A Scanner Darkly
On sale
14th October 1999
Price: £9.99
BSFA Award, 1979
Genre
A brilliant sci-fi novel from one of the last century’s most influential pop culture figures
Substance D – otherwise known as Death – is the most dangerous drug ever to find its way on to the black market. It destroys the links between the brain’s two hemispheres, leading first to disorentation and then to complete and irreversible brain damage. Bob Arctor, undercover narcotics agent, is trying to find a lead to the source of supply, but to pass as an addict he must become a user, and soon, without knowing what is happening to him, he is as dependent as any of the addicts he is monitoring.
Substance D – otherwise known as Death – is the most dangerous drug ever to find its way on to the black market. It destroys the links between the brain’s two hemispheres, leading first to disorentation and then to complete and irreversible brain damage. Bob Arctor, undercover narcotics agent, is trying to find a lead to the source of supply, but to pass as an addict he must become a user, and soon, without knowing what is happening to him, he is as dependent as any of the addicts he is monitoring.
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Reviews
Dick quietly produced serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise
Dick is Thoreau plus the death of the American dream
The best book of the year - extraordinary
The most brilliant SF mind on any planet
The most consistently brilliant SF writer in the world
In all his work he was astonishingly intimate, self exposed, and very dangerous. He was the funniest SF writer of his time, and perhaps the most terrifying. His dreads were our own, spoken as we could not have spoken them
One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction, Dick made most of the European avant-garde seem like navel-gazers in a cul-de-sac
My literary hero
For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplicating realities of the modern world, remember: Philip K. Dick got there first
