The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a 1965 novel by American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Like many of Dick’s novels, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is complex in that it utilizes an array of science fiction concepts and features several layers of reality and unreality. It is also one of Dick’s first works to explore religious themes.

Plot synopsis

Back story

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch takes place some time in the twenty-first century. Under the authority of the United Nations, humankind has colonized every habitable planet and moon in the solar system.

Life for most colonists is physically daunting and psychologically monotonous so the UN must draft individuals to colonize. Most colonists entertain themselves using Barbie-like “Perky Pat” dolls and the multitude of accessories manufactured by Earth-based P.P. Layouts. The company also secretly creates Can-D, an illegal but widely available hallucinogen that allows the user to "translate" into Perky Pat (if the user is female) or her boyfriend Walt (if male). This allows colonists to experience an idealized version of life on Earth in a collective unconscious hallucination. P.P. Layouts employs several precogs to determine if possible new Perky Pat accessories will be popular.

Life on Earth is also harsh as the global temperature has risen to a level where one can no longer be outdoors without a personal air conditioning unit and Antarctica is the only suitable vacation spot.

Wealthy people often undergo “evolution therapy,” which allows them to skip several stages of human evolution. This causes their craniums to become large and bubble-like and it may increase their intelligence, although there is evidence that the extra brainpower is superficial. Devolution occurs in some cases.

At the novel’s beginning, renegade industrialist Palmer Eldritch has traveled to the inhabited Proxima Centauri star system in search of a sellable product. He has been gone for a decade.

Storyline

Barney Mayerson, P.P. Layout’s top precog in New York City, has been drafted to colonize Mars. Mayerson has just entered a sexual relationship with his assistant Roni Fugate, although he is still bitter about his divorce to his first wife Emily, a ceramic pot artist.

Emily's second husband tries to sell her pots to P.P. Layouts as possible Perky Pat accessories but Barney recognizes them as Emily's and rejects them out of bitterness.

Meanwhile, the UN rescues Palmer Eldritch’s ship from a crash on Pluto. Leo Bulero, head of P.P. Layouts and an "evolved" human, hears rumors that Eldritch discovered an alien hallucinogen in the Prox system and plans to market it as "Chew-Z," with U.N. approval, on off-world colonies. This would effectively destroy P.P. Layouts. Bulero tries to contact Eldritch but he is quarantined at a U.N. hospital. Both Mayerson and Fugate have precognitions of Bulero murdering Eldritch.

Meanwhile, Emily and her second husband sell her pots to Eldritch and undergo evolution therapy. This causes Emily to devolve and unknowingly recreate pots she previously concocted.

Under the guise of a reporter, Bulero travels to the artificial satellite of Earth where Eldritch holds a press conference. Bulero is kidnapped and forced to take Chew-Z intravenously. He enters a psychic netherworld over which both he and Eldritch seemingly have some control. After wrangling about business with Eldritch, Bulero comes to a seeming future Earth. Evolved humans identify him as a ghost and show him a monument to himself where he is to have killed Eldritch, an "enemy of the Sol System."

Bulero returns to Earth and fires Mayerson because Mayerson was afraid to travel to the satellite to rescue him. Mayerson accepts his conscription to Mars but Bulero recruits him as a double agent. Mayerson is to inject himself with a virus after taking Chew-Z, which will deceive the UN into thinking Chew-Z is harmful.

On Mars, Mayerson buys some Chew-Z from Eldritch, who appears in holographic form beamed down from a starship. Mayerson tries to hallucinate a world where he is still with Emily but finds that he does not control his "hallucination." Like Bulero, he finds himself in the future. Mayerson arrives in New York two years hence where he speaks with Bulero, Fugate and his own future self about the death of Palmer Eldritch. He also encounters several manifestations of Eldritch, identifiable by their robotic right hand, artificial eyes and steel teeth.

Eldritch offers to help Mayerson “become” whatever he wants. When Mayerson chooses death, he becomes one with Eldritch and Eldritch plans to allow him to die when Bulero kills Eldritch.

Somehow, Mayerson "awakes" from the experience and finds Bulero on Mars willing to take him back to Earth but he refuses after learning that Mayerson did not inject himself with the virus as instructed. Later, Mayerson discusses his experience with a Neo-Christian colonist and they conclude that either Eldritch became a god in the Prox system or some god-like being has taken his place. Mayerson is convinced some aspect of Eldritch is still inside him.

Meanwhile, Bulero returned to Earth where he and everyone around him suddenly developed artificial right hands, Jensen visors and steel teeth.

Religious themes

Chew-Z is marketed with the slogan, God promises eternal life. We can deliver it. Those who take the drug have experiences akin to the afterlife in both western and eastern religions. Chew-Z allows a person to live “eternally” in that it seemingly eliminates time and space; a trip that actually lasts only minutes can seem to last hours, days or possibly years. It also is akin to reincarnation in that it allows a person to experience his or her surroundings as a new life form, a point that appealed to the novel’s United Nations Secretary-General, a Buddhist.

Eldritch may be a Christ-like figure in that all who try Chew-Z seem to have visions of him and he has control over their "afterlife." The title of the novel refers to Eldritch’s "three stigmata," his robotic right hand, artificial eyes and steel teeth. Eldritch does not develop a typical stigmata; the mysterious development of wounds similar to those of Christ during the crucifixion. Instead others develop a robotic right hand, artificial eyes and steel teeth: the "three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch."

Eldritch may be a Satanic figure in that he appears to be conniving and power-hungry, states himself to be a competitor to God (God promises eternal life. We can deliver it) and utilizes holy and otherworldly appearances for dubious ends. Mayerson theorizes that Eldritch is some aspect of God. In some theological views, Satan is one aspect of God or a necessary part of his court.

Eldritch may also be a Gnostic figure, reminiscent of the corrupting "blind god" Samael. Like Samael, Eldritch takes the existing world and changes it into his vision, thereby introducing "error," including suffering, unreality and entropy. Dick explored this perception of reality, the creation of a corrupting deity, in VALIS, The Divine Invasion and other works. Eldritch's three stigmata might bear a resemblance to the three aspects of the corrupting divinity of gnosticism. However, in many Gnostic tellings, the world is perfect before the arrival of Samael. The world of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is not perfect before the arrival of Eldritch (it is indeed a stark and unwelcoming setting), and that the Chew-Z dream world is less entropic than the real world (God promises eternal life. We can deliver it). It is possible that Eldritch is a reverse Samael, bringing the world out of a corrupted, entropic existence into an eternal one, but this too is a double-edged sword as Eldritch takes complete control of the dream world.

The novel also makes reference to Eucharist. Mayerson theorizes that it is perhaps not proper for the lesser being to consume the greater being and that the greater being should consume the lesser; i.e. the way Eldritch "takes over" those who take Chew-Z and the novel’s final scene, in which all people possess his "stigmata." However, the taking of Chew-Z could not be an inversion of the Eucharist if Chew-Z is Eldritch; the lesser beings are "consuming" him. But this could be another of Eldritch’s devilish tricks.

Black humor

Dick had a talent for showing the funny or ironic side of his creations. In this story Barney and Roni, both precogs, foresaw that they would be lovers as soon as they met, so naturally they decided to skip the preliminaries and get on with it.

Among the Martian colonists, a man and a woman embark on a clandestine affair, which they will consummate as Perky Pat and Walt, using the drug Can-D. However, the other colonists soon take the drug and begin to share the experience. Disgusted, the lovers recover from their trances, and decide to do in reality what they could not do in unreality, before the others wake up.

Comparisons with Dick’s life and other work

There are parallels between the enthousiasmos Dick experienced in February/March of 1974 (the 2-3-74 experiences) and the themes of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which Dick continued to explore in a series of novels and short stories:

"The Days of Perky Pat" (1963) is a short story in which Perky Pat dolls first appear, although they are the prize objects of people on a post-apocalyptic Earth, not Mars and the story does not involve drugs. Dick experienced a "vision of the face of Palmer Eldritch" while writing the story, prompting him to write The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch ^*
Martian Time-Slip (1964) also features the UN as a tyrannical organization lording over off-world colonies. It presents a more pleasant, although hardly idealized, version of life on Mars
"Faith of Our Fathers" (1967) also portrays a godlike being who is amoral and all-consuming
Ubik (1969) and Minority Report (1956) feature the exploitation of precognition for commercial or government gain
A Maze of Death (1970) also portrays the lives of planetary colonists as drab and boring and features an authoritative organization that conscripts them to go to new worlds. It also supposes that God's nature may be different on other planets.
"Rautavaara's Case" (1980) also features an inverted Eucharist of sorts where the greater being consumes the lesser. This story also involves creatures from the Proxima Centauri star system and thus may take place in the same continuity of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
The Divine Invasion (1981) features a scenario in which Satanic forces have clouded the Earth and God has been exiled into an outer star system. If Palmer Eldritch is viewed as Satanic, this could describe the Earth once he has accomplished his goals. If Eldritch is Godly, his return could be similar to that of Emmanuel Asher in The Divine Invasion.
Ceramics play a part in other Dick novels: the protagonist of Galactic Pot-Healer (1969) is a potter and Horselover Fat, Dick's author surrogate in VALIS (1981), greatly values a pot he received as a gift from a young drug dealer he is infatued with.

1965 novels | Dystopian novels | Mars in fiction | Philip K. Dick novels | Science fiction novels