A Scanner Darkly ~ Phillip K Dick

Corinthians 13:12 ~ For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.


Phillip K. Dick writes “I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time”.

Bob Arctor is the undercover agent Officer Fred living with drug addicts in his own home, buying drugs from Donna Hawthorne in larger and larger quantities in the hope that it forces her to let him deal with her dealer directly and bust him.

Fred has to regularly check the holo scanners which record the day to day activity within his home and edit himself in certain sequences so that his fellow agents don’t know his real identity. Fred wears a scramble suit which conceals his identity and voice print. Hank, who is Bob’s superior and also wears a scramble suit, becomes concerned that Fred is showing signs of a split personality and arranges for a series of cognition tests to be run. Bob as an undercover agent should only have pretended to take drugs, however he willingly took the highly addictive Substance D (also simply known as Death).

As time goes by Bob becomes increasingly paranoid that one of his housemates is trying to kill him. Fred increases his surveillance on Bob as his behaviour becomes more erratic unaware that he is suffering from split brain syndrome and the fact that he is Bob. Finally as Fred/Bob becomes less able to function day to day from his substance abuse Hank is forced to send him to New Path for drug rehabilitation.

Hank has been involved in an undercover operation of his own, he is actually Donna Hawthorne (the scramble suit creating the male identity at work) and Bob/Fred has been the pawn. Hank/Donna believes that New Path’s funding is received by growing the blue flower that produces Substance D and by sending in a damaged agent he/she may be able to prove it (as eventually rehabilitating addicts are sent out to the farms to work…….).

A story of paranoia, identity and a frightening insight into drug addiction, though told with compassion.

This book is dedicated to many of Dick’s friends who died or who were damaged by drug addiction and includes himself in that list “To Phil – permanent pancreatic damage”.

About The Author

Phillip K. Dick is the author of many science fiction novels and short stories, and the inspiration of several musical artists such as Gary Numan. Since his untimely death in 1982 from a stroke, there has been one movie made every three years (Total Recall, Minority Report, Screamers, Pay Check, Blade Runner are movie adaptations of his more popular novels), this rate of cinematic adaptation is exceeded only by Stephen King.

Dick’s common themes are drugs or identity/paranoia. My two favourites ~ Flow My Tears The Policeman Said told the story of a celebrity who wakes up in a parallel world where no-one knows him and he cannot prove who he is. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch centers around drug use in an off world colony.

Born in 1928, he lost his twin sister at age six weeks old, which affected him profoundly. Married five times he spent most of his life in near poverty despite his publishing successes, which was probably due to his drug abuse. A run-in with the IRS caused fellow Sci Fi writer Robert Heinlein to step in and pay the bills for which he was ever grateful.

A Scanner Darkly was released this year to DVD starring Keanu Reaves as Fred/Bob, Robert Downey Jnr as Barris and Winona Ryder as Donna