When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. - 1 Corinthians 13:11-12.

During a recent attempt to tighten household expenses, I discovered that I’m currently spending about $200 a month on gasoline and about $80 in tolls just to get to and from work every month. The only upside I’ve been able to uncover in this situation is that it also means I have an opportunity, should I take it, to listen to audio books during my daily commute. Recently, I finished listening to the unabridged audio book version of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly.

Philip K. Dick is now known as one of the most influential sci-fi authors of the 20th Century, but didn’t receive much attention during his lifetime. (One of the most interesting bits of trivia found in this Wikipedia entry is that P.K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin graduated from the same high school class, but didn’t know each other.) Most people know of him through the movie adaptations of his stories, most notably Blade Runner (from “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”) and Minority Report. In fact, A Scanner Darkly has recently been adapted as a rotoscoped animated movie by Richard Linklater. (I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t comment on how it compares.)

In A Scanner Darkly, however, the science fiction is incidental to the story. Dick wrote this book in 1977 and set it (ostensibly) fifteen years in the future. Despite this convention, and some mildly futuristic trappings, A Scanner Darkly is a 1970s drug novel, and quite a powerful and effective one at that. The slang, the pop cultural references, even the cars that the characters drive, all refer to the 1970s Southern California culture that Dick knew. Through his own experiences, Dick had a deep understanding of druggie culture, and the dialog and paranoid/burned out logic used by the characters seems both authentic and empathetic.

At the same time, despite the dated colloquialisms, A Scanner Darkly also feels quite up-to-date. That’s partly because drug culture didn’t really die in the ’70s, but the other themes of the book, including paranoia and informational espionage, are even more prevalent now than they were when the book was written.

Bob Archer is a narcotics officer working undercover for the Orange County Sheriff, trying to discover the source of a particularly destructive and addictive drug referred to as “Substance D” (or “Slow Death” as it’s referred to by users). Arctor is so deeply undercover that his identity isn’t even known to his contact at the Sheriff’s Office. To Arctor’s contact, he’s an agent who goes by the name of Fred, and all face-to-face contacts are done with Fred and his supervisor donning an identity-concealing “scramble suit.” Arctor is also a user and (partly as a pretext for his investigatory work, partly as a lifestyle choice and source of income) a drug dealer, using and dealing Substance D, spending his time hanging out with his druggie friends.

Eventually—andinevitably—Fred, the narcotics officer is assigned to conduct surveillance on Bob Arctor. At the same time, Arctor, burned out on Substance D, starts to lose his grip on reality and his sense of identity. This makes for interesting, depressing, sometimes funny, and in the end, surprisingly poignant musings on the philosophy of identity, Christian mysticism, mass consumerist society, and law enforcement.

Dick’s novel is really a mix of a few different genres of fiction: it’s a police procedural, a drug-tripping philosophical fable, and (to a lesser extent) a futuristic proto-cyberpunk novel. The language, understandably, is pretty coarse and there are times when the novel veers off into the memoirs-of-a-junkie genre of pulp fiction. Still, I thought the book was entertaining and unexpectedly moving. I’m quick to recommend it, with the caveat that it’s neither light nor pretty.

As anyone who has ever listened to an audio book knows, it’s essential to one’s enjoyment that someone with talent do the reading. Fortunately, A Scanner Darkly features a reading by Paul Giamatti. The voice characterizations, in particular, are excellent, and Giamatti’s one of those actors that you don’t mind listening to for hours on end—his voice is that interesting.