Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

I have come to think of “A Scanner Darkly” as an artifact of its time.  It is semi-autobiographical and written about a time in Philip K. Dick’s life where he was recently divorced (again) and spent a few years in the early 70s inviting various teen-ish druggies to live in his house so he wouldn’t be alone.  Obviously, he did a lot of drugs in that period.  He also lost a lot of friends to drugs during that period.  Thus was born “A Scanner Darkly”.  I say the book is an artifact of its time because the drug culture back then was vastly different from what it is today, or at least vastly different from how popular culture portrays the 70s drug culture vs. the 90s and beyond drug culture, because let’s face it, a drug culture expert I am not.  “A Scanner Darkly” is not violence-free, but it’s a far cry from the hyper-violent drug culture we see today.  That makes it very difficult to relate to the individuals who are just going through their daily motions and decidedly not in a buddy drug comedy a la Cheech and Chong or Harold and Kumar.

The story deals with Bob Arctor who is really “Fred”, an undercover agent whose identity is even hidden by his bosses by a scramble suit which jumbles a person’s appearance.  In the line of duty as an undercover druggie, Bob gets addicted to Substance D, a made up drug that plays into the story.  Much of the story is about Bob’s descent into addiction and the symptoms he starts to exhibit.  It’s a bit trippy and somewhat interesting from a psychological perspective, but it’s mostly dry and plodding as a story.  Bob’s addiction is a very necessary plot point in the story, but the entire book is basically Bob’s addiction with a loose plot to give the book some semblance of a narrative.

“A Scanner Darkly” is basically an attempt to keep kids off drugs.  It’s every bad anti-drug commercial from the 80s.  This is drugs. *holds up egg*  This is your brain on drugs. *cracks egg into hot frying pan* Any questions?  Only 200+ pages of it.  Personally, I’d rather have watched the commercial again and saved myself hours of reading.