Review of "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick

In an afterword that reads like an epitaph, Philip K. Dick explains the impetus behind A Scanner Darkly.  He tells the reader that, having witnessed the death and onset of senility of many of his drug-abusing friends, the novel is a reminder to himself and others that the euphoria of narcotics has a flip side.  Largely autobiographical, Dick openly admits some of the characters—Barris, Luckman, and Arctor—are based on people who exist or existed in real life.  A tragedy in the Greek sense, A Scanner Darkly is as such a brilliant, drug addled story of the counter-culture in an anachronistic future, flower power not everything it was cracked up to be.  (Sorry for the pun.)

A Scanner Darkly is the story of Bob Arctor and his duel life.  One half narcotics agent, one half drug dealer, he is a user as well as dealer of Substance D, and all confusion as a result.  And Arctor’s friends don’t help.  Barris is either an intelligent man solving the world one riddle at a time or a complete crackhead.  The more the story progresses, the faster the reader oscillates between the two possibilities, his antics like a puzzle piece that fits in two different places at once.  No such discernment is needed with the luckless Luckman whose brand of sentience has its area code in another dimension.  And Donna, Arctor’s would be lover/always dealer, forever hangs on the fringes, teasing and haunting just as he’s ready to give up on her.

Captured as only Hunter S. Thompson can, Dick perfectly portrays the rigid paranoia, dementia, and eccentricity of the drug riddled mind.  The dialogue, while surveying the stratosphere for looniness, never loses touch with reality.  Dick guides the deranged banter with an unfailing hand, into wonderland and back, shaping a wholly unpredictable yet highly readable narrative in the process.  Trusting that conversation amongst the main characters is based on objective message is truly the most interesting aspect of the novel.

 A Scanner Darkly is one of Dick’s more realist works.  There are a few sci-fi elements, e.g. scrambler suits which disguise people’s identities, holoscanning, and synthetic drugs, however, the remainder is as real as apple pie--even out-dated to some extent.  The cassette tapes and rattletrap cars the characters drive (Arctor has a boat of an Oldsmobile) lend the story a strong retro feel.  Not a sterile, clean future, the grittier, dystopian side of America is portrayed.  Sagging porches in run down suburbia, poorly mown lawns beside old shopping malls, and people living under the threat of petty theft are redolent throughout the story. 

Sadly, it is the realist elements which highlight the only real fault of the novel.  The grand reveals of Now Wait for Last Year, Ubik, and especially The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch all fit their respective stories despite stretching the imagination, .  Dick is, after all, read to expand the mind.  The conspiracy theory denouement of A Scanner Darkly, however, fails slightly.  The main reason for this is because of its contrast with the message Dick was trying to drive home.  Without spoiling anything, the larger forces at work give the characters an escape route from the responsibility of drug use—the theme Dick was trying to cultivate in the first place.  That being said, the softened ending does not fully dilute the social agenda, various other points in the novel portraying the negative effects of extended drug use as good as any novel has.  

In the end, A Scanner Darkly is one of Philip K. Dick’s greatest achievements.  Poignant to a culture still dealing with drug problems, Dick’s imagination on the nature of narcotics induced mental health issues, government watchdoggery, and general discontent amongst an otherwise functioning group of people is social commentary not to be ignored.  That Dick is able to focus what few writing abilities he possesses into a consistent, enlightening and a well-paced narrative is also to be lauded, the opportunities rare.  The scrambler suit, for example, is an amazing literary parallel to the identity problems Arctor faces.  The conspiracy theory ending unnecessary, readers will forgive Dick his whims given the powerful statement that is the afterword.  Simply put, readers cannot call themselves a Dick fan without having read A Scanner Darkly.  Of all his novels, perhaps this has the greatest chance of standing the test of time.

(The opportunities to applaud a film adaptation of a novel rare, the following note should be made.  Richard Linklater’s film version of A Scanner Darkly is superb.  Perhaps the best adaptation of any Dick story, Linklater omits only a few minor details while clinging tightly to the novel’s characterization, dialogue, plot and theme.  Keanu Reeves the weakest point, Robert Downey Jr. is a perfect Barris, however, just as Woody Harrelson and Wynona Ryder portray Luckman and Donna as I imagined them while reading.  The rotoscoping effect of the film serves to make the film not only unique in appearance but it also more vibrantly displays the hallucinogenic aspects of the story, the scrambler suits especially.) 

Review of "Now Wait for last Year" by Philip K.. Dick

Like a mad dream of himself, some Philip K. Dick books seem more autobiographical than fictional.  One can almost see him, hunched over the typewriter, taking his wacky visions and delusional experiences of the afternoon and plunking them into a story.  Bad marriages, paranoia, experimental drug use, precogs, suicide, etc., etc., are landmarks navigating his novels.  Written in 1966, Now Wait for Last Year has all of this and more, and leaves the reader asking: how many different ways can Dick combine his favorite motifs.  The answer: at least one more.

Containing the ambiguous leader concept of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, the reality-altering property of drugs from FlowMy Tears, the Policeman Said, and the surreal mood and broken relationships of every seemingly Dick book, Now Wait for Last Year has little new to offer well-read Dick fans in the way of ideas.  The writing beginning broken and jumbled but settling in after the first few chapters, Dick’s poor prose is also present, but not in spades.  Thus, from being nothing special through one glass, to a representative sample of PKD’s work through another, the verdict is ho-hum.

The year is 2055 and Eric Sweetscent, an artiforg (artificial organ transplant surgeon), is employed by one of the richest men in the world keeping the centuries old businessman alive.  When not at work, he spends his time in constant disharmony with his wife, Kathy.  She a drug addicted, emotional wreck, their domestic life alternates awkwardly between hurtful disagreements and tender sensitivity—a lifestyle which does not well suit the mild-mannered, highly passive Sweetscent.  But when the UN Secretary General, leader of the Earth’s government, recruits Sweetscent to be his own personal physician, events start rolling. 

In Dick’s 2055, earthlings are the third wheel in an interstellar battle between the power hungry ‘Starmen and the insectile reegs.  The Secretary General, Gino Molinari, spends his time trying to sidetrack the ‘Starmen, with whom Earth has signed a peace treaty, in order to prevent humans from being sent to the front to fight.  Molinari’s main method of redirecting ‘Starmen requests for soldiers is not so subtle: he plays dead, literally, and Sweetscent must keep him alive.  But when Sweetscent finds both an assassinated version and a younger version of the ageing Molinari in the white house, questions arise.  Further complicating events is the appearance of a mysterious drug named JJ-180.  Having the ability to send people back and forth in time, things really lose touch with reality when Kathy slips Sweetscent some of the strange drug.  Highly addictive, Sweetscent is forced to abandon his relaxed life to escape the mysterious shifts in time, possibly just saving Earthlings in the process.

Now Wait for Last Year of the middling grade in Dick’s oeuvre, diehard fans will undoubtedly enjoy it despite the lack of anything truly fresh.  A direct analogue of Dick’s own relationship troubles (Wikipedia states he was married five times), Sweetscent’s broken marriage is perhaps the strongest aspect of the novel.  The dialogue that occurs between he and his wife, particularly the hurtful vitriol hurtling across the room in the opening scenes, is especially realistic.  Dick’s final resolution of the relationship—almost a note written on a mirror to himself—is touching and closes the novel in affective fashion.

Time travel a gaping hole just waiting for writers to trip and fall into, Dick handles the motif with ease.  Perhaps too lax, its effect on the reality of the novel is poorly thought through.  In the same vein as the drug effects of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, if a large number of people are able to modify reality simply by taking a pill, one would expect reality to be in constant, chaotic shift, rather than responsive only to the main character’s actions.  This selfish personalization, while effectively focusing the plot on the main characters, fails to deliver a message at any logical or social level, thus diminishing the idea’s credibility.

In the end, Now Wait for Last Year is an average read.  Readers who enjoy time travel will like the book, however, there are several other books which portray the motif in more convincing fashion.  (The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers or Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys’ film are good examples.)  Fans of the author will find nothing to complain about; all the typical Dickian elements are present in quantity.  One of his stronger examinations of a broken relationship, readers should expect domestic turmoil to heavily affect the plot.  However, when contrasted against the larger conflict occurring in space, its depth gets lost solving the mystery of who or what Molinari really is .  There are better Dick stories out there, but there are probably more that are worse.

Review of "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" by Philip K. Dick

Adhering to the nature of its title, Philip K. Dick’s 1974 Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is a cipher.  Events unfolding in typical Dick fashion, which is to say in a way that actively propels the plot into the unknown, one irreconcilable event after another, the resulting story creates suspense effectively but at the expense of inter-connectivity.  So many concepts come to underlie the dynamic paranoia that the novel ends up suffering an identity crisis of its own.  

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said begins with the story of variety show host Jason Taverner and his attempts to re-place himself within the context of a reality he was once positive of existing within.  Waking up from a most obtuse and bizarre murder attempt—death by cuddle sponge—Taverner quickly finds things are not as they were.  Colleagues, lovers, and business partners he once knew intimately do not recall his face or even his name.  The setting strongly Orwellian, pols and nats (police and nationalists) patrol the streets, controlling checkpoints, and taking those without proper ID away to work camps, causing Taverner to have trouble leaving even the run-down hotel he’s awoken in.  An underground of sorts exists, and it is with their help he sets out in search of his identity.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is not one of Dick’s focused efforts.  Taverner’s troubles related in acute and sympathetic detail, the story starts strong as readers quickly develop a relationship with the protagonist.  Slowly but surely, however, things unravel.  More and more characters are introduced, and a river delta of storylines forms.  Some occupy significant stage time only to be discarded abruptly.  Still others hold little of the spotlight, but later play an important role in the overall outcome.  By spreading events in such random fashion, the reader loses track of the story’s purpose and plot direction.  One character, police chief Buckman, is in particular poorly drawn but unfortunately a major player.  One moment kind and logical, the next a deranged lunatic, he closes out the novel as the main character, meek as a lamb, and in late night stranger-hugging mode.  From the attentive outset to the narrative delta of an ending, Dick’s inability to focus the narrative really hurts the novel, leaving readers to wonder: what’s the point?

But plot can be argued.  Dick’s writing style, however, cannot.  Famous for often producing bad prose, the novel is a prime example why.  Sentence structure abominable, at no time is a rhythm established to settle into.  Dick switches randomly between internal monologue, 3rd person narrative, and almost a fourth wall form of address.  As a result, the action scenes are blunted, and worse yet, the moments of emotion that are supposed to affect the reader lose impact in the jumbled mess of text spilled across the page.  The titular tears are the result of syntax rather than character empathy.

Unfortunately, there is a another major issue with the book that must be addressed: the reveal. Without spoiling things, suffice to say the manner in which Dick explains Taverner’s identity problems not only heavily contrasts the mood of the novel, but likewise does not fit the reality underpinning the setting as a whole.  The reader’s willingness to suspend their disbelief is really tested.  Ursula Le Guin in The Lathe of Heaven would later take Dick’s idea, modify it slightly, and apply it in a style allegorical rather than mimetic.  Throughout her story readers are fully aware that Le Guin’s book is a thought experiment and ignore the larger portent.  With his inclusion of so many “real” aspects of society, including celebrity-ism, 1984-ish government induced paranoia, and child molestation, things only become more confused when the source of Taverner’s troubles is revealed.  Satire, allegory, social commentary, personal musing—none know Dick’s intentions, probably not even the author himself, creating a confused narrative in the process.

That being said, the social ills Dick portrays are one of the few strong points of the novel.  There are strong indications that he was attempting to use the darker side of being a celebrity to elucidate his own ideas concerning multiple identities.  This, and a few moments when the narrative congeals into emotive locution are the only positives of the novel.

In the end, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is not one of Dick’s stronger efforts.  From the alien murder “device” in the book’s opening pages to the conspiracy theory reveal, the inclusion of sex with 12 year olds to genetically modified humans, late-night stranger hugging to celebrity-ism, Orwellian tyranny to philosophizing on love, jumbled prose to character development, nothing about the book seems to fit within an identifiable umbrella concept.  Thus, the book is not a good starting place for a peek at Dick’s strengths as a writer and is in fact recommended only for fans forgiving of his faults.  How the book won an award is based on something I don't understand.