A Scanner Darkly & Three Days to Never

I like Philip K. Dick’s writing, but I think I made a mistake in trying to read A Scanner Darkly so soon after seeing it in the theater.  The director seems to have made a loyal translation of the book to the movie, so there were few surprises, and I kept seeing the actors who played the roles in the movie.  I also found myself waiting to reach certain points in the story, and I eventually adandoned the book at page 72.  There were too many spoilers to keep me engaged in the book.

I had the same experience with Three Days to Never as I did with Declare: I reached the point where I was struggling too much to figure out what the hell was going on.  I like Tim Powers a lot (I think The Anubis Gates is one of the cleverest novels ever written), but these two were too muddled and indistinct for me to grasp the reality of the story.  I felt the same way about The Stress of Her Regard, and still felt lost when I had finished that book.

I know that I’ll return to Three Days to Never at some point.  I think I’m just not in the right frame of mind to read something dense and obtuse; in a few years, I may be ready for something like that.  At least, I hope that’s the case.  I have a copy of Declare at home that I bought under the same rationalization.

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