First published: 1964230 pages (paperback)
Life on Mars is dull. That's why the UN has to draft (i.e. force) people to go live in the colonies there. In order to escape their dead-end existence, the colonists seek refuge in a drug called Can-D, which allows them to enter a virtual reality, where life on earth is still like in the good old days, before global warming made it into a barely inhabitable desert.
Everybody is happy with this until one day the mysterious Palmer Eldritch returns from a trip to the Prox sytems, bringing with him the new and much more potent drug Chew-Z that allows for any fantasy to come true.
The company that (inofficially) sells Can-D to the colonists is of course worried about the new competitor on the market. Barney Mayerson, after having lost both his job at that company as well as his marriage, and therefore volunteering to live in the colonies, is offered his old job back - under the condition that he will help drive Eldritch out of business by faking harmful side-effects of the new drug... As it turns out, however, the drug is more than it seems to be, as is Eldritch himself.
