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A Scanner Darkly, published in 1977 is one of Philip K. Dick's semi-autobiographical science fiction novels. Dick set it in a dystopian Orange County, California in his own future (1994). A Scanner Darkly can be considered his master statement on drugs, in light of his works' extensive portrayals of drug culture and drug use. Readers should be prepared for a very depressing, but gripping and entertaining read.

Plot

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The main character is both Bob Arctor, one of a house of hippie drug-users, and Fred, an undercover police agent assigned to spy on them. Arctor/Fred shields his true identity both from those in the drug subculture and, ironically, from the police, who apparently must be presumed to include corrupt elements and/or double agents. He takes drugs in part so he can fill his reports with satisfyingly subversive activities, but he becomes addicted to the mysterious Substance D and falls in love with Donna, a Substance D dealer through whom he once attempted to find the uppermost source of the drug. His drug intake leaves him unable to distinguish between his roles as a drug user and a policeman, and the frauds he uses to combine them, leading to mental breakdown. He deteriorates into spying on himself, without realizing it, and eventually enters New Path, a rehab clinic. There he takes on a third name, Bruce, and discovers that New Path grows Substance D on its farm communities and is funded through sales of the drug.

Themes

Dick twists American society into a very surreal setting, by expanding two all-encompassing proportions two social problems of growing interest as he wrote it in the 1960s, namely:

• police surveillance - in the novel, highly technologically advanced even viewed as of 2004
• drug abuse - in the novel, involving widespread drug-abuse-induced mental collapse that is treated in numerous and widespread rehab clinics that amount to a nationwide, non-governmental but federal-government-entangled, institution.

In addition, Dick's standard themes appear here:

• the construction of reality in consciousness,
• an admirable, fascinating, but unattainable and marginally insane woman (Donna)
• humaneness in extreme situations

Particularly relevant to the novel is the construction of reality in consciousness. The most obvious example of this is the dilemma of the main character who simultaneously takes on two identities and often losses grip towards which is real and which is false. Also, many of the characters excessively kid and trick one another and many characters, made paranoid by drug use, understand the world through a number of conspiracy theories. Because the surreal, almost absurdist style of the novel, readers are left wondering what of their perceptions is reality and what is paranoia.

Dick also used Fred/Arctor to explore the symbiotic relationship between cop and criminal, how one defines and thus relies upon the existence of the other. The New Path recovery clinic, which harvests Substance D to fund its treatment programs, also shows this relationship.

Autobiographical Nature

Dick, a frequent drug user and quasi hippie himself, captures the language and conversation and culture of drug users in the 1960s with a rare clarity. Those who have ever wondered what it was like in those days can gain insight by reviewing the extended conversation on "microdots" in this book.

The autobiographical nature of the novel is explained in the moving afterword, where Dick dedicates the book to those of his friends—he includes himself—who suffered debilitation and/or death as a result of their drug use. This is mirrored in the involuntary goodbyes that occur throughout the story.

He also states that the novel is about “some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did” and that “drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to move out in front of a moving car.”

Dick was himself a participant in X-Kalay, a Canadian Synanon-type recovery program at one point, as is portrayed in his 1988 book The Dark-Haired Girl. Presumably this is a source of the vividness and accuracy with which the clinic is portrayed.

Title

The "scanner" of the title is a holographic recorder/projector on which the main character views clips of his own life but doesn't recognize them. It is also a reference to a Biblical verse in 1 Corinthians 13 that includes "we see as through a mirror darkly", and thus refers to the main character's weak grasp on reality. SD, the initials of Scanner Darkly, are presumably clipped from LSD, and are also the initials of Substance D, the drug that is one of the stars of the book.

• 1977 books
• Dystopian novels
• Philip K. Dick novels
• Science fiction novels