The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

     I have recently been reading the book "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" by Philip K. Dick. It is set in a future where the Earth has heated up to the point where people need to stay indoors most of the time and can't face the sun with bare skin ever. On colonies on other planets such as Mars, people resort to an illegal drug called Can-D to look into the eyes of a doll in a "Perky Pat" layout in past Earth. But a man named Palmer Eldritch comes back with a strange lichen from the universe outside of the solar system and makes a new company called Chew-Z that sells legal Chew-Z.
     The protagonist is someone named Barney Mayerson. He is a pre-cog (someone who can glimpse into the future at future possibilities) who works for P.P. (Perky Pat) Layouts. I can relate to him because I have made the wrong decision and it has had consequences.
     Another leading character in the story is the CEO of P.P. Layouts, Leo Bulero. He lives lavishly and holds many mistresses, but everything falls apart when Eldritch becomes competition. I can relate to him because I have worked hard on something only to have someone else take the reward from right under me. It is hard to get over it.

Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick

     I recently read the book "Solar Lottery" by Philip K. Dick. It is about a system that determines who will be the next leader, or "Quizmaster", of the whole class system. The problem about this machine is due to it being similar to spinning a bottle (the author doesn't go into much detail about what actually happens to determine the Quizmaster), many randomly chosen people are very bad leaders. This is why the previous Quizmaster can send an endless stream of assassins, albeit one by one, to try and kill the new Quizmaster. This insures that only the best of the best survive.
     The book follows many main character, one of which is the new Quizmaster, named Cartwright, who is 65. He is scared about the assassins, and moves to Luna to try to get away, because everything around a resort on the planet is bleak, airless space, so no one would survive to try to get to him. The only problem about this plan is that the assassin is not human. He is a synthetic humanoid robot who can be controlled by human thoughts from very far away. This insures that people who are telepathic that are working for Cartwright will become confused, because they follow the trail of the robot, named Keith Pellig, only to have it stop suddenly. Many go crazy, or die because they can't find him and he gets to them first. I can relate to the main character, because I've been scared in my life about things that I could not control, but nothing as bad as what he is facing.