Just saw “A Scanner Darkly.” I’ve seen bad reviews. I’ve seen good reviews. It is good. Linklater didn’t make it funny as some have criticized, though parts of it are. Humor happens sometimes even amidst bad situations.
“What does a scanner see?” he asked himself. I mean, really see?
Into the head? Down into the heart?
Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me – into us – clearly or darkly?
I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk.
Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the scanners do better.
Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too.
I dragged my wife to see the movie on Saturday and I have never read the book. I heard a review of the movie on the Escape Pod Podcast and I really enjoyed “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” so I figured it would be worth the hassle it was to find a theater playing it. I have to agree, it is good. I am going to go back and read the book, as well as a few others by Dick just because I can see now why everyone loves his stories so much.
Yeah, I really never read any of his stories, but they are now on my list the next time I place an order from Amazon.