A Scanner Darkly is available on amazon.com. However, as best I could tell, you can either purchase an older, used hardback copy (one offered at $608.00?!) or as part of a recently published collection (Philip K. Dick: Five novels of the 1960s and 1970s) .
The movie and the graphic novel are also available.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
A Scanner Darkly: Paranoia and Hope
I've been thinking about all the Philip Dick novels I've read, trying to put together the words to explain the 'feel' that he creates in each one of them. There is a sense --most clearly spelled out in Valis --that something has gone wrong with the world. Something is off: but his characters are not sure what.
Dick has heroes, in a way; but these are not strong heroes (Superman), or all-knowing heroes (Spock), or even well-armed heroes (Batman? Dirty Harry?). A Dickian hero is a man (or, in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, a woman) who has made mistakes, who is basically decent, who has flashes of self-knowledge. This individual pursues the path he believes he should take, and in the end, makes some kind of difference.
A Scanner Darkly (first published in 1977) is, perhaps, bleaker than some of Dick's other novels, but even as his main character--Bob Arctor--becomes terribly damaged from the drugs he's taken, the author never quite gives up on him, or on his world.
What has gone wrong in Arctor's world? Who is the enemy? In A Scanner Darkly, the enemy is eventually spelled out clearly: it is a real group of people, with a real agenda. But it is not the drug users themselves (Dick writes about them with empathy and humor), nor the police, whom the author treats kindly as well. It is another group, unexpected, that preys on the weak and the damaged.
When I finished reading ASD for the first time I felt that it was a profoundly anti-drug statement, but an anti-drug statement of an odd kind. As Dick noted himself, in the afterword:
"There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say that they [the drug users] were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were."
I've often felt that Americans make everything - every story, every movie, every issue, every election - into a morality play. Maybe that's what I've been searching for, the unique 'feel' of Dick's work: whatever his books are, they are not morality plays.
Dick has heroes, in a way; but these are not strong heroes (Superman), or all-knowing heroes (Spock), or even well-armed heroes (Batman? Dirty Harry?). A Dickian hero is a man (or, in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, a woman) who has made mistakes, who is basically decent, who has flashes of self-knowledge. This individual pursues the path he believes he should take, and in the end, makes some kind of difference.
A Scanner Darkly (first published in 1977) is, perhaps, bleaker than some of Dick's other novels, but even as his main character--Bob Arctor--becomes terribly damaged from the drugs he's taken, the author never quite gives up on him, or on his world.
What has gone wrong in Arctor's world? Who is the enemy? In A Scanner Darkly, the enemy is eventually spelled out clearly: it is a real group of people, with a real agenda. But it is not the drug users themselves (Dick writes about them with empathy and humor), nor the police, whom the author treats kindly as well. It is another group, unexpected, that preys on the weak and the damaged.
When I finished reading ASD for the first time I felt that it was a profoundly anti-drug statement, but an anti-drug statement of an odd kind. As Dick noted himself, in the afterword:
"There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say that they [the drug users] were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were."
I've often felt that Americans make everything - every story, every movie, every issue, every election - into a morality play. Maybe that's what I've been searching for, the unique 'feel' of Dick's work: whatever his books are, they are not morality plays.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Androids, Blade Runner, Philip Dick
Philip Dick is, of course, the author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the book on which the movie Blade Runner is based.
I imagine there has been a fair amount written comparing the two. Blade Runner received - as I recall - middling or even poor reviews when it first came out in 1982, but its reputation has grown considerably since. Philip Dick (who died not long before the movie came out) has achieved cult-hero and eccentric sci-fi author status as well.
(Re the movie: some people seemed to particularly hate the voice-overs by Harrison Ford. I can't say I minded them.)
Blade Runner had fabulous special effects (for 1982), and a uniquely evocative 'feel' - the future as an endless grey, urban drizzle. It also has one of my all-time favorite, breath-catching movie moments: Rutger Hauer, as Roy Batty, letting Harrison Ford go - and then opening his hands, releasing a pigeon.
I don't complain that it isn't the book. You can't film an entire book (OK, except for Peter Jackson). But there are elements in Sheep - missing from the movie - that give it a unique feel as well, and are worth comment.
One example is the Penfield Mood Organ (dial up a mood at will).
"My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression," Iran said.
"Dial 888," Rick said as the set warmed. "The desire to watch TV no matter what's on it."
Another example: Wilber Mercer and the empathy box, and the associated belief system of Mercerism.
But the most unique aspect of the novel is Dick's description of his created future's attitude towards animals. As most of them are rare or extinct, the result of the devastating 'Word War Terminus', even the smallest animal - even a spider - is cherished. Instead of mega-inch wide-screen TVs as a status symbol, or granite kitchen countertops, real status is achieved when a family owns an animal:
"Graveson has that chicken over there . . . . I think Ed Smith has a cat down in his apt; at least he says so . . . "
At the end of the book Deckard has 'retired' Rachel (an android) and returned home with - against all odds - a toad. His wife shows him what he did not notice: the toad is artifical. Then, she finally convinces him to rest . . .
"Will you go to bed now? If I set the mood organ to a 670 setting?"
"What does that bring about?" he asked.
"Long deserved peace," Iran said.
. . . and as he sleeps, Iran searches the yellow pages for a business that sells animal accessories. And buys a pound of artificial flies.
I imagine there has been a fair amount written comparing the two. Blade Runner received - as I recall - middling or even poor reviews when it first came out in 1982, but its reputation has grown considerably since. Philip Dick (who died not long before the movie came out) has achieved cult-hero and eccentric sci-fi author status as well.
(Re the movie: some people seemed to particularly hate the voice-overs by Harrison Ford. I can't say I minded them.)
Blade Runner had fabulous special effects (for 1982), and a uniquely evocative 'feel' - the future as an endless grey, urban drizzle. It also has one of my all-time favorite, breath-catching movie moments: Rutger Hauer, as Roy Batty, letting Harrison Ford go - and then opening his hands, releasing a pigeon.
I don't complain that it isn't the book. You can't film an entire book (OK, except for Peter Jackson). But there are elements in Sheep - missing from the movie - that give it a unique feel as well, and are worth comment.
One example is the Penfield Mood Organ (dial up a mood at will).
"My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression," Iran said.
"Dial 888," Rick said as the set warmed. "The desire to watch TV no matter what's on it."
Another example: Wilber Mercer and the empathy box, and the associated belief system of Mercerism.
But the most unique aspect of the novel is Dick's description of his created future's attitude towards animals. As most of them are rare or extinct, the result of the devastating 'Word War Terminus', even the smallest animal - even a spider - is cherished. Instead of mega-inch wide-screen TVs as a status symbol, or granite kitchen countertops, real status is achieved when a family owns an animal:
"Graveson has that chicken over there . . . . I think Ed Smith has a cat down in his apt; at least he says so . . . "
At the end of the book Deckard has 'retired' Rachel (an android) and returned home with - against all odds - a toad. His wife shows him what he did not notice: the toad is artifical. Then, she finally convinces him to rest . . .
"Will you go to bed now? If I set the mood organ to a 670 setting?"
"What does that bring about?" he asked.
"Long deserved peace," Iran said.
. . . and as he sleeps, Iran searches the yellow pages for a business that sells animal accessories. And buys a pound of artificial flies.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
I was a voracious reader as a child. In the beginning I read everything, but when I was given a science fiction novel as a Christmas gift (Catseye by Andre Norton, circa 1960) I devoured it and never looked back.
Early on, I had very little thought for the authors of the books I was reading, nor for the literary value - if any - of their works. I read what I liked, and with science fiction I liked it all.
Still, some were favorites, which brings us to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein. It is a Hugo Award winner, and one of the great works of moon sci-fi.
The book presents a lunar society in which the adaptation to a unique local environment (proximity to hard vacuum, a perennial shortage of women) is worked out in logical, and highly entertaining, detail. It is also an adventure story involving intrigue, revolution, and dropping large rocks down a big fat gravity well.
Mike - the computer who wakes up - is a major player in the plot, and I still love Heinlein's cut-to-the-chase discussion of the nature of self-awareness:
"Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don't know about you, tovarishch, but I am."
Such was my literary naivete as a child that it was years later before I realized that the odd way the book reads is due to the total lack of the definite article (the word 'the') in Heinlein's first person narrative by our hero, Mannie; Heinlein's version of a lunar dialect.
It was also many years before I learned about Heinlein's political leanings and his rather - umm - unusual take on family relationships. At the time I didn't need more that a good story, and as that, the book works.
Early on, I had very little thought for the authors of the books I was reading, nor for the literary value - if any - of their works. I read what I liked, and with science fiction I liked it all.
Still, some were favorites, which brings us to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein. It is a Hugo Award winner, and one of the great works of moon sci-fi.
The book presents a lunar society in which the adaptation to a unique local environment (proximity to hard vacuum, a perennial shortage of women) is worked out in logical, and highly entertaining, detail. It is also an adventure story involving intrigue, revolution, and dropping large rocks down a big fat gravity well.
Mike - the computer who wakes up - is a major player in the plot, and I still love Heinlein's cut-to-the-chase discussion of the nature of self-awareness:
"Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don't know about you, tovarishch, but I am."
Such was my literary naivete as a child that it was years later before I realized that the odd way the book reads is due to the total lack of the definite article (the word 'the') in Heinlein's first person narrative by our hero, Mannie; Heinlein's version of a lunar dialect.
It was also many years before I learned about Heinlein's political leanings and his rather - umm - unusual take on family relationships. At the time I didn't need more that a good story, and as that, the book works.
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