I read this as an audiobook read by Paul Giamatti. Let me say that again: Paul-freaking-Giamatti. It was a genius casting choice - he is the PERFECT reader for this whacked out psychadelic trip of a book. The writing style is very conventional, at least for the first half of the book, but it gets weirder and weirder as the main character's mind disintegrates under the influence of "Substance D" or "Death" - a designer drug. He's living a double life as a narc and as a druggie, and his life starts to unravel when he can't keep the parts of his life separate anymore. I loved this audiobook so much.

Mi sembra di aver capito la storia solo a un livello molto generale, come se mi fosse mancata la giusta chiave di lettura per comprenderla appieno.
Ho seguito la trama, ma mi ha interessato solo fino a un certo punto e non mi sono affezionato a nessuno dei personaggi.
Sarà lo stile, sarà la lingua, sarà che mi aspettavo un capolavoro e un pizzico di fantascienza in più, sarà che il mondo descritto da Dick è lontano anni luce dal mio. Non lo so.
Insomma, mi è piaciucchiato, ho apprezzato alcune scene e alcune trovate (la scramble suit, per dirne una), ma visto che quasi tutti lo considerano il miglior libro di Dick il mio "piaciucchiato" non vale granché.
In ogni caso leggerò sicuramente altro di Dick e prima o poi guarderò il film che ne è stato tratto.

2024 reads, 15/22

Not really sure where to start with this one – Philip K. Dick (PDK for short), arguably one of the best science fiction writers of all time, has been on my to-read list for years. In fact, it’s surprising that I haven’t read anything by him yet, especially since Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the inspiration for my favorite movie, Blade Runner. But I digress – we’ll get to that review soon enough.

A Scanner Darkly is a dystopian sci-fi novel set in 1994 California, in an alternate timeline where America has lost the war on drugs. Dealers, users, and federal agents are all intertwined in one another’s lives, and the existence of “scramble suits,” a body suit that conceals one’s identity, only complicates matters. Bob Arctor is an undercover narcotics agent investigating users such as Jim Barris, Ernie Luckman, and Charles Freck, whose house is bugged with “scanners” for Arctor’s alter-ego to surveil.

“Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself.”

I’m slightly reminded of other counterculture novels, e.g., [b:One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest|332613|One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest|Ken Kesey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1516211014l/332613._SX50_.jpg|2100252] or [b:Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas|7745|Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas|Hunter S. Thompson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1703312483l/7745._SY75_.jpg|1309111]; any of the works of Kesey, Leary, and HST between the beats and the hippies. Barris even recites Leary’s catchphrase as a sign-off: “Turn on, tune out, and good-by.” But where those novels focus on the actual use or psychedelics of drugs, A Scanner Darkly focuses more on the consequences of repeated drug use.

The concept of the “scramble suit” is also intriguing; as readers, we know who Arctor and his alter ego are, but I was left wondering about the identities and motives of the other characters. How do they fit into this mess? What exactly is Arctor looking for? The idea of double lives is pervasive throughout this novel, both in a temporal and spatial sense, and adds to the haziness.

“There she was, stable and as if forever; then—nothing. Vanished like fire or air, an element of the earth back into the earth. To mix with the everyone-else people that never ceased to be. Poured out among them. The evaporated girl, he thought. Of transformation. That comes and goes as she will. And no one, nothing, can hold on to her.”

This book was amazing and heartbreaking at the same time, and made me immediately pick up my next PKD book. For anyone looking to get into PKD, or just wanting to read a science fiction classic, this is a great one to go with.

P.S. The movie did a great job capturing not just the confusing nature of the novel, but also remained pretty faithful to the book. Worth the watch!

“It requires the greatest kind of wisdom, she thought, to know when to apply injustice.”

Very weird book with a story line that danced all over the place with some minor twists/surprises but overall it was kind of just an annoying book to read with not much happenings. Thankfully it was/felt short.

Less sci-fi and more contemporary. A dark nightmare of the curdling 60s drug scene, which lends itself perfectly to Dick’s paranoid fantasy.