Mismatched Socks

A Scanner Darkly
Philip K. Dick

Told through a variety of mental states, the narratives in A Scanner Darkly are gripping and intense; Philip K. Dick is phenomenal at taking the perspective of insanity, or at least decaying sanity.

The setting is the near future of Southern California, where the United States has become a full-blown police state. Everything everywhere is under constant surveillance; police stations all across the country are fully equipped with state of the art cameras and bugs. At the same time, the country has been crippled with the rising popularity of a dangerous psychedelic drug called Substance D; most of the characters in the book are addicted to Substance D. The main character, Robert Arctor, is an undercover cop doing surveillance on himself and his friends, and over the course of the book you experience him slowly but surely losing touch with reality. There is, of course, a great little twist at the end that packs more punch than the author seems to have intended.

A fun trippy sci-fi book with neat political themes; A Scanner Darkly is one of my favorite recent reads.