A Scanner Darkly

Many could argue that picking the most mind-bending Philip K. Dick book is an impossible task. His imagination spawned some of the best science fiction books of his era, which inspired several groundbreaking films (Bladerunner, Total Recall, Minority Report, etc.) I agree: it’s impossible to pick one.

But I love this book because it explores an intriguing idea from drug-induced psychosis—that of cross-chatter, or the notion that the brain’s two hemispheres can keep secrets from each other. The story follows the hapless Bob Arctor, an undercover narcotics agent trying to spy on himself and his junkie friends who… show more.

In a list of brain benders, PKD had to be on the list. Though he has written better ones, I felt like this was as tight of a novel as you will get from Phillip K. Dick. It details the unfortunate madness we all suffer internally, of a mind trying to do what is ‘right’ even though the system (and another part of themselves) are rigged against them. Of the good and virtuous person getting dragged into the mud by chaos.

I liked this one mainly for the ending, which was dark but still made so much sense. Also, the… show more.

Dick struggled with mental health his whole life, sometimes to the point where reality began to fracture and he questioned his own identity. That very struggle is at the heart of A Scanner Darkly.  

The protagonist is so mixed up that I’m not even sure what to call him. Sometimes he’s Bob Arctor, a junkie living in a flop house, high on the reality-splitting drug Substance D. Sometimes he’s Fred, the police detective enlisted to watch Arctor’s house and determine who is making and selling the dangerous drug. 

After weeks of living in the house and monitoring its inhabitants, Fred… show more.

This book, said to be at least partly an autobiographical account of Dick’s own experience with drug culture in the 1970s, centers on protagonist Bob Arctor, an undercover narcotics agent spying on the household of drug users with which he’s associated himself. The novel deals with a drug called Substance D which makes the two hemispheres of the brain work independently, effectively splitting the user almost into two distinct individuals. As a result of his eventual addiction to Substance D, Arctor does not even realize he is both people and acts independently as a narcotics agent and drug user. It’s… show more.

The Philip K Dick novel I always recommend. Bob Arctor lives a double life as both an undercover narc and a slacker drug abuser, but the new drug Substance D is the most dangerous drug to find its way onto the streets, destroying the user's brain bit by bit until they are no longer able to recognise themselves. Based on Dick's own drug misadventures in the 1970s, it's a novel about "some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did."