Book Review: A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick's work is always a little disturbing and unusual, but A Scanner Darkly is definitely one of his oddest, and one of the more downbeat. Set in (what was at the time) the near future, the central character is Agent Fred, a member of an equivalent agency to the DEA today, working undercover as a drop-out in a household of drug users. The drug of choice is the fictional 'Slow D' or 'Slow Death', which causes odd pyschoactive activity in the brain and can lead to independent action in each hemisphere.

As Agent Fred, Arctor is completely anonymous, dressed in a scatter-suit which projects random images of facial features over his own, a constantly swirling shift of noses, eyes, and so on, so that not even other agents know what their colleagues look like. Arctor is set to monitor and incriminate the other members of the household by acquiring video footage of their illegal activities, and has to monitor and edit this on a regular basis, without incriminating himself too heavily.

The problems start because he also uses the drug, as a cover, and is already pretty much addicted by the start of the book; as the story progresses, the drug causes his personality to split, so that he is incapable of realising he and Fred are the same person. The two are completely dissociated from one another, and the whole thing becomes rather chilling as he increasingly spies on himself, trying to build up a case.

This lack of/change in reality is something that Dick comes back to often in his books; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Filmed as Blade Runner) was all about what constitutes being human, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (Filmed as Total Recall) was about what makes up reality, and whether our memories are truly real. In a Scanner Darkly, this becomes even more personal as it deals with what exactly constitutes the 'self', and is a study in how one man's actions can change dramatically depending on where he is.

Also like a lot of Dick's work, the story is semi-autobiographical, referencing a period of Dick's life when he lived in such a commune and was heavily dependant on amphetamines; many of the characters are at least partly based on people he knew. This first hand experience also probably contributes heavily to the rather gritty realism of the book.

I'd thoroughly recommend the book, haven't seen the movie, nor probably will rush to do so. I have a distinct lack of faith in Keanu Reeves being able to pull off the role, I'm afraid.