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Philip K. Dick is possibly the most important writer of science fiction. That's a pretty grandiose statement considering the likes of Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, Zamyatin, Lem and Butler. But Dick, idea for idea, meme for meme, and trope for trope, is a creative hurricane that devestates the consciousness by being relevant as well as fun. His novel A Scanner Darkly is as good as it gets.

The title of A Scanner Darkly refers to a biblical passage in First Corinthians 13.

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 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.

And that's the most important thing you need to know about the book. It's about paranoia and conspiracies where the protagonist and you as well, never have a complete view of anything, even yourself.

In A Scanner Darkly, the protagonist is Bob Arctor, who is also Agent Fred working for the police. He becomes addicted to the very drug that he is, as an undercover agent, supposed to be interdicting. He continues to watch his fellow druggies and learning about the subculture. The big problem is that the drug he is abusing, Substance D, Sudden Death or Death (note the S D combination that is also present in the title?). Substance D makes him unable to reconcile the two secret parts of his character, the agent and the druggy, until he is so tripped out that he ends up spying on himself.

One of his fellow druggies turns out to be an agent as well. They pull him out and they stick him in a work camp that's supposed to be a hospital. While working in the fields he discovers the plant from which Substance D is manufactured. So, is the government using recovering addicts in work farms to farm more Substance D to keep the worthless people in the population docile, or what? There is no end to the depths of the paranoia that is induced.

This book may not be Dick's best. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Ubik are both better, and the Three Stigmata is incredibly moving. But Dick's understanding of drug abuse, being an abusive personality infuses the book with both a relevance and a poignancy that science fiction often lacks.

Everyone pretty quickly figures out that more or less of the book is auto-biographical. Although it is not nearly as creepy or psychotic as Naked Lunch, it is just as powerful and visceral. Dick also writes as intricately and as cryptically as the most obsessive reader could want. For instance, in Chapter thirteen of ASD, Dick's character Arctor, who is both an actor (an undercover agent as well as an active agent in the quest for identity), and an arc (an incomplete segment of a whole), discusses how he is like St. Paul in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. The book is filled with little easter eggs like that.

For the reader of serious science fiction, for whom Star Trek and Star Wars are trivial weaknesses, and Babylon 5 and Farscape are meat and potatoes with ray guns, Philip K. Dick's novel A Scanner Darkly, will please and disturb. It gets my three tentacles up, five quasars and a rating of 9.8 on the Davidson scale.

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