PKD was a visionary. And a master storyteller. He truly was one of the greats. But even the greats can't turn every at-bat into a home run.
For me, "A Scanner Darkly" is PKD's missed at-bat. It begins with a solid premise that makes a few predictions about technology and social development (with the promise of accompanying commentary) that's flavored by scenes of drug use. However, it quickly devolves into psychology and thinly veiled (or not veiled at all) references to PKD's own experiences with drugs, at times eschewing the plot altogether. The flimsy narrative that desperately wants to connect the disparate scenes of drug use and altered perceptions grows more and more anemic as the novel progresses. By the end of the book, it's no longer a story complimented or accentuated by situational recollection; it's a pseudo-memoir with a strangled, dystopian ending tacked on to complete the symbolism. Or metaphor. Or... whatever it was.
I'm willing to accept that this book is a genuine 'misunderstood' classic and that I was just one of the saps who couldn't appreciate it for the masterpiece that is. That statement was made with no sarcasm, by the way; that's an honest assessment of my own limitations regarding the appraisal of this particular brand of literature.
For me, "A Scanner Darkly" works as a sci-fi flavored version of "Fear and Loathing." In terms of strange, surreal randomness, it's tough to beat. As an exercise in facing down his drug-induced demons from days gone by, I can only imagine the degree of success PKD felt he had upon completion of this novel; I hope it helped. This was clearly an ordeal he had to work through, which is made all the more sobering in the book's afterword (which, by the time you've taken the journey the story puts you through, is pretty brutal).
Many of his observations are still remarkably on point, however. Here are a few for good measure:
"If I had known it was harmless I would have killed it myself."
"The guilty, he reflected as he drove amid the heavy late-afternoon traffic as carefully as possible, may flee when no one pursues- he had heard that, and maybe that was true. What for a certainty was true, however, was that the guilty fled, fled like hell and took plenty of swift precautions, when someone did pursue: someone real and expert and at the same time hidden. And very close by. As close, he thought, as the back seat of this car."
"If you were diabetic," he said, "and you didn't have money for a hit of insulin, would you steal to get the money? Or just die?"
"To survive in this fascist police state, he thought, you gotta always be able to come up with a name, your name. At all times. That's the first sign they look for that you're wired, not being able to figure out who the hell you are."
"He liked that; he liked to get rid of time."
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A Scanner Darkly Paperback – December 3, 1991
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Philip K. Dick
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Philip K. Dick
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Print length288 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherVintage
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Publication dateDecember 3, 1991
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Dimensions5.17 x 0.72 x 7.99 inches
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ISBN-100679736654
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ISBN-13978-0679736653
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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.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Inside Flap
Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D--which Arctor takes in massive doses--gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself.
Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.
Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.
About the Author
Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. He briefly attended the University of California, but dropped out before completing any classes. In 1952, he began writing professionally and proceeded to write numerous novels and short story collections. He died on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California, of heart failure following a stroke.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. The doctor told him there were no bugs in his hair. After he had taken a shower for eight hours, standing under hot water hour after hour suffering the pain of the bugs, he got out and dried himself, and he still had bugs in his hair; in fact, he had bugs all over him. A month later he had bugs in his lungs.
Having nothing else to do or think about, he began to work out theoretically the life cycle of the bugs, and, with the aid of the Britannica, try to determine specifically which bugs they were. They now filled his house. He read about many different kinds and finally noticed bugs outdoors, so he concluded they were aphids. After that decision came to his mind it never changed, no matter what other people told him ... like "Aphids don't bite people."
They said that to him because the endless biting of the bugs kept him in torment. At the 7-11 grocery store, part of a chain spread out over most of California, he bought spray cans of Raid and Black Flag and Yard Guard. First he sprayed the house, then himself. The Yard Guard seemed to work the best.
As to the theoretical side, he perceived three stages in the cycle of the bugs. First, they were carried to him to contaminate him by what he called Carrier-people, which were people who didn't understand their role in distributing the bugs. During that stage the bugs had no jaws or mandibles (he learned that word during his weeks of scholarly research, an unusually bookish occupation for a guy who worked at the Handy Brake and Tire place relining people's brake drums). The Carrier-people therefore felt nothing. He used to sit in the far corner of his living room watching different Carrier-people enter--most of them people he'd known for a while, but some new to him--covered with the aphids in this particular nonbiting stage. He'd sort of smile to himself, because he knew that the person was being used by the bugs and wasn't hip to it.
"What are you grinning about, Jerry?" they'd say.
He'd just smile.
In the next stage the bugs grew wings or something, but they really weren't precisely wings; anyhow, they were appendages of a functional sort permitting them to swarm, which was how they migrated and spread--especially to him. At that point the air was full of them; it made his living room, his whole house, cloudy. During this stage he tried not to inhale them.
Most of all he felt sorry for his dog, because he could see the bugs landing on and settling all over him, and probably getting into the dog's lungs, as they were in his own. Probably--at least so his empathic ability told him--the dog was suffering as much as he was. Should he give the dog away for the dog's own comfort? No, he decided: the dog was now, inadvertently, infected, and would carry the bugs with him everywhere.
Sometimes he stood in the shower with the dog, trying to wash the dog clean too. He had no more success with him than he did with himself. It hurt to feel the dog suffer; he never stopped trying to help him. In some respect this was the worst part, the suffering of the animal, who could not complain.
"What the fuck are you doing there all day in the shower with the goddamn dog?" his buddy Charles Freck asked one time, coming in during this.
Jerry said, "I got to get the aphids off him." He brought Max, the dog, out of the shower and began drying him. Charles Freck watched, mystified, as Jerry rubbed baby oil and talc into the dog's fur. All over the house, cans of insect spray, bottles of talc, and baby oil and skin conditioners were piled and tossed, most of them empty; he used many cans a day now.
"I don't see any aphids," Charles said. "What's an aphid?"
"It eventually kills you," Jerry said. "That's what an aphid is. They're in my hair and my skin and my lungs, and the goddamn pain is unbearable--I'm going to have to go to the hospital."
"How come I can't see them?"
Jerry put down the dog, which was wrapped in a towel, and knelt over the shag rug. "I'll show you one," he said. The rug was covered with aphids; they hopped up everywhere, up and down, some higher than others. He searched for an especially large one, because of the difficulty people had seeing them. "Bring me a bottle or jar," he said, "from under the sink. We'll cap it or put a lid on it and then I can take it with me when I go to the doctor and he can analyze it."
Charles Freck brought him an empty mayonnaise jar. Jerry went on searching, and at last came across an aphid leaping up at least four feet in the air. The aphid was over an inch long. He caught it, carried it to the jar, carefully dropped it in, and screwed on the lid. Then he held it up triumphantly. "See?" he said.
"Yeahhhhh," Charles Freck said, his eyes wide as he scrutinized the contents of the jar. "What a big one! Wow!"
"Help me find more for the doctor to see," Jerry said, again squatting down on the rug, the jar beside him.
"Sure," Charles Freck said, and did so.
Within half an hour they had three jars full of the bugs. Charles, although new at it, found some of the largest.
It was midday, in June of 1994. In California, in a tract area of cheap but durable plastic houses, long ago vacated by the straights. Jerry had at an earlier date sprayed metal paint over all the windows, though, to keep out the light; the illumination for the room came from a pole lamp into which he had screwed nothing but spot lamps, which shone day and night, so as to abolish time for him and his friends. He liked that; he liked to get rid of time. By doing that he could concentrate on important things without interruption. Like this: two men kneeling down on the shag rug, finding bug after bug and putting them into jar after jar.
"What do we get for these," Charles Freck said, later on in the day. "I mean, does the doctor pay a bounty or something? A prize? Any bread?"
"I get to help perfect a cure for them this way," Jerry said. The pain, constant as it was, had become unbearable; he had never gotten used to it, and he knew he never would. The urge, the longing, to take another shower was overwhelming him. "Hey, man," he gasped, straightening up, "you go on putting them in the jars while I take a leak and like that." He started toward the bathroom.
"Okay," Charles said, his long legs wobbling as he swung toward a jar, both hands cupped. An ex-veteran, he still had good muscular control, though; he made it to the jar. But then he said suddenly, "Jerry, hey--those bugs sort of scare me. I don't like it here by myself." He stood up.
"Chickenshit bastard," Jerry said, panting with pain as he halted momentarily at the bathroom.
"Couldn't you--"
"I got to take a leak!" He slammed the door and spun the knobs of the shower. Water poured down.
"I'm afraid out here." Charles Freck's voice came dimly, even though he was evidently yelling loud.
"Then go fuck yourself!" Jerry yelled back, and stepped into the shower. What fucking good are friends? he asked himself bitterly. No good, no good! No fucking good!
"Do these fuckers sting?" Charles yelled, right at the door.
"Yeah, they sting," Jerry said as he rubbed shampoo into his hair.
"That's what I thought." A pause. "Can I wash my hands and get them off and wait for you?"
Chickenshit, Jerry thought with bitter fury. He said nothing; he merely kept on washing. The bastard wasn't worth answering ... He paid no attention to Charles Freck, only to himself. To his own vital, demanding, terrible, urgent needs. Everything else would have to wait. There was no time, no time; these things could not be postponed. Everything else was secondary. Except the dog; he wondered about Max, the dog.
Charles Freck phoned up somebody who he hoped was holding, "Can you lay about ten deaths on me?"
"Christ, I'm entirely out--I'm looking to score myself. Let me know when you find some, I could use some."
"What's wrong with the supply?"
"Some busts, I guess."
Charles Freck hung up and then ran a fantasy number in his head as he slumped dismally back from the pay phone booth--you never used your home phone for a buy call--to his parked Chevy. In his fantasy number he was driving past the Thrifty Drugstore and they had a huge window display; bottles of slow death, cans of slow death, jars and bathtubs and vats and bowls of slow death, millions of caps and tabs and hits of slow death, slow death mixed with speed and junk and barbiturates and psychedelics, everything--and a giant sign: YOUR CREDIT IS GOOD HERE. Not to mention: LOW LOW PRICES, LOWEST IN TOWN.
But in actuality the Thrifty usually had a display of nothing: combs, bottles of mineral oil, spray cans of deodorant, always crap like that. But I bet the pharmacy in the back has slow death under lock and key in an unstepped-on, pure, unadulterated, uncut form, he thought as he drove from the parking lot onto Harbor Boulevard, into the afternoon traffic. About a fifty-pound bag.
He wondered when and how they unloaded the fifty-pound bag of Substance D at the Thrifty Pharmacy every morning, from wherever it came from--God knew, maybe from Switzerland or maybe from another planet where some wise race lived. They'd deliver probably real early, and with armed guards--the Man standing there with Laser rifles looking mean, the way the Man always did. Anybody rip off my slow death, he thought through the Man's head, I'll snuff them.
Probably Substance D is an ingredient in every legal medication that's worth anything, he thought. A little pinch here and there according to the secret exclusive formula at the issuing house in Germany or Switzerland that invented i...
Having nothing else to do or think about, he began to work out theoretically the life cycle of the bugs, and, with the aid of the Britannica, try to determine specifically which bugs they were. They now filled his house. He read about many different kinds and finally noticed bugs outdoors, so he concluded they were aphids. After that decision came to his mind it never changed, no matter what other people told him ... like "Aphids don't bite people."
They said that to him because the endless biting of the bugs kept him in torment. At the 7-11 grocery store, part of a chain spread out over most of California, he bought spray cans of Raid and Black Flag and Yard Guard. First he sprayed the house, then himself. The Yard Guard seemed to work the best.
As to the theoretical side, he perceived three stages in the cycle of the bugs. First, they were carried to him to contaminate him by what he called Carrier-people, which were people who didn't understand their role in distributing the bugs. During that stage the bugs had no jaws or mandibles (he learned that word during his weeks of scholarly research, an unusually bookish occupation for a guy who worked at the Handy Brake and Tire place relining people's brake drums). The Carrier-people therefore felt nothing. He used to sit in the far corner of his living room watching different Carrier-people enter--most of them people he'd known for a while, but some new to him--covered with the aphids in this particular nonbiting stage. He'd sort of smile to himself, because he knew that the person was being used by the bugs and wasn't hip to it.
"What are you grinning about, Jerry?" they'd say.
He'd just smile.
In the next stage the bugs grew wings or something, but they really weren't precisely wings; anyhow, they were appendages of a functional sort permitting them to swarm, which was how they migrated and spread--especially to him. At that point the air was full of them; it made his living room, his whole house, cloudy. During this stage he tried not to inhale them.
Most of all he felt sorry for his dog, because he could see the bugs landing on and settling all over him, and probably getting into the dog's lungs, as they were in his own. Probably--at least so his empathic ability told him--the dog was suffering as much as he was. Should he give the dog away for the dog's own comfort? No, he decided: the dog was now, inadvertently, infected, and would carry the bugs with him everywhere.
Sometimes he stood in the shower with the dog, trying to wash the dog clean too. He had no more success with him than he did with himself. It hurt to feel the dog suffer; he never stopped trying to help him. In some respect this was the worst part, the suffering of the animal, who could not complain.
"What the fuck are you doing there all day in the shower with the goddamn dog?" his buddy Charles Freck asked one time, coming in during this.
Jerry said, "I got to get the aphids off him." He brought Max, the dog, out of the shower and began drying him. Charles Freck watched, mystified, as Jerry rubbed baby oil and talc into the dog's fur. All over the house, cans of insect spray, bottles of talc, and baby oil and skin conditioners were piled and tossed, most of them empty; he used many cans a day now.
"I don't see any aphids," Charles said. "What's an aphid?"
"It eventually kills you," Jerry said. "That's what an aphid is. They're in my hair and my skin and my lungs, and the goddamn pain is unbearable--I'm going to have to go to the hospital."
"How come I can't see them?"
Jerry put down the dog, which was wrapped in a towel, and knelt over the shag rug. "I'll show you one," he said. The rug was covered with aphids; they hopped up everywhere, up and down, some higher than others. He searched for an especially large one, because of the difficulty people had seeing them. "Bring me a bottle or jar," he said, "from under the sink. We'll cap it or put a lid on it and then I can take it with me when I go to the doctor and he can analyze it."
Charles Freck brought him an empty mayonnaise jar. Jerry went on searching, and at last came across an aphid leaping up at least four feet in the air. The aphid was over an inch long. He caught it, carried it to the jar, carefully dropped it in, and screwed on the lid. Then he held it up triumphantly. "See?" he said.
"Yeahhhhh," Charles Freck said, his eyes wide as he scrutinized the contents of the jar. "What a big one! Wow!"
"Help me find more for the doctor to see," Jerry said, again squatting down on the rug, the jar beside him.
"Sure," Charles Freck said, and did so.
Within half an hour they had three jars full of the bugs. Charles, although new at it, found some of the largest.
It was midday, in June of 1994. In California, in a tract area of cheap but durable plastic houses, long ago vacated by the straights. Jerry had at an earlier date sprayed metal paint over all the windows, though, to keep out the light; the illumination for the room came from a pole lamp into which he had screwed nothing but spot lamps, which shone day and night, so as to abolish time for him and his friends. He liked that; he liked to get rid of time. By doing that he could concentrate on important things without interruption. Like this: two men kneeling down on the shag rug, finding bug after bug and putting them into jar after jar.
"What do we get for these," Charles Freck said, later on in the day. "I mean, does the doctor pay a bounty or something? A prize? Any bread?"
"I get to help perfect a cure for them this way," Jerry said. The pain, constant as it was, had become unbearable; he had never gotten used to it, and he knew he never would. The urge, the longing, to take another shower was overwhelming him. "Hey, man," he gasped, straightening up, "you go on putting them in the jars while I take a leak and like that." He started toward the bathroom.
"Okay," Charles said, his long legs wobbling as he swung toward a jar, both hands cupped. An ex-veteran, he still had good muscular control, though; he made it to the jar. But then he said suddenly, "Jerry, hey--those bugs sort of scare me. I don't like it here by myself." He stood up.
"Chickenshit bastard," Jerry said, panting with pain as he halted momentarily at the bathroom.
"Couldn't you--"
"I got to take a leak!" He slammed the door and spun the knobs of the shower. Water poured down.
"I'm afraid out here." Charles Freck's voice came dimly, even though he was evidently yelling loud.
"Then go fuck yourself!" Jerry yelled back, and stepped into the shower. What fucking good are friends? he asked himself bitterly. No good, no good! No fucking good!
"Do these fuckers sting?" Charles yelled, right at the door.
"Yeah, they sting," Jerry said as he rubbed shampoo into his hair.
"That's what I thought." A pause. "Can I wash my hands and get them off and wait for you?"
Chickenshit, Jerry thought with bitter fury. He said nothing; he merely kept on washing. The bastard wasn't worth answering ... He paid no attention to Charles Freck, only to himself. To his own vital, demanding, terrible, urgent needs. Everything else would have to wait. There was no time, no time; these things could not be postponed. Everything else was secondary. Except the dog; he wondered about Max, the dog.
Charles Freck phoned up somebody who he hoped was holding, "Can you lay about ten deaths on me?"
"Christ, I'm entirely out--I'm looking to score myself. Let me know when you find some, I could use some."
"What's wrong with the supply?"
"Some busts, I guess."
Charles Freck hung up and then ran a fantasy number in his head as he slumped dismally back from the pay phone booth--you never used your home phone for a buy call--to his parked Chevy. In his fantasy number he was driving past the Thrifty Drugstore and they had a huge window display; bottles of slow death, cans of slow death, jars and bathtubs and vats and bowls of slow death, millions of caps and tabs and hits of slow death, slow death mixed with speed and junk and barbiturates and psychedelics, everything--and a giant sign: YOUR CREDIT IS GOOD HERE. Not to mention: LOW LOW PRICES, LOWEST IN TOWN.
But in actuality the Thrifty usually had a display of nothing: combs, bottles of mineral oil, spray cans of deodorant, always crap like that. But I bet the pharmacy in the back has slow death under lock and key in an unstepped-on, pure, unadulterated, uncut form, he thought as he drove from the parking lot onto Harbor Boulevard, into the afternoon traffic. About a fifty-pound bag.
He wondered when and how they unloaded the fifty-pound bag of Substance D at the Thrifty Pharmacy every morning, from wherever it came from--God knew, maybe from Switzerland or maybe from another planet where some wise race lived. They'd deliver probably real early, and with armed guards--the Man standing there with Laser rifles looking mean, the way the Man always did. Anybody rip off my slow death, he thought through the Man's head, I'll snuff them.
Probably Substance D is an ingredient in every legal medication that's worth anything, he thought. A little pinch here and there according to the secret exclusive formula at the issuing house in Germany or Switzerland that invented i...
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Product details
- Publisher : Vintage; Reprint edition (December 3, 1991)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0679736654
- ISBN-13 : 978-0679736653
- Item Weight : 8.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.17 x 0.72 x 7.99 inches
-
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Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2018
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Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2018
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A difficult and depressing novel about addicts, narcs who become addicts, dealers who are narcs, and users in all senses of the term. The hard part was reading from the point of view of the addled minds of the drug abusers, trying to make sense of what's objectively real and what's a hallucination or warped perception. The boring parts, for me, were the repetitions of those bizarre perceptions, the explanations by non-addicts of the biological causes of the misperceptions, and the explanations of the world by the increasingly deranged addicts. The depressing part was feeling the well-intentioned addicts crumble and the manipulation of them revealed at the end. What I don't get is why this is set in the then-future of 1994 without modifying the '60s and early '70s hippy drug culture or almost anything else except adding scramble suits and holographic scanners. The constant male valuing of women first and foremost, if not exclusively, for their sexuality also got to me.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2018
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If you haven't seen the movie, if you don't already know where this novel will go, you could not possibly predict it's ending, meaning or deep revelations of the human mind. I've spent the last few weeks slowly enjoying the characters, marveling over the winding plot line, constantly unsure of what I was actually experiencing via these remarkable and frenzied encounters. This story leaves me heartbroken and afraid for our youths' future. It also fills me with hope that society can learn and grow from our social mistakes if only we urgently share them and own our roles in them. I wish I could meet the author in this life rather than the next.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2016
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Now I don't always dig Philip K. Dick because frankly sometimes his endings leave me frustrated and I have therefore started reading him very cautiously. Many of this well known works are just ramblings of a drug addicted and bipolar brain, which were made into great movie and TV adaptations by solid writers who corrected his flaws. However, A Scanner Darkly is not a story going nowhere. I picked up the book after watching the movie by the great Richard Linklater. I must say the movie stays pretty faithful to its source and the book does not disappoint. This is a sad but important work about drug addiction. Its semi-autobiographical, which makes it all the more relevant and haunting. Pick it up and be amazed by all the "wondrous little things" that Dick throws at you.
A word about the book quality itself. I had wanted the book with the movie cover on it (yes, I am one of those people!!) and the seller did not disappoint, some seller don't even return the book if the cover is wrong. The book itself was in a great shape and was delivered fast, sturdy packing and all!!
A word about the book quality itself. I had wanted the book with the movie cover on it (yes, I am one of those people!!) and the seller did not disappoint, some seller don't even return the book if the cover is wrong. The book itself was in a great shape and was delivered fast, sturdy packing and all!!
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Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2021
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This book is incredible. PKD lived through the sixties and WOW you live through an era like that and you will have some stories let me tell you. He based a lot of these characters on people he actually KNEW. A writer who writes from the heart is one that you should latch onto and READ ASAP. The scene with Donna where....wait, I won't give it away, just PLEASE GET THIS BOOK. And this version is beautiful. The book cover is awesomely drawn really in like a cool way and says a lot about the story and the way the characters are thought up, it really makes you wonder about your own mortality and how much time is really left. My dad likes this book too, and we have been estranged for a while, but after I read this book we started talking again and so that's good too. 5 stars. Do you wanna go down a deep rabbit hole full of imagination and magnitude. Look no further. Like I said, buy it now!
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Top reviews from other countries
Kindle Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not for me
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2019Verified Purchase
Given that this book is about drugs, addiction, reality it makes sense for it to be a very jumbled, stream of thought type book. However I found the chaotic jumble unappealing.
6 people found this helpful
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Matt van Staden
1.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult to understand
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 7, 2018Verified Purchase
Think you need to be on drugs as well to read this book! Can see what the author was trying to do by writing from the perspective of someone descending into madness from drug abuse, and it’s clever from that perspective; but it’s a nightmare to read and understand what is going on.
7 people found this helpful
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Syriat
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspired
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 19, 2012Verified Purchase
A Scanner Darkly is the story of Bob Arctor and his drug using friends. Or rather the story of Agent Bob Arctor who is undercover as a drug user and using his associates to try and find the source of a drug called Substance D. Or rather it is both, at the same time and then more. Because A Scanner Darkly is a story that changes throughout it 200 odd pages. It follows the Agent Bob Arctor and his investigation and this morphs into another investigation entirely. Its quite dizzying at times reading this and following the focus of the book, the investigation and the shifting paranoia of the drug addled characters within.
There are sci-fi touches here for sure. The scramble suits, which make it impossible to recognise the person speaking to you, are the best example of this. However, for this book the emphasis moves away from sci-fi and rather tells the drug centred story and it just sets it in a near future. The story can be difficult to follow at times. However, it is a brilliant example of clever sci-fi and shows Philip K Dick at the top of his game. The end shows this in absolute clarity and leaves you thinking and wondering...what happened next. Arctor as a character works as you can feel for him at every stage. His friends are absolutely hopeless...yet you find yourself liking them in spite of themselves.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this when I was younger and again more recently. I found it thought provoking and enjoyable and believe that if you like clever sci-fi or even if you don't then you will really enjoy this. Highly recommended
There are sci-fi touches here for sure. The scramble suits, which make it impossible to recognise the person speaking to you, are the best example of this. However, for this book the emphasis moves away from sci-fi and rather tells the drug centred story and it just sets it in a near future. The story can be difficult to follow at times. However, it is a brilliant example of clever sci-fi and shows Philip K Dick at the top of his game. The end shows this in absolute clarity and leaves you thinking and wondering...what happened next. Arctor as a character works as you can feel for him at every stage. His friends are absolutely hopeless...yet you find yourself liking them in spite of themselves.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this when I was younger and again more recently. I found it thought provoking and enjoyable and believe that if you like clever sci-fi or even if you don't then you will really enjoy this. Highly recommended
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Herefordrob
5.0 out of 5 stars
My thoughts
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2021Verified Purchase
The book is a novel which as the author says has no agenda or message other than we should be allowed to exercise personal choice. At times an overly simplistic view. The novel illustrated this well.
Not a review, prompts to my thoughts/mind.
Sad in that people make choices and are not always able to change it at a later date.
Addiction is a horrible & destroys lives & families.
Remembering friends should be enough but is it?
Not a review, prompts to my thoughts/mind.
Sad in that people make choices and are not always able to change it at a later date.
Addiction is a horrible & destroys lives & families.
Remembering friends should be enough but is it?
Ben
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favorite PKD work
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 23, 2014Verified Purchase
I'm not a lover of traditional Sci-Fi. It gets too hung up on the detail, padding out it's expansive world with minute detail but fundamentally falling down in the character department. This is the strongest element of A Scanner Darkly, with much of the dialogue being ripped from PKD's own life - detailing the daily farse of drug-culture. Despite some small retention of Science elements, this novel is more straight fiction - a study of human interiority, what makes people tick. The themes of identity and Government collusion in the downfall of Man are all as applicable today as they were upon this novel's construction. Technically this is one of PKD's strongest works utilizing techniques that make this novel immensely readable.
The 2006 amimotion picture (the closest term I can construct that does the unique art style of this wonderful justice) captures the atmosphere of the novel almost perfectly, but the extent of Robert Arctor's downfall is most apparent in this prose.
Goes down as one of my favorite novels, and I even wrote my coursework on it.
The 2006 amimotion picture (the closest term I can construct that does the unique art style of this wonderful justice) captures the atmosphere of the novel almost perfectly, but the extent of Robert Arctor's downfall is most apparent in this prose.
Goes down as one of my favorite novels, and I even wrote my coursework on it.
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