Kim Miller
PKD does it again. In a far future where humans are colonising the planets they need to be 'chemically encouraged' with the drug Can-D to maintain their lives in the boredom of life on the bleakest places imaginable. The principle drug involves sitting around a playing board called a Layout - think of Monopoly in 3D - and engaging with each other as the drug blanks their minds and takes them into the game.
Palmer Eldritch is a mystical figure who enters the story with a new drug called Chew-Z that he says eclipses anything else. Of course he wants to sell it because of course he does. But Chew-Z does not require a Layout, and the Layout marketers don't like it.
It sounds like a silly plot but PKD works his magic and we enter the typical PKD world where we question the difference between human sentience and whatever other alternatives are presented.
PKD does it again. In a far future where humans are colonising the planets they need to be 'chemically encouraged' with the drug Can-D to maintain their lives in the boredom of life on the bleakest places imaginable. The principle drug involves sitting around a playing board called a Layout - think of Monopoly in 3D - and engaging with each other as the drug blanks their minds and takes them into the game.
Palmer Eldritch is a mystical figure who enters the story with a new drug called Chew-Z that he says eclipses anything else. Of course he wants to sell it because of course he does. But Chew-Z does not require a Layout, and the Layout marketers don't like it.
It sounds like a silly plot but PKD works his magic and we enter the typical PKD world where we question the difference between human sentience and whatever other alternatives are presented.