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[twunny]

Wow wow wow.

I saw the movie in the theatre last summer, and was hesitant to draw conclusions due to the hit-or-miss-itude of translations of Dick's films into movies. "Blade Runner" is awesome, but a disloyal adaptation. "Scanners" is faithful to the source material, but not a great movie. "Total Recall" is neither faithful nor all that good. So...

All that aside for now, this book was amazing. It is one of the best Philip K. Dick stories I've ever read, which makes it not only superior in the realm of Science Fiction, but also an amazing novel.

It is the story of some people. Bob Arctor, a dopehead losing his mind to his addiction, Substance D. It's a hallucinogen that makes you paranoid, and messes up the way your brain processes information. The part of your brain that allows you to conceive of reality, eventually that goes away. So that sucks.
And then there's "Fred," the agent working undercover to expose Arctor and his friends. He uses surveillance and his cover to infiltrate their group. And their innane, insane chatter makes him start to crack.
Bob Arctor and "Fred" are the same person. Sometimes they know it, sometimes they don't.

This belongs on a list, right behind "Fear and Loathing" in Las Vegas, as one of the most important drug novels of all time. It goes into detail about friendships, loves, lives, jobs, families, and realities that are all created and destroyed by drugs. The scary part is when it starts to make sense. It touches on the built-in paranoia that's in every person, whether we use drugs or not. And even the characters that are only on a few pages seem real, and worthy of our care and/or pity.

As an adaptation, it was very faithful and very good. Dick's humor is there and the style of the film is downright necessary to get inside the right mindframe. The only problem is that they take Dick's pinch of pretentiousness and blow it up a little. But they cast the right people, let me tell you that.

And it's all based on real experiences.

Wow wow wow.

Read this book.
_________________
I am a dirty liar. And I'm lying when I say that.

[Eisworth]

I really enjoyed that book as well, almost as much as The Man in the High Castle.
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Todd Eisworth
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Ohio University