What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

I read this in the late 70s/early 80s, cities are towers, based on earth, but fighting some kind of bug/hive creatures, the main character tries to take over one of the cities, and goes through an process where they deal out the tarot, and whomever gets the hanged man gets killed. i also think he finds an old copy of "gravity's rainbow"? Did I just dream this up?

Well, Small Demons is a pretty new service, but it will be the perfect place to check for things like this. So far the only book in their database that mentions G's Rainbow is American Gods which is a good book but not yours.

I suggest you consider signing up with Small Demons and checking back with them, if we can't find anything for you.

http://www.smalldemons.com/books/Grav...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/a...
This is an article which mentions some sci-fi books about drugs. It sounds a bit like A Scanner darkly

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Soma in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The spice melange in the Dune books by Frank Herbert

There's also "Vurt" by Jeff Noon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vurt

Vurt

Sounds to me like The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick. I agree with Kate.

Not PKD, and again, I read this in 1979 or 1980. The title is one or two words, and is a drug mentioned in the book

The R Master, by Gordon R. Dickson? From reviews it doesn't sound like it quite matches, but the title refers to a drug in the book called R47, so thought I'd mention it. Some details here: http://www.sfreviews.net/rmaster.html

after digging around in my parents attic, I determined that the book was "Pain Gain" by John F Carr, written in 1976. Thanks for the suggestions, how do I move this to "solved"?

We've taken care of it, thanks! :)