Philip Kindred Dick’s "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch": The will to power as the axiological source of hallucinogenic and technological dystopia

Abstract

The paper investigates the ways in which hallucinations induced by hallucinogenic drugs with the help of technological devices distort the human perception of reality within the fictional world of Philip K. Dick’s novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It also examines how the axiological order of this fictional world is negatively affected by power games played by the main protagonists and how these games refer to Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical notion of the will to power. By underlining the novel’s narrative intersections between technology and axiology, this paper shows that within The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch the continuity of civilisational development proves to be dystopian in its essence.