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I've long been a fan of Philip K Dick's writing. It's just so wild and witty and full of fantastic imagery - it's easy to see why Hollywood plunders his work so often (Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, Imposter, Paycheck). It's just a shame that so much of the tone of his work is generally lost in those adaptations.

I was drawn to A Scanner Darkly after 2006's remarkable film adaptation. The story of an undercover policeman's attempts to penetrate the distribution network of a new and deadly drug (Substance D), A Scanner Darkly is classic Philip K Dick. Noone is quite as they seem, and reality itself is fluid.

Before long Bob Arctor is putting himself under surveillance. Becoming more paranoid and confused, the tone of the novel gradually becomes darker and darker. Only Donna, his aloof girlfriend, seems to be keeping him in touch with reality.

The book is a classic - Bob's gradual disintegration is handled incredibly subtly and slowly until it accelerates drastically when it becomes clear what's happening to him.

The adventures of the four drug users are brilliant. Luckman, Freck, Barris and Arctor make their confused way through life and there's a huge amount of wit in their stoned conversations. But each of these comic scenes is undercut with a certain menace thanks to Jim Barris. Undeniably the villain of the piece, the reader never quite knows what Barris is up to, but he radiates a certain calculating malevolence even through his absurdly pompous speeches.

Whether they're making home made cocaine or trying to work out where the 'missing' gears of a ten speed bike have gone, Barris smirks his way through with hidden menace.

There's also the almost obligatory Dick headtrip as Arctor sleeps with a girl only to find her face changing to that of his girlfriend. It's presented as a probable hallucination, but then he plays back the surveillance footage to see the same thing happen. This sort of thing is never really explained, and trying to work out what's going on is half of the fun.

The text just sparkles along, with comedy and drama in roughly equal doses, in spite of the fact that most of the conflict is taking place within Arctor's head. Drug use is everywhere in Dick's books, but here it really takes over. And although some of the earlier scenes come over as something out of a Kevin Smith film, the book doesn't seek to glamourise substance abuse. The symptoms of withdrawal and overdose are described unflinchingly. One character tries to kill himself out of depression at the way his friends have fallen to pieces. And all of this clearly comes from painful experience - a reading that's confirmed by a heartbreaking afterword where Dick lists his friends who 'were punished too much for what they did'.

Whether or not you liked the recent film (and I loved it), A Scanner Darkly is too brilliant not to read. It's one of the best novels I've read from the best writer ever to work in science fiction.

Learn more about this author, Kenneth Andrews.
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