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A Scanner Darkly

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About this listen

 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.

Read by Paul Giamatti

(p) 2006 Penguin Random House LLC©1977 Philip K Dick Classics Fantasy Fiction Mystery Private Investigators Science Fiction Detective Emotionally Gripping Human Brain

Critic reviews

The best book of the year - extraordinary (BrianAldiss)
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
The most brilliant SF mind on any planet
For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplicating realities of the modern world, remember: Philip K. Dick got there first
The most consistently brilliant SF writer in the world (John Brunner)
Dick is Thoreau plus the death of the American dream (Roberto Bolaño)
Dick quietly produced serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise (Michael Moorcock)
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
All stars
Most relevant
It's a really freaked out book well read and I truly enjoyed it. My partner however couldn't listen to it and it was banned from the car.
I will be listening to it for a second time.

Brilliant but not for everyone.

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I didn’t like that it didn’t go anywhere. I was waiting for clever plot or something interesting like in other PKD books, but it’s just a book about drug use.

I didn’t get it

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there is an importance to having an tether to reality, without this being a spoiler....

some wise words for us all

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An amazing audio book. Great performance, haunting insights into declining minds.
Only hint of criticism is the pronunciation of the German phrases is abysmal, but it doesn't really take away from the story so it's still 5 stars for me

A gloomy but brilliant listening experience

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This novel starts a little slowly and seems a little rambling at first. If you're not familiar with Phillip K Dick, you'd probably be best to start with 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'. That said, once this book grips you, and it will grip you, you will be sucked in completely to the weird world of Phillip K Dick. When you emerge blinking into the real world you will be... Changed somehow, and you will never see the world through the same eyes. Extraordinary.

Wow...

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