The dark screen

This article covers the novel by Philip K. Dick. For the film adaptation of the same name by Richard Linklater see A Scanner Darkly - The dark screen .

Darkly (. English A Scanner Darkly ) is a science fiction - novel by Philip K. Dick in 1977.

The main theme of the novel, which is in parts autobiographical, is drug use and the destruction of personality that it causes. He plays in a dystopian described Orange County (California) of the year 1994th

The dark screen is one of Dick's best-known novels and was filmed in 2006 by Richard Linklater using the rotoscopy process.

title

The original title is, as is also explained in the novel, an allusion to a passage from the Bible from the 1st letter of Paul to the Corinthians , namely 1 Cor 13:12  Luth : "We now see a dark image through a mirror" (in the King James Bible : "For now we see through a glass, darkly"). The protagonist of the novel no longer sees through a mirror, but through the holographic recording system, the scanner . In addition, the first letters SD (for scanner darkly ) are the same as those of Substance D , the fictional drug that plays a special role in the novel.

content

The protagonist of the novel is Bob Arctor, who as an undercover agent with the code name "Fred " monitors a group of users and dealers of the extremely addictive drug "Substance T", to which he himself belongs in his cover identity. In order to protect the investigators from exposure, they appear anonymously to the police. For this purpose, they wear a so-called "Jedermann suit", which hides the shape and face of the wearer behind a constantly changing sequence of figures and faces - this suit and the drug "Substance T" ("T" for "death", in the English original "Substance D" for "Death") belong to the few science fiction elements of the novel.

Dick describes in detail everyday life in a drug subculture and the consequences of drug abuse, for example the epizoonotic madness that is widespread among cocaine users , the idea that beetles live under their own skin.

Fred is assigned to monitor the drug trafficking suspect Bob Arctor, but the police do not know the identity of Fred and Bob Arctor. Surveillance cameras are installed in Arctor's house, Arctor monitors himself and the roommates in his house in his investigative identity in an everyone's suit. He is increasingly losing the ability to recognize the unity of his two identities. As an agent, he undergoes regular medical tests that show that he is suffering from increasing brain damage from substance T consumption. Finally he ends up as a psychological wreck in a rehab clinic of the organization “The New Path”. There he was given the code name "Bruce" - his third identity. While he is busy with the simplest work there, it turns out that the “New Path” itself produces and distributes the substance T, which Bruce / Fred / Bob is hardly aware of any more. He slips a blossom of the substance T plants into his shoe to give it to his friends when he meets other patients on Thanksgiving . This could be seen as a little happy ending , as there is an undercover agent among these friends who could inform the authorities about the activities of the "New Path".

In an afterword and obituary, Philip K. Dick takes a stand on drug use and the drug subculture to which he himself belonged. It lists the many friends and acquaintances who have died from drugs or were seriously damaged in their health.

paranoia

As in many other Dick stories, conspiracies and conspiracy theories play a central role in the novel. On the one hand, the typical paranoia addicts are caricatured when Arctors / Fred's friend Barris babbles intoxicated about possible manipulations through post-hypnotic suggestions and induced amnesia . On the other hand, his fear of persecution is only well founded, because he is being monitored by the police without his knowledge by his own friend. And finally, the aid organization of the “New Path” is portrayed as a criminal organization which, with the help of addicts, produces the toxic substance from which it claims to want to free them.

filming

The novel was made into a film by Richard Linklater in 2006 with the actors Keanu Reeves , Robert Downey Jr. , Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder . The film A Scanner Darkly works with rotoscopy , a special trick technique that superimposes cartoon textures and real film.

German-language editions

• Bergisch Gladbach: Bastei-Verlag 1980 ISBN 3-404-22018-8 ; again 1989 ISBN 3-404-24123-1
• Munich: Heyne Verlag , 2003 (revised translation) ISBN 3-453-87368-8
• Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Klassik , 2014 ISBN 978-3596905669

Web links

• Darkly in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ David Brottman: Dick, Philip K. In: Peter Knight (ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver and London 2003, Vol. 1, p. 222.