldritch has returned from outside the solar system with a new and improved drug called Chew-Z — Bulero, of course, isn’t happy about this. Meanwhile Barney Mayerson, who works for Bulero, has received his draft notice — unless he can find some medical reason to avoid it, he will soon be living on a colony world.<\/p>\n

Dick often includes philosophical speculation about the nature of reality, and that’s present here. It’s also about religion, accelerated evolution, and an alien invasion.<\/p>\n

This is a 1960s vision of the future, so it’s a bit dated — but worth reading nonetheless.<\/p>\n

I’ve read a few books by Dick — The Man in the High Castle<\/strong> is a masterpiece, and Ubik<\/strong> and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?<\/strong> are great. He also has some brilliant short stories, found in collections like Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I previously reviewed the movie Minority Report<\/strong><\/a>, which is based on one of his stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{4.5\/5} “I’ll bet I’m late for work, he said to himself, slid from the bed, and tottered to a standing position with eyes shut, keeping himself from being sick. For all he knew he was several hours’ drive from his office; perhaps he was not even in the United States. However he was on Earth; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,28,5,8],"class_list":["post-7341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-novels","tag-review","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7341"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9354,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7341\/revisions\/9354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}