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A review by vladdbad
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
To my mind, this is the best written Philip K Dick I've seen. Maybe because, according to Wikipedia, one of his five wives did a significant amount of editing and rewriting, even got assigned royalties for it. So the writing is way more polished than most PKD. And, yes, the movie tracks incredibly well to the book, minimal mods and mostly those as clarifications rather than just changes.
That being said... The ideas are why you read PKD, not the writing. Here, there are fewer scattershot novel ideas, and a lot more development of the core concept. That means it is a much greater exploration of the early meth culture of Southern California than it is weird sci-fi ideas. Whether that makes it a better or worse novel for it, that's up to you.
It certainly made me regret that PKD had trouble getting published outside of the genre-- this didn't really need the sci-fi window dressing, would have probably been better as magical realism or psychedelic memoir. I say that as someone that loves sci-fi and usually gets bored with other genres-- the genre elements detracted from the story here.
Either way, the elements that stay with you in this book aren't the tech or the reality play. It's the dissociative self-hate that participation in drug culture during the war on drugs led to, both for law enforcement pretending to be in the culture and to those who themselves *are* the culture. It's the strange line between abuse and therapy and cloister that some detox programs are or were (as an aside -- PKD apparently wrote this after being 'treated' in an offshoot of the abusive Synanon recovery cult-- more discussion of what that was actually like and what it did would have been great here; PKD hints and tantalizes with description of 'the Game' but it gets clouded by unnecessary wrap-up of the weak plot line; missed opportunity). It's the way we eat ourselves in fawning for authority while simultaneously torturing ourselves to be more authentic, the dualism of the contrarian impulse and how it leads to isolation and paranoia given the right environment... It's the casual misogyny and sexual violence that used to be normal, that we now understand to be pathological manifestations of a sick society. And maybe it's a few more things...
But notably what it's *not* is the sci-fi elements of the book, which were stapled on like the decapitated head of your grandmother's pet parakeet to the wig the mortician put her in for the otherwise beautiful and reverent service. Surreal, yes. Shocking, maybe. But ultimately the sci-fi elements only serve here to help us avoid accepting the responsibility we all bear for the atrocities we countenanced in the name of a 'war' on ourselves and our own desires we never imagined we could win. The afterword here to the victims of the drug war is as moving and transformative of the book as Machiavelli's Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians. You can ignore it, but only at your peril.
That being said... The ideas are why you read PKD, not the writing. Here, there are fewer scattershot novel ideas, and a lot more development of the core concept. That means it is a much greater exploration of the early meth culture of Southern California than it is weird sci-fi ideas. Whether that makes it a better or worse novel for it, that's up to you.
It certainly made me regret that PKD had trouble getting published outside of the genre-- this didn't really need the sci-fi window dressing, would have probably been better as magical realism or psychedelic memoir. I say that as someone that loves sci-fi and usually gets bored with other genres-- the genre elements detracted from the story here.
Either way, the elements that stay with you in this book aren't the tech or the reality play. It's the dissociative self-hate that participation in drug culture during the war on drugs led to, both for law enforcement pretending to be in the culture and to those who themselves *are* the culture. It's the strange line between abuse and therapy and cloister that some detox programs are or were (as an aside -- PKD apparently wrote this after being 'treated' in an offshoot of the abusive Synanon recovery cult-- more discussion of what that was actually like and what it did would have been great here; PKD hints and tantalizes with description of 'the Game' but it gets clouded by unnecessary wrap-up of the weak plot line; missed opportunity). It's the way we eat ourselves in fawning for authority while simultaneously torturing ourselves to be more authentic, the dualism of the contrarian impulse and how it leads to isolation and paranoia given the right environment... It's the casual misogyny and sexual violence that used to be normal, that we now understand to be pathological manifestations of a sick society. And maybe it's a few more things...
But notably what it's *not* is the sci-fi elements of the book, which were stapled on like the decapitated head of your grandmother's pet parakeet to the wig the mortician put her in for the otherwise beautiful and reverent service. Surreal, yes. Shocking, maybe. But ultimately the sci-fi elements only serve here to help us avoid accepting the responsibility we all bear for the atrocities we countenanced in the name of a 'war' on ourselves and our own desires we never imagined we could win. The afterword here to the victims of the drug war is as moving and transformative of the book as Machiavelli's Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians. You can ignore it, but only at your peril.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse and Drug use
Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Homophobia, Domestic abuse, and Misogyny
Minor: Racial slurs and Racism