Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by DonHopkins 1584 days ago
PKD was all over this like a fly on shit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_E...

>The story begins in a future world where global temperatures have risen so high that in most of the world it is unsafe to be outside without special cooling gear during daylight hours. In a desperate bid to preserve humanity and ease population burdens on Earth, the UN has initiated a "draft" for colonizing the nearby planets, where conditions are so horrific and primitive that the unwilling colonists have fallen prey to a form of escapism involving the use of an illegal drug (Can-D) in concert with "layouts." Layouts are physical props intended to simulate a sort of alternative reality where life is easier than either the grim existence of the colonists in their marginal off-world colonies, or even Earth, where global warming has progressed to the point that Antarctica is prime vacation resort territory. The illegal drug Can-D allows people to "share" their experience of the "Perky Pat" (the name of the main female character in the simulated world) layouts. This "sharing" has caused a pseudo-religious cult or series of cults to grow up around the layouts and the use of the drug.

1 comments

Excellent book. Might be my favorite of his besides Ubik.
3SoPA and Ubik are his two best books, and also the least likely to be made into movies because they are just so weird!