A SCANNER DARKLY AUTHOR'S NOTE
A SCANNER DARKLY AUTHOR'S NOTE
A SCANNER DARKLY AUTHOR'S NOTE
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A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick http://www.american‐buddha.com/scandark.authornote.htm<br />
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A <strong>SCANNER</strong> <strong>DARKLY</strong> <strong>AUTHOR'S</strong> <strong>NOTE</strong><br />
This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much<br />
for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children<br />
playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed run<br />
over, maimed, destroyed but they continued to play anyhow. We really all<br />
were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and<br />
playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was<br />
beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example,<br />
while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry<br />
Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie<br />
Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these<br />
children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead<br />
of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of<br />
those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each.<br />
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in<br />
front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in<br />
judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a lifestyle.<br />
In this particular lifestyle the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you<br />
are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.<br />
It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence.<br />
It is not different from your lifestyle, it is only faster. It all takes place in days<br />
or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as<br />
Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a<br />
whole lifetime.<br />
There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were<br />
wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences<br />
were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science,<br />
which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because<br />
anyone of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate<br />
from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who<br />
kept on playing. I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So,<br />
though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than<br />
I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this<br />
sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings,<br />
the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment.<br />
And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful.<br />
If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good<br />
time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the<br />
punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or<br />
morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause<br />
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A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick http://www.american‐buddha.com/scandark.authornote.htm<br />
andeffect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love:<br />
To Gaylene deceased<br />
To Ray deceased<br />
To Francy permanent psychosis<br />
To Kathy permanent brain damage<br />
To Jim deceased<br />
To Val<br />
massive permanent brain<br />
damage<br />
To Nancy permanent psychosis<br />
To Joanne permanent brain damage<br />
To Maren deceased<br />
To Nick deceased<br />
To Terry deceased<br />
To Dennis deceased<br />
To Phil<br />
permanent pancreatic<br />
damage<br />
To Sue permanent vascular damage<br />
To Jerri<br />
...and so forth.<br />
permanent psychosis and<br />
vascular<br />
damage<br />
In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They<br />
remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was<br />
their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let<br />
them be happy.<br />
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