Rating: 
Summary: Living on a knife's edge
Review: This is the first science fiction book I've read since reading Starwars back in the 80's. I wanted to read something by Philip K. Dick after I found out that Bladerunner was based on his book 'Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep'. I must say, I was not disappointed.This was not the easiest book to read, sometimes I got a bit overwhelmed by techno speak - (he obviously researched brain functions thoroughly), but persistence paid off. The concept of this story is not a new one: A cop goes undercover as a junkie to try to catch the suppliers of a drug called 'Substance D', but in order to pose as a junkie, he must become one. We see throughout the story how he feels about lying to his friends, but by the end of the book we learn that he was not the only one with a hidden agenda. After reading this story, it is easy to see why Mr Dick has such a strong following and why even after his death, his stories are still as relevant now as they were when first written. I recommend reading this book. Philip K. Dick said there was no moral to this story, but I think it takes something from you when you read it and leaves in its place hopefully a little compassion for those who live on a knife's edge and for the walking dead. RIP Philip K. Dick.
Rating: 
Summary: Dick's intended mainstream novel about his drug experience
Review: This is a great book. It is powerful, and emotionally draining however, so you have been warned. Most of the characters are based on real people in the author's life during his psychedelic and speed binges in Marin County and Vancouver during the late sixties early seventies. For instance, Bob Arctor's buddy who has used Substance-D (for Death). The poor character convinces himself that his body is crawling with insects, that his body is infested. This is a real friend of Dick's whose "mind was blown" and who eventually committed suicide (see the PKD Newsletter). If you read this novel and know that many of these characters are Dick's former friends and himself, that it deals with the horrible aftereffects of those drug filled days (such as Arctor's schizophrenia), "A Scanner Darkly" will hit you harder than most novels you will ever read, and will resonate for a long time. I don't recommend this one for all readers, it is not throw away Sci-Fi; this is a novel about a phase in a man's life which many of his friends did not survive, and that had painful, lasting effects on those who did.
Rating:
Summary: Darkly, indeed
Review: Dick's tragic satire on drug enforcement skewers drug users, enforcement, treatment, and organized crime with equally scathing ferocity as cogs in an out-of-control system of perverse psychological torture. The central plot device, that the undercover drug agent protagonist must narc on himself under the influence of a drug that splits his psyche into conflicting personalities, is just Dick's opening salvo. In the end, Dick's breathless pursuit of the targets of his satire is not an expression of anger but of palpable grief and despair, which the postscript explains in very real, moving terms. One subplot is marred by what I think is regrettable mysoginy, from which Dick does not seem to have a satirist's distance, but this is a problem with Dick in general. This is my favorite Dick novel, if for no other reason than it's more grounded in a reality I recognize than his more fantasy-oriented, more philosophical stories.
Rating:
Summary: Punishment for pleasure.... Not fair.
Review: Just as Philip K. Dick described, the theme of this novel is not to set moral wrongs or rights of drugs and its users. It simply is to tell the consequences of drug misuse. It not only deals with the physical consequences, but also the psychological aspect, as well. To loose your own identity, unaware of the loss of one's own self. In a way, this novel can be categorized as Science Fiction-Black Comedy. But the humor in this novel does not make the subject of drug less serious, but more intense. The outrageous humor entertains the reader, giving him a moment of pleasurable laughter. Then, like drugs, a time comes when he realize that the pleasure once devoured, in fact, is just the beginning of a slow death. The reader laughs at the addicts' stupidity, and then faces the ultimate punishment with the characters involved. Although this novel may have too many adult contents, I wish this novel can be a recommended read for the ever curious and anxious high school students. A serious science fiction that has black comedic humor. What else can you ask from a fiction?
Rating:
Summary: Let Them Play Again
Review: This is not an SF novel. This is a story about Dick's drug-addicted friends and their sad fates. The book consists of a series of anecdotes and scenes that range from the absurdly funny to the grotesquely tragic and are too familiar if you have some experience with drug addiction.
We see the characters (Dick's friends) degenerate into madness because of their drug habit. But still we refrain from saying they are degenerates and brought it on themselves, because of the compassion that Dick puts in his writing. All they wanted was to play, how can you think that is wrong.
At the end is an author's note in which Dick honors his dead friends and wants them to play again but in another way. This note is one of Dick's best writings and will break your heart (if you've got one that is). Oh yeah there's also a kind of plot to the book, but that's just thrown in to please the straights.
Rating:
Summary: Try to hang on
Review: Reading this book is akin to the pleasure of being lost in the city you live in and suddenly realizing that you are only three blocks from home. After every page in this novel, I was dragged further from coherence and deeper into the split ego of a cop who is an addict trailing an addict who is a cop. The very fiber of reality is arbitrary; good and evil tango to a song hummed by insanity. As one follows Arctor's attempts to reconcile his addiction, his past and his future, it seems that ultimately we are empathizing with madness: it is impossible to offer consolation, just learn what you can and get the hell out. I have never experimented with mind-altering drugs, and after reading this I don't think I have to. In the 3 or 4 days it took me to read this, I was completely submerged in the world in which Arctor plodded, eager to reach resolution. If you are looking for a narrative style like none other and characters that seem to stare at you from the pages, get this book. Be forewarned: Stories of this kind have been known to cause compulsive reading habits.
Rating:
Summary: A disturbing insight into the mind of Philip K Dick
Review: I have read almost everything Philip K Dick has written (I Say "almost" because he was one of the most prolific authors of the genre) and this was the one which affected me the most. It is basically the story of an undercover narcotics cop, Bruce, pretending to be a drug user, Bob, living with a group of other screwed up drug users and taking large quantities of drugs. The descent into psychosis, triggered by both the drug use and the deception, (posing as an imposter) mirrors Dick's own and, though totally predictable, it is the inevitability of the grim end which provides the drama. Bob starts off in a bad way but, as his drug use accelerates, the lines between his two identities, Bob & Bruce, cop & "criminal", drug addict & narc begin to blur. Dick explores the familiar (for him) territory of Kantian philosophy in a way which anyone with familiarity with psychotropic drugs will recognise as the voice of experience. The book is full of Dick's razor humour and the ending is all the more poignant for the affection that I, at least, felt for the cast of hopeless, helpless head cases. The dedication at the end made me want to cry. I love this book
Rating:
Summary: Dick's dark night
Review: Among Dick's 45 or so novels, A Scanner Darkly is his dark night of the soul, and is based on one of the lowest points in his life-his involvement with drugs and hard-drug users in 1970-72. Although Dick's characters had rarely been two-dimensional before, in this novel they clearly take on flesh, and for him it was a breakthrough. The dialogue is street talk of the late 1970s, gritty and realistic; the setting is Southern California, and though nominally science fiction, the sf elements are minimal. The conversations of the characters reflect, often humorously, their derangement and deterioration from the use of drugs. The main character is both a narcotics agent and an addict of the hallucinogenic Substance D, nicknamed "Death." The split in his personality finally brings him to a crisis and entry into a drug rehabilitation center. The whole story is told with great compassion, which makes the pessimism somewhat bearable. On the whole this is not a happy book. But it is compelling, real, and incredibly deeply felt. Most readers of PKD, I believe, tend to rank this near the top of the list of all his books.
Rating: 
Summary: What spoon
Review: I got this book from the library. I'll be forthcoming:
If you read it as a novel it's a horrid incorent horribly edited read. If taken as an anology and alagory (as it seems it's suposed to be.), and with the syntaxt that this was drafted in the 70's ... then it's a much better read. Iether was it's a dreadfully dificult read that is very much unpolished, in my print their's a few pages where the naritivite text merely ends with no coherent start. For instance he describes Arctor's car "He drove up to her and " [...]
Rating:
Summary: Realize what is being done
Review: A previous reviewer commented on Dick's inability to draw characterization. Interchangable are Arctor, Fred, Freck etc. This is all very true. The simple reason is Dick was portraying drugs as 'mind wrecks.' These were not characters, but paranoid puppets being conducted by the same string, drugs. Would one expect much character diversity when each man lives in the same broken down room. Their about as mechanical as the adroids that flood Dick's other stories. Everybody is portrayed as an addict or a stright. There is no middle ground. In fact, at the beginning of the read, I thought Freck was actually Arctor. They never spoke to each other. Now, whether or not this was my ignorance or Philip's plan, this can be said; he wrote at a rapid pace and was not meticulous in proof-reading. Anyways, this story is driven not by auxilliary characters but by substance D. If you want out of this trip, just don't pick up the book. Deciding to read this is your choice, but once picked up, it will be a disease.
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