A Scanner Darkly
I've been reading a lot of Philip K. Dick's work this year. I've read 5 volumes of his collected short stories (published throughout the 50s and 60s) and a half-dozen of his 30+ novels, including Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the inspiration for "Blade Runner".
There's a new movie out based on the Dick novel "A Scanner Darkly". WG and I haven't seen it yet, but I finished reading the novel itself last night.
It is amazing.
You can't read much of Dick's work without being aware of his personal history. He's always had a dark and paranoid edge to his writing, and his penchant for mind-altering substances didn't help. Mid-career he went off the deep end, and he died in his early 50s.
It was said of Whittaker Chambers that he didn't come back from hell empty-handed. Neither did Dick, who used his own drug addiction and mental problems to show the rest of the world exactly what it's like living through a breakdown.
"A Scanner Darkly" is the story of an undercover narc trying to halt the flow of brain-consuming drugs. There's the usual sort of gee-whiz technology to qualify the story as scifi, but in tone and fact it's really a fictionalized account of the drug scene in California's Bay Area in the late 60s and early 70s and the casualties of the same. Of course, it really isn't about these things at all. It's about the annihilation of the self, a topic as timely in this age of the culture of death as in Dick's own day.
It's quite disturbing, and well worth a read. When WG and I see the movie, we'll let you know if that's similar worth your time.
There's a new movie out based on the Dick novel "A Scanner Darkly". WG and I haven't seen it yet, but I finished reading the novel itself last night.
It is amazing.
You can't read much of Dick's work without being aware of his personal history. He's always had a dark and paranoid edge to his writing, and his penchant for mind-altering substances didn't help. Mid-career he went off the deep end, and he died in his early 50s.
It was said of Whittaker Chambers that he didn't come back from hell empty-handed. Neither did Dick, who used his own drug addiction and mental problems to show the rest of the world exactly what it's like living through a breakdown.
"A Scanner Darkly" is the story of an undercover narc trying to halt the flow of brain-consuming drugs. There's the usual sort of gee-whiz technology to qualify the story as scifi, but in tone and fact it's really a fictionalized account of the drug scene in California's Bay Area in the late 60s and early 70s and the casualties of the same. Of course, it really isn't about these things at all. It's about the annihilation of the self, a topic as timely in this age of the culture of death as in Dick's own day.
It's quite disturbing, and well worth a read. When WG and I see the movie, we'll let you know if that's similar worth your time.
posted by Teflon at 11:48 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Teflon, excellent science fiction is as delicious as rare. Thanks for bringing "A Scanner Darkly" to my attention.
Although animation ruins movies for me (we do not dream in cartoons, afterall), those who can tolerate animation will find an IMDB rating for the movie of 7.6 stars (high for sci-fi genre). The book is now my target.
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