Review | The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick

Palmer Eldritch's Three Stigmata is an excellent book for those who want to start reading something by Philip K. Dick, as they will find everything the author is famous for in his works, such as social criticism, the environment, mental health and reality vs. fantasy.

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“God promises eternal life. We keep the promise.” There is no better statement than this for the book Palmer Eldritch's Three Stigmata. One, because this call is very well placed in the main question of this plot and because Philip K. Dick delivers on its promise of an excellent fictional story.

About the book

Climate change has made life on Earth unsustainable. The planet is overheated and therefore citizens are sent to the martian colonies, condemned to live in isolation and with no prospect of returning to the society they once knew.

In an attempt to survive the boredom and miserable situation they find themselves in, most of the colonists come to depend on Can-D, a hallucinogenic drug that allows the user to temporarily live in an alternate reality. However, the emergence of a competitor opens a dispute for this market. Called Chew-Z, the new substance promises to fulfill the greatest promise of all: eternal life.

First published in 1965, Palmer Eldritch's Three Stigmata explores a future where humanity has colonized other planets and workers use drugs to support reality. It criticizes oppressive systems and the power of large corporations, in addition to being one of the first times that Philip K. Dick presents religious themes in a work.

Relaunched seven years after its last publication in Brazil, the new edition has a cover illustrated by Rafael Coutinho, graphic design by Giovanna Cianelli and translation by Ludimila Hashimoto.

The work

Like all Philip K. Dick books, Palmer Eldritch's Three Stigmata it is everything and a little more than the reader can expect. With his intimate narrative that moves the human mind, Philip goes a little further than expected when dealing with contexts of a drug that could very well be compared to the Internet or even the Metaverse that we discuss so much today.

The reality of colonists living on Mars is just the excuse for a society that has become only existentialist, as it seeks within itself, but through something outside, which in this case is a drug, a way to escape all this oppression. which is society and its way of dictating rules of coexistence and work.

Like everything else in his works, Philip K. Dick plays with the reader's imagination by presenting “real” situations, when in fact everything was just the “imaginary”. It's an interesting way to put the reader not just as a spectator, but as a character and understand what's going on.

Just as the characters go through situations where they don't know how to differentiate between reality and fantasy, the reader also dives into these situations to enter the mind of a person, who is also in another's and so on. Often this looks like the universe of the movie Inception, or also with other books like Minortity Report.

In addition to discussing ethical, professional and personal issues, Phlip also brings faith to the stage. With a character totally connected to science, Palmer begins to question all his knowledge, because reality is not only something palpable, but also beliefs and their truth.

Palmer Eldritch's Three Stigmata, launched by Publisher Aleph, is one of the best works by Philip K. Dick, because everything that the author put in his works, such as social criticism, the environment, what is reality, among other subjects, that readers could check in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner), Lost Reality, Disjointed Time, among others, can be seen as the entire universe constructed by the author.

For those looking to start with one of the author's books, this is an excellent choice. The only problem this version has is that it doesn't have footnotes to explain some of the words used by the author, which can leave the reader in doubt as to what it means, since not everyone is a science fiction reader.

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review-the-three-stigmas-of-palmer-eldritch-philip-k-dickPalmer Eldritch's Three Stigmata is an excellent book for those who want to start reading something by Philip K. Dick, as they will find everything the author is famous for in his works, such as social criticism, the environment, mental health and reality vs. fantasy.

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