A Scanner Darkly was one of the few Dick novels to gestate over a long period of time. By February 1973, in an effort to prove that the effects of his amphetamine usage were merely
psychosomatic, the newly clean-and-sober author had already prepared a full outline. A first draft was in development by March. This labor was soon supplanted by a new family and the completion of
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (left unfinished in 1970), which was finally released in 1974 and received the prestigious John W.
Campbell Award. Additional preoccupations were the
mystical experiences of early 1974 that eventually served as a basis for
VALIS and the
Exegesis journal; a screenplay for an unproduced film adaptation of 1969's
Ubik; occasional lectures; and the expedited completion of the deferred
Roger Zelazny collaboration
Deus Irae in 1975. Because of its semi-autobiographical nature, some of
A Scanner Darkly was torturous to write. Tessa Dick, Philip's wife at the time, once stated that she often found her husband weeping as the sun rose after a night-long writing session. Tessa has given interviews stating that "when he was with me, he wrote
A Scanner Darkly [in] under two weeks. But we spent three years rewriting it" and that she was "pretty involved in his writing process [for
A Scanner Darkly]". Tessa stated in a later interview that she "participated in the writing of
A Scanner Darkly" and said that she "consider[s] [her]self the silent co-author". Philip wrote a contract giving Tessa half of all the rights to the novel, which stated that Tessa "participated to a great extent in writing the outline and novel
A Scanner Darkly with me, and I owe her one half of all income derived from it". There was also the challenge of transmuting the events into "science fiction", as Dick felt that he could not sell a mainstream or literary novel after several previous failures. Providing invaluable aid in this field was
Judy-Lynn del Rey, head of Ballantine Books' SF division, which had optioned the book. Del Rey suggested the timeline change to 1994 and emphasized the more futuristic elements of the novel, such as the "scramble suit" employed by Fred (which, incidentally, emerged from one of the mystical experiences). Yet much of the dialogue spoken by the characters used hippie slang, dating the events of the novel to their "true" time-frame of 1970–72. Upon its publication in 1977,
A Scanner Darkly was hailed by
ALA Booklist as "his best yet!"
Brian Aldiss lauded it as "the best book of the year", while
Robert Silverberg praised the novel as "a masterpiece of sorts, full of demonic intensity", but concluded that "it happens also not to be a very successful novel... a failure, but a stunning failure".
Spider Robinson panned the novel as "sometimes fascinating, sometimes hilarious, [but] usually deadly boring". Sales were typical for the SF genre in America, but hardcover editions were issued in Europe, where all of Dick's works were warmly received. It was nominated for neither the Nebula nor the Hugo Award but was awarded the British version (the
BSFA) in 1978 and the French equivalent (Graouilly d'Or) upon its publication there in 1979. It also was nominated for the Campbell Award in 1978 and placed sixth in the annual
Locus poll. The title of the novel refers to the Biblical phrase "
Through a glass, darkly", from the
King James Version of 1 Corinthians 13. Passages from
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play
Faust are also referred to throughout the novel. The
same-titled film by
Ingmar Bergman has also been cited as a reference for the book, the film depicting the similar descent into madness and schizophrenia of its lead character portrayed by
Harriet Andersson. ==Adaptations==