arnuld
Member
I am not interested in any kind of Fiction these days. I want to say as well that I am inclined towards Non-Fiction. It seems like Non-Fiction is steering my life into some another direction, the direction where I did not want to go ( because I have seen that dimension). After criticizing (constructively) cyberpunk a lot, I read A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick quite suspiciously and unhappily. Now, I found it to be a good book. Is this all I will say about this SF piece.
No....
I think people should be cautious about reviews. I buy books by reading the amazon-reviews and I think this is not the way to understand where to spent my hard-earned money. Most reviewers do not give any idea about their thought-process and about their life-style and their habits of thinking which directly affects a review. The one who reviews a book does so from one angle, from one viewpoint, from his side of things, from the way he thinks about life. Everyone has different tastes (out of billions), everyone has different way of living (again, out of billions) and everyone has different ways of thinking about his present and future and same applies when he reviews a book. I completely agree that there are general points, that there are some particular patterns in all reviews and directly or indirectly they show up and sometimes they don't, they don't because sometimes the reviewer thinks only what makes sense to him. I try to be as close as much possible to those general-points and patterns while I am writing a review. I try to be as much unbiased as possible from my side, you can call it the one of the lessons I have learned from Hacker Culture. I try to keep things specific and very accessible to an average reader, primarily because a reader's mind must remain open, before and after reading my reviews. One problem with most reviews is that they overshadow the reader's logical thinking by suppressing it. The thought-process of one's mind must not get closed or worse, curtained, because of the way reviewer puts his words. It takes a lot of time, your hard-earned money and energy to buy and read a book, those precious things must not be wasted by some poor reviewer. Feel free to criticize my words. Except of those biased judgments, i will surely try to improve my skills in next review. Now back to the book...
A Scanner Darkly is a very unique & brilliant piece of SF. Either you will love it, hate it or will say just okay. A Scanner Darkly is never going to be good or bad in your mind. It is a little strange and difficult to grab at first piece of work. It you will like it, it will print its impact into your brain forever, you are not going to forget it. One exception is of a real-life example of a man who was 110 years old. I read that news in 1998 in some newspaper when I was in school, in 12th class. He smoked on cigar a day and had forgotten the name of his wife, in such a case you can forget about A Scanner Darkly but in other cases, it is going to hang with you forever. This work of SF is consistent and continuous like a uniform-magnet field in all those 218 pages. Majority of novels have ups and downs in pages, I mean at someplace there is lots of communication and at some other place there is very little and at another place they something different going on, at one page their is laugh, fun and after 10 pages there is some tedious thing and after 50 pages there are powerful dialogs going on. A Scanner Darkly has nothing like that, it is consistent in all 218 pages, this is how the novel was written down.
From the very first page, author talks of drug-addictions, the theme of the novel. I did not mention that I have a;ready seen the movie A Scanner Darkly, 4 months ago before I read this novel and the remake in the form of movie is totally anti-Hollywood tradition. Actually Hollywood has a tradition of screwing the books in the remaking, like Starship-Troopers, but this one is not. The novel however, is much rich in content and filled with feeling like you are there in that novel conversing with the characters. The author does not talk about why people take drugs. He doe snot even talk about how they take drugs which is quite evident as you will read first 20% of the novel. He talks only about the results after you have become an addict. There are no hows and whys in this book or the social implications, there are only consequences he talks about. The communication between the characters reminds of my experience of people who are addicted to sex. On the internet, searching at Google for months and months and reading about people's behaviors in places like swingers forums, orgy parties forums, have convinced me that those people are as much addicted to these ways of doing sex like the drug-addicted characters in A Scanner Darkly. Besides those orgy folks, Philip K. Dick fiction extends and maps into our general lives as well. One lives in his life like getting-up early in the morning, getting ready for job at 9 AM, come back form job at 7 PM, talking to his wife, look at his kids and chat with them for while and then go to bed with his partner. This cycle of life goes on and on for years and no one, not at least majority of us think how people live on the other-side. The people of other-side are the ones who are mentally-retarded or who are handicapped in Viet Nam war( psychologically or physically) and the older ones in Old Age homes, not to mention the millions of kids on USA living on streets every night and the women who are pushed into prostitution helplessly and lastly the drug-addicts living in drug-rehabilitation centers around the world. We don't think about them, we just keep on doing what we are doing or rather what we think we are supposed to be doing. We don't think that Bush administration has spent billions of dollars into Iraq and Afghanistan, in the name of "Fake War on Terror" while millions of kids and prostitutes perish on USA's streets. Bush administration did not spend any billions to make their lives better and no wonder the production of opium has been raised to 600% since the US-invasion of Afghanistan. A Scanner Darkly reminds us of those people on the other-side. It will put you in the novel and make you feel and then think about what those drug-riddled characters are doing in 218 pages. It will tell you what the addictions can do to you and it may scare you.
Except these words I do not want to say much. You can read this novel and come up with your thoughts and compare them with mine. I liked this book and it will hang with me forever. That does not mean that I will continue reading Fiction. I will not. Non-Fiction works like TAKEDOWN and Open Society and its Enemies interest me more. I want to spend the little time I get everyday out of job into something better and for me specifically, Non-Fiction is much better than Fiction. In the end, Fiction like movies like CYPHER, The Listening give one the very-real aspect of what will happen if the corporation keep on growing at the same rate and how they will control the lives. That is pretty much real but that is Future-Real and thats why its called Fiction.
Anyhow, as you folks know, my Cyberpunk-times are over. I have 3 more fiction books on my desk: 1984, A Canticle for Leobowitz and The Real Thing and I have 2 more on my mind: DUNE, which I am interested specifically because of sparkchaser and another Starmaker which someone suggested here and it somehow got on my mind because of its theme of creation of Universe by God (or whatever). I will read all of them and then will decide whether I should stop reading Fiction or not.
No....
I think people should be cautious about reviews. I buy books by reading the amazon-reviews and I think this is not the way to understand where to spent my hard-earned money. Most reviewers do not give any idea about their thought-process and about their life-style and their habits of thinking which directly affects a review. The one who reviews a book does so from one angle, from one viewpoint, from his side of things, from the way he thinks about life. Everyone has different tastes (out of billions), everyone has different way of living (again, out of billions) and everyone has different ways of thinking about his present and future and same applies when he reviews a book. I completely agree that there are general points, that there are some particular patterns in all reviews and directly or indirectly they show up and sometimes they don't, they don't because sometimes the reviewer thinks only what makes sense to him. I try to be as close as much possible to those general-points and patterns while I am writing a review. I try to be as much unbiased as possible from my side, you can call it the one of the lessons I have learned from Hacker Culture. I try to keep things specific and very accessible to an average reader, primarily because a reader's mind must remain open, before and after reading my reviews. One problem with most reviews is that they overshadow the reader's logical thinking by suppressing it. The thought-process of one's mind must not get closed or worse, curtained, because of the way reviewer puts his words. It takes a lot of time, your hard-earned money and energy to buy and read a book, those precious things must not be wasted by some poor reviewer. Feel free to criticize my words. Except of those biased judgments, i will surely try to improve my skills in next review. Now back to the book...
A Scanner Darkly is a very unique & brilliant piece of SF. Either you will love it, hate it or will say just okay. A Scanner Darkly is never going to be good or bad in your mind. It is a little strange and difficult to grab at first piece of work. It you will like it, it will print its impact into your brain forever, you are not going to forget it. One exception is of a real-life example of a man who was 110 years old. I read that news in 1998 in some newspaper when I was in school, in 12th class. He smoked on cigar a day and had forgotten the name of his wife, in such a case you can forget about A Scanner Darkly but in other cases, it is going to hang with you forever. This work of SF is consistent and continuous like a uniform-magnet field in all those 218 pages. Majority of novels have ups and downs in pages, I mean at someplace there is lots of communication and at some other place there is very little and at another place they something different going on, at one page their is laugh, fun and after 10 pages there is some tedious thing and after 50 pages there are powerful dialogs going on. A Scanner Darkly has nothing like that, it is consistent in all 218 pages, this is how the novel was written down.
From the very first page, author talks of drug-addictions, the theme of the novel. I did not mention that I have a;ready seen the movie A Scanner Darkly, 4 months ago before I read this novel and the remake in the form of movie is totally anti-Hollywood tradition. Actually Hollywood has a tradition of screwing the books in the remaking, like Starship-Troopers, but this one is not. The novel however, is much rich in content and filled with feeling like you are there in that novel conversing with the characters. The author does not talk about why people take drugs. He doe snot even talk about how they take drugs which is quite evident as you will read first 20% of the novel. He talks only about the results after you have become an addict. There are no hows and whys in this book or the social implications, there are only consequences he talks about. The communication between the characters reminds of my experience of people who are addicted to sex. On the internet, searching at Google for months and months and reading about people's behaviors in places like swingers forums, orgy parties forums, have convinced me that those people are as much addicted to these ways of doing sex like the drug-addicted characters in A Scanner Darkly. Besides those orgy folks, Philip K. Dick fiction extends and maps into our general lives as well. One lives in his life like getting-up early in the morning, getting ready for job at 9 AM, come back form job at 7 PM, talking to his wife, look at his kids and chat with them for while and then go to bed with his partner. This cycle of life goes on and on for years and no one, not at least majority of us think how people live on the other-side. The people of other-side are the ones who are mentally-retarded or who are handicapped in Viet Nam war( psychologically or physically) and the older ones in Old Age homes, not to mention the millions of kids on USA living on streets every night and the women who are pushed into prostitution helplessly and lastly the drug-addicts living in drug-rehabilitation centers around the world. We don't think about them, we just keep on doing what we are doing or rather what we think we are supposed to be doing. We don't think that Bush administration has spent billions of dollars into Iraq and Afghanistan, in the name of "Fake War on Terror" while millions of kids and prostitutes perish on USA's streets. Bush administration did not spend any billions to make their lives better and no wonder the production of opium has been raised to 600% since the US-invasion of Afghanistan. A Scanner Darkly reminds us of those people on the other-side. It will put you in the novel and make you feel and then think about what those drug-riddled characters are doing in 218 pages. It will tell you what the addictions can do to you and it may scare you.
Except these words I do not want to say much. You can read this novel and come up with your thoughts and compare them with mine. I liked this book and it will hang with me forever. That does not mean that I will continue reading Fiction. I will not. Non-Fiction works like TAKEDOWN and Open Society and its Enemies interest me more. I want to spend the little time I get everyday out of job into something better and for me specifically, Non-Fiction is much better than Fiction. In the end, Fiction like movies like CYPHER, The Listening give one the very-real aspect of what will happen if the corporation keep on growing at the same rate and how they will control the lives. That is pretty much real but that is Future-Real and thats why its called Fiction.
Anyhow, as you folks know, my Cyberpunk-times are over. I have 3 more fiction books on my desk: 1984, A Canticle for Leobowitz and The Real Thing and I have 2 more on my mind: DUNE, which I am interested specifically because of sparkchaser and another Starmaker which someone suggested here and it somehow got on my mind because of its theme of creation of Universe by God (or whatever). I will read all of them and then will decide whether I should stop reading Fiction or not.