  a scanner darkly is a bsfa award-winning 1977 science fiction novel by american writer philip k. dick. the semi-autobiographical story is set in a dystopian orange county, california, in the then-future of june 1994, and includes an extensive portrayal of drug culture and drug use (both recreational and abusive). the novel is one of dick's best-known works and served as the basis for a 2006 film of the same name. ==synopsis== the protagonist is bob arctor, member of a household of drug users, who is also living a parallel life as agent fred, an undercover police agent assigned to spy on arctor's household. arctor/fred shields his true identity from those in the drug subculture, and from the police themselves. (the requirement that narcotics agents remain anonymous, to avoid collusion and other forms of corruption, becomes a critical plot point late in the book.) while supposedly only posing as a drug user, arctor becomes addicted to "substance d" (also referred to as "slow death", "death", or "d"), a powerful psychoactive drug. an ongoing conflict is arctor's love for donna, a drug dealer, through whom he intends to identify high-level dealers of substance d. arctor's persistent use of the drug causes the two hemispheres of his brain to function independently, or "compete". through a series of drug and psychological tests, arctor's superiors at work discover that his addiction has made him incapable of performing his job as a narcotics agent. donna takes arctor to "new-path", a rehabilitation clinic, just as arctor begins to experience the symptoms of substance d withdrawal. it is revealed that donna has been a narcotics agent all along, working as part of a police operation to infiltrate new-path and determine its funding source. without his knowledge, arctor has been selected to penetrate the secretive organization. as part of the rehab program, arctor is renamed "bruce" and forced to participate in cruel group-dynamic games intended to break the will of the pat
1970s_science_fiction_novels 1977_novels 1994_in_fiction Doubleday_(publisher)_books Dystopian_novels Existentialist_novels Novels_about_drugs Novels_by_Philip_K._Dick Philosophical_novels Roman_A _clef_novels