ABSTRACT

Dick’s 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly is a tale of an undercover narcotics cop, code-named ‘Fred,’ who poses as the drug abusing addict Bob Arctor in the 1970s California.1 Arctor/Fred lives surrounded by outcast characters of the world that he has infi ltrated-dealers, other agents, addicts-women and men suffering socially and physically from the devastating effects of various drug abuses. The world they inhabit is that of outcasts: Jerry Fabin and Charles Freck, Bob Arctor’s “junkie” roommates, consider themselves and Bob ‘heads’ while the rest of the society are ‘straights.’ The group is on the perceptual outside too: Fabin, Freck, and Arctor’s time and space perceptions are distorted; they often get lost driving and “run fantasy numbers”—active daydreams-as they move about the daily reality of Southern California.