The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 7 October 2008
by Philip K. Dick
So, how do you suppose the War on Drugs is going? We've been at it since, well, forever, if you consider everything from today's meth labs to 19th century opium dens. We're still encouraged to "just say no", but nothing much has really changed. The 1960s and 1970s are widely considered a time of particular laxity in our drug behavior, but this reader doesn't see that much has changed before or since. This book, which was published in the late 70s, is Philip Dick's own version of the druggie lifestyle and the dark places it often leads. But he is also portraying a culture obsessed with control and surveillance (sound familiar?). The time of the book is a few years into the future, though much of its detail still sounds fairly dated to about thirty years ago. Nevertheless, we meet Bob Arctor and his friends. They live in a run-down suburban house in Orange County, California. All of them are addled to near incoherence by Substance D. They take a whole raft of other drugs, too, from amphetimines to hashish. Dick has a tight grasp on the lives of these people. Their lives are profoundly familiar to anyone who has known the sort of depleted but often hilarious existence inside a pharmaceutical fog. The twisted and meandering conversations, the flashing on details and comical connections, the paranoia and suspicion, all of this is brilliantly captured in this book. Meanwhile, though, Bob is also "Fred", a police officer working for the local drug control authorities. His job is to find the source of Substance D, and go after its dealers. Ultimately, he finds himself informing on Bob Arctor and Arctor's friends. The borders of identity, one of Dick's frequent themes, become hazy as Arctor/Fred tries to navigate this bipolar world while also having his brain deteriorate due to the affects of Substance D. Fred asks "what is Bob Arctor up to?" Arctor wonders if you can impersonate a man impersonating a nark. Which of these is the real protagonist? And what is going to happen to him? Will he eventually end up in a treatment program like Synanon (!) or New-Path? There are shades of conspiracy at work. Arctor's girl, Donna, has something behind the scenes going on. Actually, all of the characters seem to be leading dual lives. Arctor's best buddy Barris accuses him of being an informer while being an informer himself. The ultimate conspiracy, though, may be the relationship between drug-treatment programs and the origins of the drug itself. It is hard to say where Dick is going with all these confused allegations, which are, after all, muddled by the drug-crazed prose. His postscript suggests a hard line against drug users and their own responsibility in their addictions. But the story itself suggests a broader accusation, involving the "authorities", such as they are, as much as the users. In the end, the book's deepest impression is the intensely authentic portrayal of the subculture of drug use and abuse, its entertainments and its fears.
Also by Dick: [Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]