A Scanner Darkly (Paperback)

by Philip K. Dick (Author) "Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair..." (more)
Key Phrases: Bob Arctor, Charles Freck, Jerry Fabin (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Mind- and reality-bending drugs factor again and again in Philip K. Dick's hugely influential SF stories. A Scanner Darkly cuts closest to the bone, drawing on Dick's own experience with illicit chemicals and on his many friends who died from drug abuse. Nevertheless, it's blackly farcical, full of comic-surreal conversations between people whose synapses are partly fried, sudden flights of paranoid logic, and bad trips like the one whose victim spends a subjective eternity having all his sins read to him, in shifts, by compound-eyed aliens. (It takes 11,000 years of this to reach the time when as a boy he discovered masturbation.) The antihero Bob Arctor is forced by his double life into warring double personalities: as futuristic narcotics agent "Fred," face blurred by a high-tech scrambler, he must spy on and entrap suspected drug dealer Bob Arctor. His disintegration under the influence of the insidious Substance D is genuine tragicomedy. For Arctor there's no way off the addict's downward escalator, but what awaits at the bottom is a kind of redemption--there are more wheels within wheels than we suspected, and his life is not entirely wasted. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly
America in the near future has lost the war against drugs. Though the government tries to protect the upper class, the system is infested with undercover cops like Fred, who regularly ingests the popular Substance D as part of his ruse. The drug has caused Fred to develop a split personality, of which he is not aware; his alter ego is Bob, a drug dealer. Fred's superiors then set up a hidden holographic camera in his home as part of a sting operation against Bob. Though he appears on camera as Bob, none of Fred's co-workers catch on: since Fred, like all undercover police, wears a scramble suit that constantly changes his appearance, his colleagues don't know what he looks like. The camera in Fred/Bob's apartment reveals that Bob's intimates regularly betray one another for the chance to score more drugs. Even Donna, a young dealer whom Bob/Fred loves, prefers the drug to human contact. Originally published in 1977, the out-of-print novel comes frighteningly close to capturing the U.S. in 1991, in terms of the drug crisis and the relationships between the sexes. But the unrelenting scenes among the addicts make it a grueling read.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (December 3, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679736654
• ISBN-13: 978-0679736653
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (131 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #343,787 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

90 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Slow Train to Oblivion, expertly documented, February 23, 2002

By	Ian Vance (pagosa springs CO.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There is an old adage about writing: "Write what you know"--as quoted verbatim from Hemmingway, among many others, this proverb is a key to mastering the craft. One's best work originates from principle experience, core emotions; the rest is just window-dressings, technique for transition. Philip K. Dick, one of the most prolific authors of science fiction for the later half of the twentieth century, wrote about what he knew: paranoia, `big brother', psychological disruptions, drug abuse; and the sci-fi `trimmings' of aliens, techno-dystopias, etc. usually served as interesting backdrops. As a mad, bad, meth-snortin' horsemeat lovin' pulp master, the dominant themes Dick experienced during his relatively short(ened) life appear again and again in the bulk of his work, though rarely so coherently expressed as in his tragic masterpiece, _A Scanner Darkly_.

The `basics:' Bob Arctor is a drug dealer who is also Fred, a narc working undercover with the LAPD to bust a big time drug dealer named...Bob Arctor. Bob/Fred's drug of choice, Substance D(eath), gradually splits the user's brain into two separate halves, corroding the interaction between the hemispheres and rendering one a split-personality veering chaotically close to schizophrenia. Bob doesn't realize he's Fred, and vice-versa (except in moments of rare epiphany). As anyone who has read VALIS can attest, the real-life events from which this story is based occurred to Dick in the beginning of the `70's, and most of his fiction afterward were attempts for him to glean and get down the life-shattering experience. _A Scanner Darkly_ was debatably his most successful attempt, and certainly his most lucid.

For all the futuristic flourishes, the bulk of _A Scanner Darkly_ basically describes the everyday existence of Orange County drug users. The dissipation of the body and slow decay of the mind; the rupturing of the moral core for the immediate high; life on the downward spiral--it's all documented here, in harrowing fashion. Among the endless repetitive conversations and breakdown-ruminations, there are a few moments of outstanding imagery-the Connie/Donna face-melt and the flower-field being the most prominent in recollection--the first hideous, the second serene--both chilling to the bone given the circumstances.

Never a literary stylist, Dick's simple prose veered from elegant to downright amateurish, making some of his lesser/cryptic works a bit of a slog, yet in this particular volume, the author's heart can be found in the characters, environments, and overall pathos; the feel of catharsis is prevalent throughout and made abundantly clear in the coda:

"They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow."

A melancholic, mad masterpiece.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Scanner Darkly, April 12, 2007

By	Joshua Miller "Josh" (Coeur d'Alene,ID) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

The movie version of "A Scanner Darkly" was one of the most original films I saw last year. I loved it; the animation was innovative and fascinating, while the movie itself was hypnotic. Philip K. Dick has been responsible for writing the novel versions of several recent great films (including "Minority Report") and I was curious to read some of his work. After reading "A Scanner Darkly" I discovered why Richard Linklater made the film version the way he did. The subject matter of the film, its atmosphere could be caught in a live-action film; but I doubt it would have been as good. The book is great! Whether it's better than the movie or not, I really can't say...I barely paid attention to the plot of the movie, it was the animation that kept my eyes glued to the screen. The book is very close to the movie; Fred is an undercover narcotic agent trying to bust Bob Arctor, a man who's believed to be a big-time drug dealer of Substance D (as in death), a drug that causes split personalities in people. Scanners (hidden cameras) have been installed in Arctor's house so the police can have 24-hour surveillance; There's only one problem; Fred is Bob Arctor. He's doing surveillance on himself. His fellow workers don't know this because employees where a scramble suit (a suit which scrambles their facial features and vocal patterns, the movie couldn't have done a better job with it). Bob's life is relatively simple; He hangs out at his house all day dropping D with his two drug-addicted roommates James Barris (the most memorable character in both film and novel) and Ernie Luckman and hangs out with his drug-dealing girlfriend Donna. The only real BIG differences between novel and film are that in the movie, a character named Charles Freck (who plays a small but memorable role in the book) takes the place of a character named Jerry Fabin. And the ending of the book is more drawn out than it is in the film. Hopefully, I've made it clear that this is not a novel of science fiction but rather a novel about drugs. Science fiction does play a small role, but it doesn't deserve top billing. But drugs aren't 100% of it either. The book also captures the paranoia people felt after the Watergate scandal and it does all of it so well. This is a terrific book and is worthy of a read. I guarantee that if you see the movie you'll realize how good the translation to screen was.

GRADE: A-

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Disturbing Tract for Both Sides of the Brain, November 9, 2002

By	doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

I have always felt that PKD was the type of author who could really blow me away with his mind-expanding ideas. Unfortunately his other novels that I previously read struck me as overrated, as the ideas failed to gel into coherent stories. However, he hits the bullseye with "A Scanner Darkly" which has to be one of best novels. Taking place in a dysfunctional near-future, the story revolves around the new drug called Substance D. (The only glitch in this book is that PKD places the story in the 1990's, and PKD's vision of the future from back in the 70's is a bit distracting in its inaccuracies). Substance D causes a disconnect between the left and right sides of the brain, causing a split personality syndrome in which both of the user's selves are active simultaneously and compete with each other. The main character, Bob Arctor, is an undercover cop who poses as a dealer, and his undercover self has been assigned to watch his dealer self. At first he realizes the bureaucratic mistake, but as he falls deeper and deeper into the world of Substance D, Bob can no longer perceive the difference between his two selves and descends into a schizophrenic nightmare. Bob's deteriorating state becomes a very disturbing tract from PKD on the nature of one's identity, the destruction of the self through drug abuse, and the reality or un-reality of the self's replacement. Also, in PKD's future the drug war becomes a class war, as the "straights" need the users as a class of non-persons to manipulate and to experiment on. This may just be the way users see the world, and PKD shows us that it may not be a farfetched conspiracy theory. This is a truly troubling look into the world of damaged and ruined minds, from a man who just may have been there himself.