The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick (231 pages)

Meet us online, or in person at The Lass O'Gowrie (36 Charles Street, Manchester, M1 7DB), for this hybrid meetup. At the Lass, we will either be in the snug or the upstairs room - ask the bar staff where the book club is this time. In the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late twenty-first century, tedium can be endured through the use of the drug Can-D, which enables the user to inhabit a shared illusory world. But when industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z, which is far more potent than Can-D. But could the permanent state of drugged illusion it induces be part of something much more sinister?