Product Description

Substance D -- otherwise known as Death -- is the most dangerous drug ever to find its way on to the black market. It destroys the links between the brain's two hemispheres, leading first to disorentation and then to complete and irreversible brain damage. Bob Arctor, undercover narcotics agent, is trying to find a lead to the source of supply, but to pass as an addict he must become a user, and soon, without knowing what is happening to him, he is as dependent as any of the addicts he is monitoring.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9056 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 217 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Mind- and reality-bending drugs feature again and again in Philip K. Dick's hugely influential SF stories. A Scanner Darkly is the novel that cuts closest to the bone, drawing on Dick's own experience with illicit chemicals and on his many friends who died through drug misuse. 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. In a just world this harrowing novel, the 20th selection in the Millennium SF Masterworks, would have matched the sales of Trainspotting. --David Langford

About the Author
Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was born in Chicago but lived in California for most of his life. He went to college at Berkeley for a year, ran a record store and had his own classical-music show on a local radio station. He published his first short story, 'Beyond Lies the Wub' in 1952. Among his many fine novels are The Man in the High Castle, Time Out of Joint, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.

Customer Reviews

Dark, scary book about drugs by one who has been there
Dick doesn't just write about drugs, or paranoia -- he has really been there. This is a truly great book (much better than the film, though that wasn't too bad), touching on all the issues about drugs - the doper scene, the paranoia, the obsession, the blurry line between the good and bad guys, and the dodgy politics and practices of some of the 'anti-drug ' institutions.

Read it if you need any further education as to why the "War on Drugs", like the "War on Terror", is doomed to failure.

Simply brilliant!
This is one of my three favourite books (the others being 'The Affirmation' by Christopher Priest and 'Leviathan' by Paul Auster). Philip K. Dick wrote a huge number of books - some of which were IMHO very weak (in the sense of being slight nonsense e.g. 'Galactic Pot Healer') and others which are brilliant in their extrapolating of potentially 'present day' situations into fiction which questions reality and so helps to provide perspectives on our existence. Written like this, you might think that this sounds like pretentious nonsense instead of the slight nonsense mentioned earlier. However, books like 'Man in the High Castle' and 'A Scanner Darkly' are eminently and enjoyably readable but contain so much of interest that they can be read again and again. PKD had used hallucinogenic drugs and the majority of his books question reality using the form of Science Fiction. He specifically asked that 'A Scanner Darkly was classified as fiction rather than the sub-category of Science-Fiction, because he wanted it to reach a wider audience. There are no 'bug-eyed monsters' here, unless in imagination - just an undercover cop who, intriguingly is asked to spy on himself. Enjoy and enter into a different milieu!

Disturbing but brilliant
This is by far my favourite Philip K Dick book and I've loved many of his books a lot so this says much about the way I feel. I read "A Scanner Darkly" in high school and it hasn't left me yet. One of those reading experiences that leave a mark on you for a long long time. So strong in many ways.
The book is fascinating, thrilling, sometimes even funny but mostly scarry and disturbing. I had for a long time a desire to read this one again and finally, I did read it and was completely amazed once again. From the page one the story and the charachters took on hold on me. Still after many months the images are there. And theres this strange desire to open the book again. Why? The only explanation I can think of is simply this: that the book is just so good. Dick is brilliant writer. His style is fluent and easy to follow and his imagination is fast and witty. This is not a book by some disturbed mind. Maybe the he was disturbed in many ways but his mind was clear - at least while he was writing this.
This of course is my personal experience and I know that, maybe you'll find the book dissapoiting. In many ways there no reason to like this book. It drags sometimes and there repetition and it's about the most depressing book there is - but it is fascinating. Not really a scifi book. More like an study about man's struggle not to face reality and his desperate search for alternative comforts. No flying cars and laserguns here. Just human existence explored.