Synopsis
1st Del Rey 1979 edition paperback vg book In stock shipped from our UK warehouse
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Review
Mind- and reality-bending drugs feature again and again in Philip K. Dick's hugely influential SF stories. A Scanner Darkly is the novel that cuts closest to the bone, drawing on Dick's own experience with illicit chemicals and on his many friends who died through drug misuse. Nevertheless it's blackly farcical, full of comic- surreal conversations between people whose synapses are partly fried, sudden flights of paranoid logic, and bad trips like the one whose victim spends a subjective eternity having all his sins read to him, in shifts, by compound-eyed aliens. (It takes 11,000 years of this to reach the time when as a boy he discovered masturbation.) The antihero Bob Arctor is forced by his double life into warring double personalities: as futuristic narcotics agent "Fred", face blurred by a high-tech scrambler, he must spy on and entrap suspected drug dealer Bob Arctor. His disintegration under the influence of the insidious Substance D is genuine tragicomedy. For Arctor there's no way off the addict's downward escalator, but what awaits at the bottom is a kind of redemption--there are more wheels within wheels than we suspected, and his life is not entirely wasted. In a just world this harrowing novel, the 20th selection in the Millennium SF Masterworks, would have matched the sales of Trainspotting. --David Langford
Review
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 (Sunday Times)
My literary hero (Fay Weldon)
For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplicating realities of the modern world, remember: Philip K. Dick got there first (Terry Gilliam)
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A Scanner Darkly
Seller: Wonder Book, Frederick, MD, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Fair. Acceptable condition. A readable, intact copy that may have noticeable tears and wear to the spine. All pages of text are present, but they may include extensive notes and highlighting or be heavily stained. Includes reading copy only books. Seller Inventory # R08OS-00200
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A Scanner Darkly
Seller: Riverby Books, Fredericksburg, VA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. Softcover; mass market media size. Very good condition; minor shelf wear on crown and foot of spine. No date on the title page. Copyright page dated 1977. 291 pages. Pages are crisp and clean. Please contact us with questions or if you'd like to see photographs. Seller Inventory # 21-821
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A Scanner Darkly
Seller: BennettBooksLtd, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Mass Market Paperback. Condition: New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! Seller Inventory # Q-0345260643