A Scanner Darkly

Rating:
Summary: The Best of Dick!
Review: A Scanner Darkly was the third Phillip K. Dick book I got my hands on and is, in my opinion, his finest work. Bob Arctor is an undercover cop who has become addicted to Substance-D. The problem is addiction makes the two hemisphere's of the brain split into combatative personalities. Bob's personalities are a. The cop on an undercover assignment and b. the criminal he has come to suspect as a main player in a huge drug ring. Although this central irony drives the plot of the book it is only part of the action. What makes PKD a great writer, and an unparalelled Science Fiction writer, is the way he minimalizes the Science Fiction elements and focuses on character development. As a result the book (in the same manner as many of his best novels) manages to deftly juggle philisophical issues of personal identity, present realistic charecters in unusual situations, and relate the painful story of his own drug use and psychological problems in fictionalized terms (I consider all of Dick's work to be semi-autobiographical despite their fantastic elements). Dick also manages to tell a story about the drug culture of the late sixties and early seventies more lucid and honest than any I have previously encountered. This is one of those books I would rabidly reccomend to fans of the genre or reading enthusiasts in general. Other reccomended works are: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich and Man in the High Castle (the single best meditation on if The Axis powers had won WWII ever written).

Rating:
Summary: American Classic
Review: This novel is especially dear to me because it takes place in the neighborhood I grew up in and lived until up thru College (Cal State Fullerton, which we belovedly called Cal State Across the Street -- since it was directly on the other side of our High School). Like many of PDK novels, he scores a least one bulls-eye in prediction of the future (the longevity of classic rock, for example, the Joni Mitchell reference) and misses the target by predicting something that didn't come true but still seems like a very perceptive understanding of modern trends (the requirement of credit cards to gain entry into the mall [is this the BREA MALL?]). Well this is not a novel for everyone, but certainly worth reading if you enjoy a little challenge to your reading. The beginning is classic and the only thing I can think that matches the first page is the start of Amy Tan's wonderful novel A HUNDRED SECRET SENSES. Did Amy Tan read any PDK -- I have to think so.

Rating:
Summary: Cloaked Finn, head storming by G-stuff.
Review: When I read this book I was hit by a terrible need of G and need of the cloaking suit. Lack of existance, addiction in lurking. I wanted to re- read the book because I wanted to believe in it. Psychedelic is the lost key word in this crazy story.

Rating:
Summary: Document of decline
Review: A very sad book and the last of pk dicks lucid writings. I read it as a narrative of his own schizophrenic degeneration, catalysed by speed addiction.

Rating:
Summary: Who are you? Who am i?
Review: A thoroughly disturbing novel, yet at the same time incredibly enjoyable. Takes Des Cartes "cogito ergo sum" to the extreme.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: By far the best and most disturbing PKD book I have read. If only Ridley Scott had turned this one into a film. Utterly paranoid, confusing and depressing - I loved it. Hint: grab a German dictionary for the weird parts!

Rating:
Summary: Psycodelic dual personality.
Review: When reading this book, try to follow the storyline. Then re-read it and try again. This is one strange novel and one that only survivors of the 1960's drug induced world can probably relate to.

Rating:
Summary: A Scanner Darkly - c'est moi!!
Review: I very nearly clicked the "I am the Author" button when I chose to review this work - it seemed the Dickian thing to do. A Scanner Darkly - how do I love thee, let me count the ways. From the opening sentence: "One day a guy stood shaking bugs from his hair" (probably a misquote - I'm working from memory - also very Dickian), to that moment when Bob Arctor spying on himself with the Holoprojector is convinced that he is the guilty party, Dick not only unbalances your conciousness, but he unbalances your emotional reactions. I think that it is here that the true genius of the novel lies. We expect great IDEAS in Dick - questions about reality and "genuine-ness" - but here we get a breadth of emotion. A Scanner Darkly is not only an intellectual trip - it is an emotional one. There is great humour - the scene when the heads try to work out how many gears are on the stolen bicycle is hysterical. The moment when Arctor lying beside the prostitute he has picked up because his girl won't sleep with him, sees her change into the girlfriend is as touching a moment in literature. Of course Dick also uses this as part of Arctor's intellectual disintegration, and when later "Fred" reviewing the holoscan of this incident also sees the transformation we are again disoriented. The two conceits that the novel relies on - the unknown drug "Substance D" and the holoscanners that can record all the events in the house - work with varying success. The holoscanners symbolise nicely the paranoia of drug addiction - but it does take some suspension of disbelief to accept that the drug source would/could be unknown to government forces. Picky? Yes. The title - from one of St Paul's letters reflects (!) well not only the themes of the book but my own reaction to it - I see my reflection in this novel as in a glass darkly. When we stare into the abyss never forget....

Rating:
Summary: This book screwed with my mind.
Review: It dragged me into a strange world, the world of the addict, and left me there confused and disoriented. Like a drug itself I couldn't put the book down, but felt numb when it was over. The Author's Notes are a must.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece! A must read for every fan of PKD
Review: Tom Wolfe wrote somewhere in one of his condescending 'New Yorker' articles that the Hippie generation had produced no great American writers. He had obviously not read any Philip K. Dick. And certainly not A SCANNER DARKLY (which Dick himself termed "a masterpiece"). In this chilling tale of Drug-war totalitarianism one recognizes what it was like to be a 'head' in the early 1970s and for those of us who lived through it the shock of recognition is acute. Bob Arctor, the protagonist of the novel, is one of us and it is our lives that Dick writes about in SCANNER. If you were there then you know, if you weren't here's how it was.-- Lord RC END