Play Book Tag discussion

A scanner darkly

Written in 1977, this SSF novel imagines the 1990’s with sophisticated surveillance systems, and a scrambler that makes it impossible for anyone to recognize your face. It also contains a deadly drug called substance D, which causes serious brain damage and disconnects the two hemispheres of the brain. Most of the characters are drug users or undercover detectives, and they both get high a lot. This made much of the dialogue boring for me. They were also very sexist and nearly every woman they saw triggered dirty thoughts or comments. Fortunately I was able to speed through the stupid talk, and slow down to catch the important parts.

On the bright side, the book has a delightfully complicated plot, with lots of surprises. It gets very confusing because many of the undercover agents characters have aliases. At least one character who is using D also believes that he truly IS two different people. He periodically spoke German. This was odd because it happened in another book I read this month.