A Scanner Darkly
LC Class | PZ4.D547 Sc PS3554.I3 |
A Scanner Darkly is a
Plot summary
The
When performing his work as an undercover agent, Arctor goes by the name "Fred" and wears a "scramble suit" that conceals his identity from other officers. Then he is able to sit in a police facility and observe his housemates through "holo-scanners", audio-visual surveillance devices that are placed throughout the house. Arctor's use of the drug causes the two hemispheres of his brain to function independently or "compete". When Arctor sees himself in the videos saved by the scanners, he does not realize that it is him. Through a series of drug and psychological tests, Arctor's superiors at work discover that his addiction has made him incapable of performing his job as a narcotics agent. They do not know his identity because he wears the scramble suit, but when his police supervisor suggests to him that he might be Bob Arctor, he is confused and thinks it cannot be possible.
Donna takes Arctor to "New-Path", a
The story ends with Bruce working at a New-Path farming commune, where he is experiencing a serious
Autobiographical nature
A Scanner Darkly is a fictionalized account of real events, based on Dick's experiences in the 1970s drug culture. Dick said in an interview, "Everything in A Scanner Darkly I actually saw."[1]
Between mid-1970 (when his fourth wife Nancy left him) and mid-1972, Dick lived semi-communally with a rotating group of mostly teenage drug users at his home in
During this period, the author ceased writing completely and became fully dependent upon
The character of Donna was inspired by an older teenager who became associated with Dick sometime in 1970; though they never became lovers, the woman was his principal female companion until early 1972, when Dick left for Canada to deliver a speech to a Vancouver science fiction convention. This speech, "The Android and the Human", served as the basis for many of the recurring themes and motifs in the ensuing novel. Another turning point in this timeframe for Dick is the alleged burglary of his home and theft of his papers.
After delivering "The Android and the Human", Dick became a participant in X-Kalay (a Canadian Synanon-type recovery program), effortlessly convincing program caseworkers that he was nursing a heroin addiction to do so. Dick's recovery program participation was portrayed in the posthumously released book The Dark Haired Girl (a collection of letters and journals from this period, most of a romantic nature). It was at X-Kalay, while doing publicity for the facility, that he devised the notion of rehab centers being used to secretly harvest drugs (thus inspiring the book's New-Path clinics).
In the afterword, Dick dedicates the book to those of his friends—he includes himself—who had experienced debilitation or death as a result of their drug use. Mirroring the epilogue are the involuntary goodbyes that occur throughout the story—the constant turnover and burn-out of young people that lived with Dick during those years.[3] In the afterword, he states that the novel is about "some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did",[4] and that "drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to move out in front of a moving car".[4]
Background and publication
A Scanner Darkly was one of the few Dick novels to gestate over a long period of time. By February 1973, in an effort to prove that the effects of his amphetamine usage were merely
Because of its semi-autobiographical nature, some of A Scanner Darkly was torturous to write. Tessa Dick, Philip's wife at the time, once stated that she often found her husband weeping as the sun rose after a night-long writing session. Tessa has given interviews stating that "when he was with me, he wrote A Scanner Darkly [in] under two weeks. But we spent three years rewriting it" and that she was "pretty involved in his writing process [for A Scanner Darkly]".[8] Tessa stated in a later interview that she "participated in the writing of A Scanner Darkly" and said that she "consider[s] [her]self the silent co-author". Philip wrote a contract giving Tessa half of all the rights to the novel, which stated that Tessa "participated to a great extent in writing the outline and novel A Scanner Darkly with me, and I owe her one half of all income derived from it".[9]
There was also the challenge of transmuting the events into "science fiction", as Dick felt that he could not sell a mainstream or literary novel after several previous failures.[citation needed][10] Providing invaluable aid in this field was Judy-Lynn del Rey, head of Ballantine Books' SF division, which had optioned the book. Del Rey suggested the timeline change to 1994 and emphasized the more futuristic elements of the novel, such as the "scramble suit" employed by Fred (which, incidentally, emerged from one of the mystical experiences). Yet much of the dialogue spoken by the characters used hippie slang, dating the events of the novel to their "true" time-frame of 1970–72.
Upon its publication in 1977, A Scanner Darkly was hailed by
The title of the novel refers to the Biblical phrase "
Adaptations
Film
The rotoscoped film A Scanner Darkly was authorized by Dick's estate. It was released in July 2006 and stars Keanu Reeves as Fred/Bob Arctor and Winona Ryder as Donna. Rory Cochrane, Robert Downey Jr., and Woody Harrelson co-star as Arctor's drugged-out housemates and friends. The film was directed by Richard Linklater.
Audiobook
An
Citations
- ^ a b c Uwe Anton; Werner Fuchs; Frank C. Bertrand (Spring 1996). "So I Don't Write About Heroes: An Interview with Philip K. Dick". SF EYE. pp. 37–46. Archived from the original on May 11, 2012. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
- ^ Redfern, Nick (February 2010). "The Strange Tale of Solarcon-6". Fortean Times. Archived from the original on August 12, 2014. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
- ISBN 978-0-547-57217-8. Retrieved August 24, 2012.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-547-57217-8. Retrieved August 24, 2012.
- ^ Dick, Philip K. (February 28, 1973). "Letter to Scott Meredith". Letters. Philip K. Dick Trust. Archived from the original on June 2, 2007. Retrieved June 6, 2007.
- ^ Dick, Philip K. (March 20, 1973). "Letter to Scott Meredith". Letters. Philip K. Dick Trust. Archived from the original on June 2, 2007. Retrieved June 6, 2007.
- ^ "1975 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved September 27, 2009.
- ^ Knight, Annie (November 1, 2002). "About Philip K. Dick: An interview with Tessa, Chris, and Ranea Dick". Deep Outside SFF. Retrieved June 6, 2007.
- ^ "An interview with Tessa Dick".
- ^ Dick, Philip K. The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings.
- ^ "Books", Cosmos, September 1977, p. 39.
- ^ "Galaxy Bookshelf", Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1977, p. 141.
- ^ "1978 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved September 27, 2009.
- ^ "thephildickian.com – Award Winning Authors". Archived from the original on October 18, 2010. Retrieved January 2, 2007.
- ^ Locus Index to SF Awards Archived March 27, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 9780203886847.
- ^ "Through a Glass Darkly". IMDb. Retrieved April 18, 2019.
- ISBN 978-0-7393-2392-2
- ^ "Review of A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick: SFFaudio". July 3, 2006.
General and cited sources
- Bell, V. (2006). "Through a scanner darkly: Neuropsychology and psychosis in A Scanner Darkly" . The Psychologist, 19 (8), 488–489.
- Kosub, Nathan (2006). "Clearly, Clearly, Dark-Eyed Donna: Time and A Scanner Darkly", Senses of Cinema: An Online Film Journal Devoted to the Serious and Eclectic Discussion of Cinema, October–December; 41: [no pagination].
- Prezzavento, Paolo (20060. "Allegoricus semper interpres delirat: Un oscuro scrutare tra teologia e paranoia", Trasmigrazioni, eds. Valerio Massimo De Angelis and Umberto Rossi, Firenze, Le Monnier, 2006, pp. 225–36.
- Sutin, Lawrence (2005). Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick. Carroll & Graf.
External links
- A Scanner Darkly at Worlds Without End
- "Darkness in literature: Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly," Damien Walter, The Guardian, 17 December 2012