by Renee Asher

Created on: September 14, 2008   Last Updated: August 15, 2009

A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick is a dark, saddening look at the heavy drug culture of the sixties and seventies. Dick wrote it as a memorial to the friends he lost to drugs in the hey-day of free love, and good drugs.

The fictional drug focused on in this story is Substance D. It is widely accepted that Substance D is a manufactured drug, not a naturally grown drug. Although most of the characters in the story have seen their own friends fall to addiction and abuse of the drug, the withdrawals the addicted must endure to get off of it, seems too much to bear.

We meet Bob Arctor, a Substance D user who has given his home over to an unclean, passive disorder by allowing a few of his likewise addicted friends to move in with him. Shortly there after, we discover that Bob, is also Fred, a narcotics agent sent under cover in an attempt to discover the source of this super drug. Through the use of what is known as a "scramble-suit" Bob is able to hide his identity from even those he works for.

As time passes, Bob/Fred becomes more and more addicted to Substance D, and his psyche begins to suffer greatly. Around the same time the narcotics officers he works for decide to plant scanners that will work as video recorders into Bob Arctor's home, they put Fred through a series of tests designed to see how much damage the drug has done to his brain. It is known that eventually, after heavy use, the drug begins to split the two halves of the brain and make them work against each other (Dick illustrates this with chilling detail

Eventually, Fred becomes so intent on watching the video feeds from the scanners and avoiding the truth of his addiction, that it is possible for the drugs to take full effect without his noticing. Soon, Fred becomes intent on nailing Bob Arctor, and Bob becomes paranoid, thinking his friends are out to get him. Neither fully realizing that they both are the same person. Because the agents he works for are also unaware that he is Bob Arctor, they are not truly able to help Fred battle the division of his psyche. In addition to this issue, the agents also feel a certain lack of pity for him, viewing him as a junkie, rather than a victim of the system he is a part of.

The story follows the horrifying split of the two psyches, and the gut-wrenching withdrawal process in detail that allows the reader to really feel it. At the end of the story, many things are revealed that leave the reader both shocked, and somehow empty. Bob/Fred is a shell of a man at a drug rehab center, almost surely to never fully recover from the brain damage. Most of the supporting characters are revealed to be quite different from what the reader expected, and the true nature of Substance D is revealed.

I highly recommend the novel for any reader who is a fan of Philip K. Dick, or who wants to start in on his novels. Perhaps the saddest thing about A Scanner Darkly is how closely it mimics the true nature of the drugs and those addicted to them that have infiltrated our own society.

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