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    A Scanner Darkly
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    A Scanner Darkly
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    A Scanner Darkly
    Audiobook9 hours

    A Scanner Darkly

    Written by Philip K. Dick

    Narrated by Paul Giamatti

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D--which Arctor takes in massive doses--gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself.

    Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 23, 2006
    ISBN9780739323939
    Author

    Philip K. Dick

    Over a writing career that spanned three decades, PHILIP K. DICK (1928–1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, as well as television's The Man in the High Castle. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, including the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and between 2007 and 2009, the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

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    Reviews for A Scanner Darkly

    4/5

    2,015 ratings63 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A dark semi-autobiographical journey into drug abuse and the loss of identity with some subtle SF/F elements throughout. By turns funny, sad, sobering, and harrowing, a sadly dystopian tale made the worse for how real it all feels. We follow the undercover agent Fred / drug house owner Bob as the line between these identities becomes suddenly concrete as one side of his personality forgets the other and begins looking at his own image as a stranger. Eventually his whole sense of self begins to dissolve and the story takes its darkest, saddest turns yet.
    • 4/5
      Only a few years after To Your Scattered Bodies Go, this book shows what sci-fi of that era was actually capable of: a supporting female character with an interesting and complex inner world; multifaceted main characters with very human worries, faults, and ambivalence; and brief glimpses of something profound and deeply philosophical, making you feel you didn't waste your time on pure brain candy. It's not an easy book, and I have it four stars instead of three more because I was impressed by it than because I liked it, but it challenged me and I recognize the accomplishment in that.
    • 4/5
      Wow, really makes you think - and really interesting from a modern perspective.
    • 4/5
      When I finished this book I needed a hug.
    • 3/5
      I decided to start reading some of the work of Phillip K. Dick and for now I'm relying on the titles available at my local library. When I picked up A Scanner Darkly, I didn't know anything about it other than that they made a "rotoscope" film about a decade ago but I never saw the movie and didn't pay enough attention to know the plot. Reading the synopsis on the back of the book was very intriguing...it sounded like sort of weird split-personality situation where the protagonist was a policeman who was hunting after himself. As I started reading the book, I realized that my interpretation of the synopsis was a little bit off, but the book was still intriguing. The story revolves around the protagonist, a man named Bob Arctor who is a flaky drug user in Southern California living with a bunch of other druggies. He also happens to be an undercover narcotics officer trying to work his investigation up the drug traffic chain to find the big suppliers at the top. The trouble is, Bob actually did start using some of the drugs to maintain his cover and now he's a full-blown addict and is on the verge of a mental breakdown as a result. There's a lot of internal monolog as both Bob the druggie and Bob the cop and as the book goes on, his psyche becomes more and more segmented to the point that my original reading of the synopsis makes some sense in that Bob the druggie seems somewhat unaware that he's actually a cop and he's very paranoid that he's going to be caught...meanwhile Bob the cop has dissociated himself so much from his other self that he studies and tails the drug user as a separate person. The whole concept is a little trippy (pardon the phrasing) and takes some time to wrap your head around the creative way the scenes play out. The book is set in the future so there are some sci-fi elements but they are minimal. Remnants of the author's contemporary technology are still in place (the cars, the music, the phones, etc.). Probably the most intriguing piece of futuristic tech is the "scramble suit" that the cop wears when making his official reports or doing other leg work in an official capacity. The scramble suit is a full body suit with high-tech camouflage that "scrambles" the wearer's appearance constantly so that he/she is never recognizable. The technology and use of the suit seems to be yet another factor in Bob's loss of "self" and his mental schism. A lot of the book is spent with extensive scenes where Bob is talking with his other addict friends in various states of drug use. The language definitely gets R-rated and a lot of times the conversations are semi-random ramblings about life, society, paranoia and corruption. The druggies go back and forth between being super friendly to each other and playing tricks on each other and sometimes being outright antagonistic to one another. I've not personally sat around through lengthy drug-induced conversations but the few times I have interacted with people who have been very drunk or high, their behavior and language seemed very familiar to what was portrayed in this book. The notes at the end of the book indicate that a lot of the content is semi-autobiographical based on Dick's own drug problems and his interactions with fellow users. Dick indicates that he didn't write the book trying to sell some big anti-drug message but more he wrote it as a sort of memory to his old friends who he's lost over the years to their abuse. It's clear he doesn't condone drug d use and the way the plot plays out it's clear that he'd like to see the drug trade taken down any way possible. More than that though I felt like he was just showing the tragic way that these people's lives are wasted and destroyed and sadly they often get to a point where there is no way to fully recover. At the end, I can say this was an interesting read. It spun my head in circles at times and left me thinking about things but mostly it just made me sad and frustrated that the drug problem just keeps plugging away even though everybody (at least most people here in the U.S.) are taught and understand from their childhood that truly nothing goocomes of getting into drugs. I understand there are some who "don't have a choice" and that sometimes psychological problems or other influences make a person feel like the risks are outweighed by what they hope to gain. Overall, I felt like this was an okay book but not something I would call a "must read." Still, it left me in a thoughtful place. *** 3 out of 5 stars
    • 4/5
      A strange and troubling and touching tribute to the world of drug use in the '60s. Excellently written, of course.
    • 4/5
      Very interesting take on drug use and what it does to the mind;
    • 4/5
      "Happiness, he thought, is knowing you got some pills." And in this tale, the pills are Substance D - Death. Just watch out for aphids!This is just a weird, trippy book! Sometimes I didn't understand it, and sometimes I understood it all too well! I loved the spaced out conversations, like the one about bike gears, because they felt so much like real drugged out discussions I've heard over the years! The whole book is just one big trip, but worth reading! Unless, of course, you are Bob Arctor/Fred/Bruce. That poor bastard...
    • 1/5
      Drug addicts and an undercover agent who may or may not also be a drug addict. There's a lot of pseudo-philosophy and random "what if it's all a bad trip" hints but mostly it's druggies having inane conversations about nothing in particular. I guess it's supposed to be funny? I don't know. I was bored.
    • 5/5
      Bleak perspective on drug culture.
    • 3/5
      I've been putting off reading this book. I should have put it off more. It's a depressing, tragicomic, eloquent slice of genius pie, P.K. Dick style. It's a cerebral novel that demands your attention. I don't regret reading the book, but it certainly wasn't a pleasant experience. It was king of like having a bad tooth pulled.

      I would recommend this book to almost anyone and would not read it again.

    • 4/5
      I liked this book quite a bit. It wasn't as filled with science fiction as his other books, more like exaggerations. I was also surprised by how sad the book became and by the heavy Author's note at the end of the novel.

      Here is a passage that sums things up nicely:

      To himself. Bob Arctor thought, How many Bob Arctor's are there? A weird and fucked up thought. Two that I can think of, he thought. The one called Fred, who will be watching the other one, called Bob. The same person. Or is it? Is Fred actually the same as Bob? Does anybody know? I would know, if anybody did, because I am the only person in the world that knows that Fred is Bob Arctor. But, he thought, who am I? Which one of the is me?



      Welch Dunkel Hier!
    • 5/5
      This is a complicated book but by the end it all comes together. The ending is sad, but there's really no other way to finish. I really enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      This book is a fascinating insight into the damage recreational drugs can do to our psyche. Set in an alternate history, there is a new drug on the market known as 'Substance D' or 'Death'. Prolonged use of this drug messes with the physical structure of the brain, leading to severe mental illness and, eventually, death. Even withdrawing from the drug doesn't reverse the effects, with many ex-users left as walking, talking vegetables.Our protagonist is an undercover police officer, who is forced to take the drug in the line of duty. Told from his point of view, the novel documents his slow descent into insanity. Being inside the mind of a user is unpleasant and often confusing. However, this is a book well worth reading.
    • 4/5
      What a disturbing, intense book! The first thing I did after finishing this novel was hand it off to a friend so I'd have someone to discuss it with. It's definitely not a light read, so don't pick it up if you're not looking for something thought-provoking. It's science-fiction, yes, but also has a lot of interesting things to say about drug abuse and addiction and, whether you agree with Dick's views or not, the sociology of crime.
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars

      Dick always did have a fascination for the workings of the mind, whether perceiving "reality" (We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, the basis for Total Recall) or identity (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep/Blade Runner). This book combines the two topics in a story where many things are not what they seem.

      From the back cover: "Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug called Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, he has taken on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D--which Arctor takes in mammoth doses--gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize that he is narcing on himself."

      Dick writes with authority about an addict's mind, lifestyle, and deterioration; as he describes in the afterword, he was one himself. That, to me, is the book's primary strength. Creating and maintaining a nebulous sense of menace is another.

      Its weaknesses relate to the passing of time and its length. First, I can believe that the book was important at the time it was published, perhaps even groundbreaking. Given the almost 40 years of SF and scientific/tech advancements since then, though, it comes off a bit flat. I wish I had read this before reading similar novels or seeing movies like Total Recall or The Matrix, among others.

      Second, it's inherently less interesting to watch or read about other peoples' highs/trips rather than live one yourself--a little "dude, that's deep, man" dialog goes a long, LONG way. I think the book would have done better as a tight, kickass novelette or novella. It'll be interesting to see whether my opinion changes after seeing the film of the novel.
    • 4/5
      A Scanner Darkly is a classic novel by one of the masters of sci-fi, Philip K. Dick. In it, he tells the story of Bob Arctor who is a drug addict, getting high with his burnt-out friends on a dangerously addictive new drug called Substance D. At the same time, he is also Fred - an undercover narcotics officer whose newest target is Bob Arctor. Thus Fred/Bob must continue to maintain the pretence of informing on Arctor while keeping his own double identity secret. Yet, because of the large amounts of Substance D he consumes, it grows increasingly difficult for him to differentiate between the two identities.

      The difference between fiction and reality, one's perception of it, and crises of identity make this a classic P. K. Dick novel but it really excels as one of the most unnerving and realistic novels of drug addiction written. Semi-autobiographical in nature, A Scanner Darkly portrays the drug culture of 1970s Southern California in which Dick was involved. The various tangential and darkly funny conversations Arctor has with his fellow addicts are evidence of this.

      Dick thus does an excellent job of showing how people can descend into a drug-fuelled haze to the total exclusion of everything around them, as they and their friends descend further into a drug-addled state, as well as showing once again how fragile our senses of self are and how easily manipulated they are. Altogether, a frightening yet darkly funny and thought-provoking novel.
    • 4/5
      In a surreal and claustrophobic story where paranoia is justified, Dock explores the interconnected worlds of drugs and law enforcement. The novel starts with a scene that sets the tone for the entire book. A man is detailing his big problem. Within paragraphs it becomes apparent that he is a little mad; no one else can see the bugs, they are nonetheless enormous, and he is going to extreme and dangerous lengths to rid himself of them. Just when you think he is a complete mental case, his friend comes over and starts helping him collect bugs! Are they real? But the the conversation veers into the territory of buying drugs, and the reader finally had an answer. These men are addicts, and they are on a very bad trip.
    • 3/5
      First half is quite well written and shows drug culture with empathy, honesty and humour. The second part of the book does not deliver what the first sets out to do, nor what the author claims in the afterword he wanted to achieve.
    • 4/5
      This one started out seemingly normal and just went more and more off the rails as the story progressed. At times, I was really just sucked into the narrative and was jolted back to reality. Gritty and gripping!
    • 4/5
      One of the first things I noticed about this book was how quickly I was drawn into this world. Set in 1994 unless you were told or already knew then I highly doubt you'd pick that it was written in 1977. It could have been set today and still I would have believed it. Philip K. Dick was always well ahead of his time and his writing holds up as well now as it did when first written.

      This book delves into the murky world of psychedelic drugs and the police trying to stop it but not in a typical crime show way. Bob Arctor is a typical, every-day user of the most popular drug Substance-D. He shares a house with two other similar men Luckman and Barris. His friends are all drug-users. They sit around, take drugs and talk shit. Arctor is also trying to work his way up the dealer chain. Because Arctor is really an undercover narcotics officer, known as Fred. He left his previous life to try and find the source of this dangerous narcotic.

      Now because he has to blend in with everyone Arctor can't be seen to not take drugs. So he is a habitual user. One of the bad effects of Substance-D is a, sometimes permanent, alteration of the mind. It splits into two consciousnesses that can be unaware of the other. To protect his identity from other narcotics officers, thereby reducing the options for corruption, Arctor wears a body and voice altering camouflage suit when reporting to his colleagues and goes by the name of Fred. Under this alias he is given his latest task - monitoring the activities of the suspected ringleader, Bob Arctor. As he is made to spy on himself he beings to disassociate the two roles he portrays to the point the he is no longer aware that he is both people.

      I won't go more into the plot as I believe this is a story that you need to read for yourself. There are some interesting twists and turns. Dick is a great writer and really brings the fore his first-hand knowledge of this world. There's a lot of moral ambiguity here and that's done on purpose. In an afterword Dick points out that he wrote this just to tell the consequences as they are without saying whether they were right or wrong. It was a choice that the characters chose and this is the where it lead them. Nobody forced them, it was of their own free will.

      A really great book, Philip K. Dick was a great writer, one of the best science-fiction writers of all time. I would easily recommend picking this book up. And, just like many of his other works, this has been made into a movie. I purposefully held off on watching it as I've always planned to read this book. Now I have I will tomorrow night watch the movie and see how well it compares.
    • 3/5
      It features full-body scramble suits and a mysterious new drug called "Substance D," but I'm not sure that "A Scanner Darkly" should be classified as science fiction. It might fit more comfortably brief, relatively new canon of junkie lit, and, like most books in this genre, it's pretty much a bummer of a trip. Dick's real fixation here is paranoia on both a personal and societal scale: he traces both the personal disintegration of his main character, Bob Arctor, and describes the elaborate societal mechanisms that have made it possible for him to be an undercover agent who conceals his "real" identity from both his police contacts and the hapless, pleasure-seeking drug users that he's supposed to be spying on. This isn't to say that "A Scanner Darkly" resembles a political screed: In his author's note, Dick refutes the claim that his story is "bourgeois," and he never brings up the topic of legalization even once. Still, Dick goes to great lengths to show how drug use seems to split everything in two only to set it against itself: left-brain against right-brain, cops against users, and society, ultimately, against itself. There are few characters or institutions in this book that feel comfortable putting their trust in anyone or anything; even their own motives and perception of reality seem suspect. "A Scanner Darkly" is certainly more overtly literary than the other two Dick novels that I've read -- "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and "Ubik" -- and while I've pointed out Dick's shortcomings as a prose stylist before, there are some unquestioningly effective passages here. Dick's explanation of the book's title, which delves into theology and emerges with a surprisingly apt metaphor for neural dysfunction, and the last few brief chapters that describe Bob Arctor's sad fate, are genuinely affecting. It's the author's note to "A Scanner Darkly," in which Dick eulogizes the friends he lost to drug abuse, which is really shattering, though. Unfortunately, Dick can't keep up this tenor for the entirety of the book. The characters we meet in "A Scanner Darkly" are, like many literary drug addicts, disorganized, self-obsessed, and rather unlikable. Readers who must identify -- or at least feel some sympathy for -- the characters they read about might do well to avoid this one. Even so, this novel is an admirably cogent distillation of the experience of all-consuming paranoia. I also get the feeling that Dick felt that the stories of these characters, who many readers would probably consider little more than marginal layabouts, needed to be told. "A Scanner Darkly," then, rescues something of literary merit from a social scene distinguished by lost time and shattered lives.
    • 4/5
      This is, I think, my favorite Philip K Dick book so far (although I really loved Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). I picked it up to take a break from my re-read of VALIS. I thought I was getting tired of PK Dick because I wasn't really enjoying VALIS, but picking up another of his books with more plot has helped get me back on my PK Dick kick.

      I found it interesting and enjoyable to be inside the main character's head and witness his confusion and attempts to sort out reality from fiction. Of course, there's some element of this in all of PK Dick's novels (or at least the handful I've read). Perhaps that's the trip that I really enjoy when reading his books.
    • 4/5
      A trippy, trippy book, the first of his I've read. Not what I expected (I was expecting more sci-fi elements and less...cynicism I guess), but good stuff.
    • 5/5
      An interesting and thought provoking book.Very believable descriptions of drug-induced paranoia and psychosis. The main character's slow destruction by substance D makes for compulsive reading.
    • 4/5
      SPOILER ALERT!!!This is my second experience with Philip K. Dick's work (after Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) and I have to say I enjoyed this one better. A couple different twists at the end surprised me. Bob's deterioration happened so gradually that I barely noticed at first, as Bob/Fred didn't really notice, so I began to feel the same sort of disorientation while reading. I have no direct knowledge of drug addiction or tripping, but from Dick's first-hand portrayal this felt accurate, trippy and surreal.
    • 5/5
      This is Dick's best novel. A drug novel, yes, but there is no glorification or moralizing here, just cause and effect and the high price paid for some good times, compassion and tenderness as well as stoner humor and paranoia. And it's the ultimate paranoia of fearing and doubting yourself that gets Dick's best novel length treatment here. Special Agent Fred eventually forgets the man he is watching on surveillance tapes is his undercover ego Bob. It's a conceit successfully pulled off starting with metaphorical alienation, to the disguises Fred's work requires, to the literal brain damage rationalized by quotes from scientific articles on split-brain research. And there are the usual Dick motifs: God in the gutter and trash of our world, the insect as metaphor for the spiritually dead, the ethical dilemmas, and the religious allusions -- not the least being the title which echoes Saint Paul. And, unlike many of his novels, Dick maintains control of his plot to the end. One senses this novel was plotted start to finish and not ad hoc like some of his work seems to be. And that ending is a strange mixture of cynicism, vague utopianism, and a contemplation of human loss and sacrifice. As usual with Dick, even the villains have our understanding if not sympathy. This remembrance of his friends and younger days has Dick's blackest humor. And the friend's touch Arctor remembers to his dying day is at the center of this novel.
    • 4/5
      A dark and disturbing tale of drug abuse made more so by the author's note featured at the end of this book. In the note he provides a list of people (including himself) that the novel is dedicated to and what became of each. It's not a pleasant reminder of the consequences involved.Bob Arctor is an undercover narcotics agent reporting on his group of friends and trying to get a lead on Substance D, or Death as it's commonly referred to. Unfortunately for Bob, he's gotten in too deep and as his grip on reality starts to blur he turns increasingly paranoid and the line between his role as a nark and his undercover alter-ego becomes increasingly less distinct until finally believing they are separate identities completely.This is a near-future dystopian tale which doesn't have a huge amount of science fiction attached to it (only the scramble suits which protect the identity of the agent really springs to mind) so can be easily read by non-SF readers as well if so inclined. It probably took a couple of chapters for me to get into the style of writing in this book but it was so worth sticking with until the end. It's not all darkness though as there are some entertaining conversations between the drug-addled friends that provide lighter relief. You can get much more insight to the characters by reading the book than you can from the movie but the film is not too bad either.
    • 4/5
      This was one of those novels that drew me in immediately. I was vaguely disturbed, yet couldn't help reading the description of Jerry Fabin, the man who thought he was infested with aphids. As it turns out, Jerry's brain is pretty much reduced to mush by substance D, a dangerous drug that law enforcement is unable to determine the source of. We then meet Bob Arctor, the undercover narcotics agent who becomes a little too caught up in the drug culture he is supposed to be infiltrating. The tone of this book is hopeless and depressing, yet full of dark humor (i.e the 10 speed bicycle incident). I especially enjoyed reading the banter between Bob and his roomates. As the novel progresses, it gets more and more surreal as Bob begins to lose his grip on reality. I did really enjoy the ending of the book. It's one of those things where you wonder if the end justifies the means. The reason I only gave this book four stars is that I didn't really care for how surreal and the novel became towards the end. This is just a personal preference though. All in all I thought the novel was well written and did a good job of portraying drug culture and Arctor's downward spiral. By the time I reached the end of the book, I felt a little less sane than I had before I started.
    • 3/5
      I had high hopes for A Scanner Darkly, after PKD's The Man in the High Castle proved to be a very memorable read. It may not have had much of a plot, and become a bit too aimless at times, but it was a really thoughtful novel, with a wonderfully intense ending. A Scanner Darkly seemed to promise more of the same, but with a grittier and more surreal style. Things didn't really turn out that way. So here's the story; Bob Arctor is an undercover narcotics agent trying to find out who is responsible for the distribution of Substance D, a highly addictive drug which can cause significant brain damage and in extreme cases cause the two hemispheres of the brain to separate (this becomes relevant later in the novel). He gets assigned to observe drug addict and possibly high level dealer...Bob Arctor. Y'see to avoid corruption the police make themselves willfully ignorant of the identity of their undercover agents, resulting in absurd situations like this one. But most of the novel isn't really about that. In fact most of the novel isn't really about anything at all. It just consists of stoners having your typical stoner conversations. Some people have commented on how amusing these are. Perhaps one reason I found the book so hard to get into is that I just don't find these particularly funny; there's the occasional half-smile to be had, that's about it. I could never get into this novel. There's just something so...flat about it. It doesn't have any sort of tone; despite its many attempts at comedy, more intense, surreal scenes or grittier drama, nothing sticks with me. In an attempt to give a detached account of the lives of drug addicts, Dick has written a novel which evokes no emotions. I never feel as if I know the characters, and I never feel as if I should care about them. There are a couple of memorable moments; firstly, the story of Jerry Fabin, the man who believed his entire body and his house was infested with bugs, seems to be the only part where what Dick was aiming for really worked for me; it's strange, comical and kind of disturbing and depressing. And there is one encounter Arctor has with a drug addict and her abusive partner. Aside from that, I never hated A Scanner Darkly, but the only emotions I felt whilst reading it were frustration and boredom. As for the plot, I get the feeling PKD wasn't quite sure what he wanted this book to be. The plot moves at a snail's pace for three quarters of the novel, then he tries to shove the whole thing into the last fifty pages. It's not very exciting, or interesting. There is some musing on various things, particularly personal identity, but it just doesn't feel meaningful in the way it was in The Man in the High Castle. I was rather surprised to find out Dick laboured over this book for a long time; I was kind of expecting to learn it was rushed out in a few weeks. The Author's Note at the end of the novel, however, is pretty affecting. Dick talks about how he based this novel heavily on his own personal experiences with drugs and fellow addicts, and he writes a pretty moving description of how these people got punished for doing something which at its core was fairly innocent; they just wanted to keep having fun in life. They made a mistake, and got punished way too harshly. It's quite a poignant piece of writing, in strong contrast to the rest of the novel. I feel like I should have some greater reasons for not liking this novel, because Dick clearly considered it quite personal. Yet for me he just doesn't translate much of that feeling onto the page. I'll probably still try more of his novels in the future, but A Scanner Darkly has made me less enthusiastic about PKD's work.