“LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE VAGUE BLUR!”

DICK, Philip K. A Scanner Darkly. Garden City: Doubleday, 1977. Octavo, original tan paper boards, original dust jacket. $1850.

First edition of Dick’s “suburban phantasmagoria” (New York Times), his finely crafted and frightening vision of drug culture, social conformity, and the struggle to discern reality.

Although many of Philip K. Dick's works in the 1960s employ "a language singularly familiar with the large repertory of mind-states accessible through the use of drugs," only with this 1977 novel did the author "explore the more negative human implications of drug-taking, though with an almost hallucinated vehemence" (Clute & Nicholls, 329). The gripping tale of a narcotics agent in hot pursuit of himself, A Scanner Darkly revisits Dick's life-long fascination with the inability to distinguish the real from the unreal to terrifying effect. "A Scanner Darkly is Dick's most politically astute novel" (Christopher Palmer, Science Fiction Studies 18:3). "An affecting, powerful novel" (Anatomy of Wonder II-333). Made into the 2006 film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, and Robert Downey, Jr. Levack 36a. Currey, 126.

A fine copy.