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A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick


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Given how many people voted for it, I hope a few more have read this book and are waiting to contribute, or have been away from their computers over the easter period.

 

Also, I hope more have read it because it's a fascinating book - both as a narrative, with the very inventive detective plot; and as an analysis of the destructiveness of drugs and how they damage personality (and, in fact, as an analysis of what it in fact means to be yourself).

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I finished this Sunday night, really loved it, and have been processing it in my mind the last couple of days, hoping my lost writing mojo would rejuvenate itself, and I might be able to say something coherent. I was in my twenties during the time frame of the novel, early 70s, although a sci-fi imperative (really just the scrambler suit) moves the time frame up to 1994. PKD captures the druggie slang and craziness of that incredible era with great wit and compassion. He viewed drug addiction as a choice rather than a disease, children wishing not to grow up, facing responsibility, staying in the playpen far too long, and paying an awful price.

 

Why does Arctor become addicted? There a couple of cryptic references to hitting his head on a pipe while doing some kitchen plumbing work, then leaving a wife and two daughters behind to seek adventure. The feds wanted him addicted, but how did they know he would succumb? The whole planting a burned out mole operation seems more than a bit implausible. Why not just raid the place?

 

Such are the vagaries of pulp fiction, and as practiced by PKD, fully transcended by the palpable paranoia, the overwhelming feeling that something is definitely rotten in the world, the autobiographical truth of his tumultous life, and still space for a small hope for humanity. And humor.

 

A couple of years before writing A Scanner Darkly, PKD reported a break-in at his house to the police in which his safe was blown up and his personal possessions stolen. The police understandably thought PKD was loony(the high point of his druggy days), and began to suspect that he had blown up the safe himself. When PKD heard he was suspected, he began to think that maybe it was indeed possible, although he had no memory of doing it. I was reminded of this story in the hilarious bad check sequence, Arctor believing his supposed buddy had maliciously written a bad check on one of Arctors old discontinued accounts. But he can't figure any motivation, and lodges a professional type investigation, he is after all a cop, then gradually realizing he had written the check himself.

 

This novel is so rich in themes and ideas. The whole duality theme is beyond my ability to articulate. But it is interesting to note that PKD had a twin sister who died after living only five days, an event that haunted him all his life, a feeling that he was missing a piece of himself.

Edited by ethan
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Given how many people voted for it, I hope a few more have read this book and are waiting to contribute, or have been away from their computers over the easter period.

 

Also, I hope more have read it because it's a fascinating book - both as a narrative, with the very inventive detective plot; and as an analysis of the destructiveness of drugs and how they damage personality (and, in fact, as an analysis of what it in fact means to be yourself).

 

 

I've only just returned from my holiday and haven't done the reading group before, I need to order it, I didn't realise you'd be talking about it so quickly!!!! I was waiting for it to be decided which book. I'll try and read as soon as poss because it did sound like an interesting read.

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No worries, HV. We'll be discussing it all week.

 

Ethan - fascinating stuff about PKD's personal life. I didn't know about the safe incident - clearly re-told as the bad cheque story. There are so many interesting little vignettes like that in the book. It's great, too, to have the perspective of someone who remembers the 70s that Dick was clearly writing about. In a lot of ways it really doesn't read like SF at all, and more like a parallel, slightly more extreme, 1970s.

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I've lost my notes which is a bit annoying but here goes:

1: Who is your favourite character, and why?

I think my favourite character was Donna, the way she helped Bob when he needed to go to rehab did it for me - she helped him when he was messing himself - that's compassion. I wasn

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I liked that he had enough left in him to pick one of the flowers and I did wonder whether it was because of the conversation he had with Donna about getting her some. ...

 

 

Other stuff.

What is a cephscope?

 

 

I had wondered whether the flower attracted him because of his conversation about getting Donna flowers too, I liked the thought of that.

 

I've just done a quick Google search on cephscope, as I had never quite decided exactly what it was either, and www.technovelgy.com suggests it is short for cephalocromoscope and is a device which "lets users see their own brain patterns recreationally during their leisure activities".

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I assumed the a "ceph" scope would be some kind of futuristic TV thingy that gets more directly into the brain. I just thought it was one of those annoying SF tics where the author gives names to techno-gimmickry without any explanation of what they are or what they do - I find it's a sort of annoying background noise to create the impression of the future.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Can I just apologise for not engaging more on leading this discussion.

 

I found the book both brilliant and fascinating, but I've been struggling to think of questions to lead the conversation along. And, typically, I've been very busy so haven't really had enough thinking time.

 

Although, oddly, I was discussing it with a friend the other day, and he pointed out similarities to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which I've never read. Another of the great druggy books, apparently, which also has the same romanticising of drug culture yet is really, also, about as good a warning as you can get about why you really want to only dabble on the fringes.

 

At least, that's what he said. I don't have the same reference point.

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That's really weird! I read Fear and Loathing a couple of weeks ago. Although they are both druggy books I wouldn't have said they were that similar, Fear and Loathing is a lot less serious but the more I think about it the more similar they become.

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