Week Ten: The Fiction of Ideas


The Three Stigmata of Palmer Aldrich

I found The Three Stigmata of Palmer Aldrich a very ambiguous book packed full of many subplots and extraneous themes. There was a lot going on. As a person who is really bad with names, I found it hard to keep up with which character was which; Myerson, Bulero, Eldritch. Also, this was compounded by the fact that they all seemed to be very similar in character traits. Maybe this was on purpose. Maybe it adds to the confusing story filled with alternate universes and time travel. Even though I had problems with the story, I cannot say I hated this book. I found it very interesting and I enjoyed reading it.

I cannot pretend to be a good writer, I am not, but I just cannot help but wonder what the story would be like when it was stripped of some of the themes that felt unimportant to the main plot. For example, the bit about the neo-Christian woman on Mars. That whole subplot was unnecessary.  The story took a detour for this story point and I cannot help but wonder why this subplot was so important to Philip K. Dick.

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