A Scanner Darkly
by Phillip K. Dick (1977)
2024 reads, 15/22
Not really sure where to start with this one – Philip K. Dick (PDK for short), arguably one of the best science fiction writers of all time, has been on my to-read list for years. In fact, it’s surprising that I haven’t read anything by him yet, especially since Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the inspiration for my favorite movie, Blade Runner. But I digress – we’ll get to that review soon enough.
A Scanner Darkly is a dystopian sci-fi novel set in 1994 California, in an alternate timeline where America has lost the war on drugs. Dealers, users, and federal agents are all intertwined in one another’s lives, and the existence of “scramble suits,” a body suit that conceals one’s identity, only complicates matters. Bob Arctor is an undercover narcotics agent investigating users such as Jim Barris, Ernie Luckman, and Charles Freck, whose house is bugged with “scanners” for Arctor’s alter-ego to surveil.
“Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself.”
I’m slightly reminded of other counterculture novels, e.g., One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; any of the works of Kesey, Leary, and HST between the beats and the hippies. Barris even recites Leary’s catchphrase as a sign-off: “Turn on, tune out, and good-by.” But where those novels focus on the actual use or psychedelics of drugs, A Scanner Darkly focuses more on the consequences of repeated drug use.
The concept of the “scramble suit” is also intriguing; as readers, we know who Arctor and his alter ego are, but I was left wondering about the identities and motives of the other characters. How do they fit into this mess? What exactly is Arctor looking for? The idea of double lives is pervasive throughout this novel, both in a temporal and spatial sense, and adds to the haziness.
“There she was, stable and as if forever; then—nothing. Vanished like fire or air, an element of the earth back into the earth. To mix with the everyone-else people that never ceased to be. Poured out among them. The evaporated girl, he thought. Of transformation. That comes and goes as she will. And no one, nothing, can hold on to her.”
This book was amazing and heartbreaking at the same time, and made me immediately pick up my next PKD book. For anyone looking to get into PKD, or just wanting to read a science fiction classic, this is a great one to go with.
P.S. The movie did a great job capturing not just the confusing nature of the novel, but also remained pretty faithful to the book. Worth the watch!