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Chapters: Katharine Hepburn, Meg Ryan, Glenn Close, Robert Mitchum, Marcus Giamatti, Paul Giamatti, John Ratzenberger, Seth Macfarlane, Chloë Sevigny, Dana Delany, Katherine Heigl, Hope Lange, Jason Robards, Brian Dennehy, Richard Belzer, Christopher Lloyd, Cassie, Daniel Wakefield Smith, Gretchen Mol, Treat Williams, Topher Grace, Jonathan Brandis, Kari Wührer, James Van Der Beek, Dylan Mcdermott, Bryce Dallas Howard, Glenne Headly, Richard Muenz, Michael Buckley, Amy Brenneman, Will Friedle, Paul Dano, Kevin Nealon, Justin Long, Michael Weatherly, Jesse Metcalfe, Heather Thomas, Mary Philips, Marilyn Borden, Madeline Zima, Jenna Von Oÿ, Jenna Dewan, Nolan North, Bill Moseley, Ted Knight, Linda Evans, Roger Bart, James Naughton, Gary Merrill, Mark Linn-Baker, Erika Slezak, Jesse Bradford, Lauren Ambrose, Stephen Macht, Michael Jai White, Becki Newton, Ed Begley, Jayne Meadows, Elisabeth Röhm, Audrey Meadows, Peter Hermann, Justin Lazard, Dyanne Thorne, Rosalyn Borden, Noah Bean, Matt Newton, Shelley Hack, Peter Paige, Loring Smith, David Alan Basche, John Bair, Evan Ross, Grant Goodeve, Jennifer Westfeldt, Arline Judge, Bruce Weitz, Royce D. Applegate, Lucia Chase, Tom Noonan, Dylan Bruno, Mary Louise Wilson, John Terry, Thomas Ian Griffith, Chris Bruno, Deborah Walley, Roberts Blossom, Titus Welliver, Nate Barlow, Dennis Holahan, Diane Venora, Allie Dimeco, Adam Lavorgna, Joseph Mascolo, Tony Amendola, Kevin Heffernan, Eric Bradley, John Sharian, Kevin Navayne, Jensen Daggett, Guy Hedlund, Abby Elliott, Henry Simmons, Michael Sopkiw, David Pittu, Matt Ross, Karen Kopins, Theodore Von Eltz, Nicholas Art, Jennifer Guthrie, Graham Beckel, Adam Donshik, Richard Henry Cummings, Robin de Jesús, Scott Terra, James Debello, Larry Sullivan, Shirley Grey, Horace Mcmahon, Heather Simms, Ralph Camargo, Ryan Michelle Bathe, Mónica Dionne, John Bobek, Biff Mcguire, Matt Brown. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 589. Not illustrated. Free updates...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=383899 ... Read more

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Weekly news and general interest magazine that is distributed weekly by inclusion inside certain Sunday Newspapers across the U.S. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Giamatti was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was a Yale University professor who later became president of the university and commissioner of Major League Baseball. His mother, Toni Marilyn, was a homemaker and English teacher who taught at Hopkins School and had also previously acted.Giamatti's mother was Irish American; his paternal grandfather, Valentine Giamatti, was an Italian American, of parentage from Telese, and his paternal grandmother, Mary Claybaugh Walton, was from a New England family. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Illusionist is a 2006 period drama written and directed by Neil Burger and starring Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, and Paul Giamatti. Based loosely on Steven Millhauser's story "Eisenheim the Illusionist", The Illusionist tells the story of Eisenheim (Norton), a magician in turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna. The film premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opened the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival; it was distributed in limited release to theaters on August 18, 2006, and expanded nationwide on September 1. ... Read more

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The Cover Story - Russell Crowe by Paul Giamatti - Has marriage, fatherhood, and the envy of his peers mellowed out Hollywood's cage-rattling pub-fighting, iron-willed iconoclast? Don't bet on it. Photographs by Eli Reed. Also in this issue - The Call of the Siren Interview: Eva Green by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, Cult Star in the Making Interview: Joseph Gordon-Levitt by Elisabeth Shue, The Truth Will Set You Free Interview: Lisa Marie Presley by Melissa Ethridge, The Most Popular Interview: Amanda Peet by Radha Mitchell, Sunny Mabrey, Ryan Reynolds, Marin Freeman, Queens of Noize, Amanda Sefried, Tom Vek, Rob Thomas, Saturday Night Live's live wire Amy Poehler, Kathleen Hanna, Teri Hatcher, Liz Smith, and much more! ... Read more

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Originally written by M. Night Shyamalan as a bedtime story for his own children, the story of the Lady in the Water is an imaginative reading experience that inspires readers to observe the world around them and consider their purpose on earth. Like all of Shyamalan's work, this story offers a dark mystery with surprising twists, a touch of magic, and a powerful message at the end.

This book stands completely on its own as a unique reading experience and is intended to complement the film, rather than recreate it. While the myth of the "lady in the water" forms the basis for the plot of the film, the film characters and setting are not featured in the book. Those who both read the book and see the film will have a deeper, richer experience of Night's story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (55)

Not really for children
I'm sorry, I like MNS, but this book is NOT for young children. In fact, it's so creepy I kind of felt a little nervous after reading it myself. I understand the message, but I think that it may be lost to young children who will most certainly remember the Scrunt hiding in the grass the next time they play outside. All I can say is Mr. S should stick to making movies and leave the storybook writing to the pro's!

Lady in the Water... the book
The book is a very nice work although it hardly tells the story that the movie tells. I suggest that these two works should be sold together. I am not disappointed in my purchase but I believe that on its own it is really not as indepth enough and ifsomeone had not seen the movie they may think it not such a great deal. F. Duran

WONDER-FILLED JOURNEY
This book was an adventure of a very classical sense.It was a lovely journey through the mind of the talented M. Night Shyamalan

passionate
The art is great, and my Kearen, loves it, he is so in love with this book! Must buy if you have kids!

Lady in the Water
I think he should stick to making movies. It was very hard for a young child to understand. ... Read more

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Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D--which Arctor takes in massive doses--gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself.

Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.


From the Trade Paperback edition.Amazon.com Review
Mind- and reality-bending drugs factor again and again inPhilip K. Dick's hugely influential SF stories. A ScannerDarkly cuts closest to the bone, drawing on Dick's own experiencewith illicit chemicals and on his many friends who died from drugabuse. Nevertheless, it's blackly farcical, full of comic-surrealconversations between people whose synapses are partly fried, suddenflights of paranoid logic, and bad trips like the one whose victimspends a subjective eternity having all his sins read to him, inshifts, by compound-eyed aliens. (It takes 11,000 years of this toreach the time when as a boy he discovered masturbation.) The antiheroBob Arctor is forced by his double life into warring doublepersonalities: as futuristic narcotics agent "Fred," face blurred by ahigh-tech scrambler, he must spy on and entrap suspected drug dealerBob Arctor. His disintegration under the influence of the insidiousSubstance D is genuine tragicomedy. For Arctor there's no way off theaddict's downward escalator, but what awaits at the bottom is a kindof redemption--there are more wheels within wheels than we suspected,and his life is not entirely wasted. --David Langford,Amazon.co.uk ... Read more

Customer Reviews (135)

Surreal, Drug Addled, Paranoid
I thought this was going to be more science fiction oriented book. While there weresome elements of that if I had to describe it to somebody I would be more inclined to use words like surreal, drug addled, paranoid. In a Scanner Darkly you have a cop, who is also working undercover as a drug dealer, and he's been assigned to take out the drug dealer who just happens to be himself. He has also completely fried his brain on the imaginary drug of the novel known as "Substance D". I'd have to say this book has more in common with Huxleys Brave New World and Orwells 1984 with a 70s stoner influence than any science fiction I've ever read. The story loses me in a few spots but overall I thought it was an entertaining book worth reading.

"Echolalia, Bruce, Echolalia"
Once a guy hit his head while he was taking out the corn popper. In a split second, he decided to abandon his current life and start a new life, not to mention a secret life along with it. I'm not sure which came first - the new life or the secret life - or even which is which - but all sorts of drugs were involved, and somewhere along the way, each of his selves developed their own secrets which were kept from each other, and due to the competitive natures of his brain's halves, the only sure thing was inevitable oblivion. But before that comes a pure understanding of reality, of time as a loop, of a reflection of a reflection of reality, and other relativities. Do you remember the part in The Man in the High Castle when the fan tells the writer the truth about his story? She might have explained it better if she'd handed him a copy of A Scanner Darkly. PKD, as you might know, was obsessed with the idea that his own timeline (and memories) had been altered without his knowledge. Another idea which gripped him was that time was not a line at all, but rather "round." That he was, for example, living among Romans about 2,000 years ago, but that maybe he wasn't plucked from that setting - maybe the setting had been altered around him, so that he believed he was living in the 1960's. The roundness of time is better expressed in Scanner than in The Man... with such theories such as, "The First and Second Coming of Christ are the same event." I think the film with Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, and Robert Downey, Jr., will be quite impressive, if the director stayed true to the novel. (Please, for a change, can we have a PKD film that resembles the novel!) Dialogue and characterization are two of the things he does best, and I expect to see that reflected in the film; as well, I hope his passion, his message, and his take on reality are treated with care.

p.s. Fans of Valis, Radio Free Albemoth, and The Divine Invasion will be happy to see the return of the pink rectangle of light on the wall!

didn't see the film but love the graphic novel
i paid considerably more (several dollars) for this hardback adaptation of the film . i consider it money well spent . others will tell you why . DICK was an excellent author . get this book . you may enjoy it more if you don't have the film in your head . not to say it wasn't excellent too . can't beat these prices . you've seen other PHILIP K. DICK works turned into film . it's hardly a gamble . very interesting .

Love Never Fails
We're coming into the home stretch, folks.You and I have gone through some of Philip K. Dick's best work, such as "Martian Time-Slip" and "Dr. Bloodmoney" and "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch ".There are only a few PKD novels left, and I've saved some of the best for last.Of "A Scanner Darkly", for instance, the author said "I believe it is a masterpiece.I believe it is the only masterpiece I will ever write."Wow.

In old usage, a "masterpiece" was a piece of work that a journeyman put together to advance to the rank of master within a guild.By that measure, Philip K. Dick was a master long before he wrote "A Scanner Darkly" in 1973.Nevertheless, this novel marks a sort of leap in his skill.He was always concerned with some pretty big issues, such as the need for empathy and the question of what makes a human being.He also returned to certain themes several times, including drugs, paranoia and the uncertain nature of what we call reality.In this novel, he dug deeper into all of these matters than maybe at any time before.What's more, while he always seemed to love his characters and grieve over their pain, he clearly took "A Scanner Darkly" much more personally.In his Afterword, he goes so far as to say "I am not a character in this novel, I am the novel."It shows.

Like a lot of great sf, but unlike most of PKD's speculative work, "A Scanner Darkly" reads pretty much like a mainstream novel except for the few technological developments.In this case, there are two such advances, if you can call them that.The first, since this is PKD, is a new recreational drug.It's called Substance D, and it's scary.It gets you high in some fashion, but if you take it, you run the risk of dividing the hemispheres of your brain so that they don't work together anymore.They function separately, or in extreme cases compete with each other.Either way, that's pretty much it.You thought you had one personality?Guess again.

The other technological advance is something called a scramble suit, which is composed of a material that broadcasts a huge number of facial and body features on its surface.Put it on and you're a vague blur that no one can identify.Very useful for undercover narcotics officers; in anonymity lies their security.

So one day Bob Arctor, a Substance D addict and undercover officer (who's called "Fred" when in his scramble suit), receives orders from his superiors (who don't know who he is) to bug the home of Bob Arctor the suspected dealer and collect evidence to be used against him at trial.Because he is an addict, and because the use of the scramble suit confuses him even beyond the drug's effects, he shortly loses track of himself and begins to suspect that Bob Arctor might really be a dealer.The activities of his paranoid housemate Jim Barris don't help his state of mind, and neither do his growing feelings for his friend Donna.

In short, both Substance D and the scramble suit tend to divide a person's personality into two untenable parts, and Bob Arctor has to deal with both technologies under increasing emotional tension.Like most great novels, then, the various parts of "A Scanner Darkly" work together to reinforce each other until you can't put the thing down.But does that make it a masterpiece?

Not by itself.While all of these wheels within wheels spin around and around, though, Bob Arctor and his friends maneuver through the precisely described physical world of Anaheim, California, with all its prefabricated plastic fast-food joints and gas stations and similarly denatured landscapes.With a few exceptions, they're actually very nice people - you wouldn't think a bunch of head cases could live together peacefully for any length of time, but with a few exceptions they do.Masterful characters in a masterful setting.

Also, this may be PKD's finest prose.He always wrote very fast, and therefore his style could get a little crude, but in 1973 his output had slowed.He took his time.He placed the information he wanted to convey into his characters' thoughts rather than in his own authorial voice, which makes his wild ideas touching rather than simply interesting.So when you discover that some character, by chemical means, has entered into a whole new mode of perception but can't communicate it to anyone, it's almost enough to make you cry.

If you ask me, the most devastating aspect of "A Scanner Darkly" is the way the characters hope for a better world even while the one they inhabit crumbles around them, either because of the effects of Substance D on their personalities or because of what they're forced to do to survive.The novel's title, of course, rings a change on the famous passage from 1 Corinthians in which Paul says that although we now perceive as through a glass darkly, one day we will see clearly.The rest of the chapter implies that when our perception is thus cleared up, we will experience _agape_, what the Jews call _chesed_, or selfless love.It's the kind of love that Bob Arctor, watching his mind crumble away, surrounded in his own home by police videoscanners that see him at all times but don't know him at all, continues to believe in.

The author informs us in his Afterword that many of his characters were based on people he knew - he lists several of them along with their various fates, mostly death, brain damage or psychosis.He says he loved them all, and in "A Scanner Darkly" he did right by them.You bet it's a masterpiece.

Benshlomo says, You don't stop loving people just because they mess up.

Highly Recommend
I only discovered Dick and his work by the film adaptations that were inevitably made. A Scanner Darkly, much like most books that get made into movies, gives the viewer a much deeper and thorough perspective into a particular universe. I found this book to be much more involved and (in some cases) MUCH darker than the film.

I had seen A Scanner Darkly (the film) before, and I couldn't have helped but feel that it was merely a series of events that only barely became more than just a sum of its parts at the end. A quality film, worth watching just for the visuals, but it certainly could be confusing. The book however, seems to roll at a much-easier-to-digest pace. I rarely if ever found myself lost amongst the seedy, drug-laced, atmosphere.

It's entertaining, and perhaps more importantly, it's written well, something that tends to be harder to find in science fiction. Philip K Dick may not always what he wants to say, but he certainly knows HOW he wants to say it. This book does a good job of bridging the gap between sci fi and literature.

Really, if you even remotely enjoyed the film, you'll find something to like here. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Semana, published by Spanish Publications, Inc. on February 1, 2002. The length of the article is 954 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: Juego de poder.(TT: Power play.)(Reseña)
Publication: Semana (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 2002
Publisher: Spanish Publications, Inc.
Volume: 8Issue: 466Page: 38

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Title: Message in a bottle: 'Sideways' & 'Closer'.(SCREEN)(Movie Review)
Author: Rand Richards Cooper
Publication: Commonweal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 17, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 131Issue: 22Page: 17(2)

Article Type: Movie Review

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This digital document is an article from National Catholic Reporter, published by National Catholic Reporter on May 27, 2005. The length of the article is 975 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: Films confront history: German 'Ninth Day' examines faith during the Nazi regime; 'Cinderella Man' tracks career of 1930s boxer.(MOVIES)(Movie Review)
Author: Joseph Cunneen
Publication: National Catholic Reporter (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 27, 2005
Publisher: National Catholic Reporter
Volume: 41Issue: 30Page: 16(1)

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This digital document is an article from Commonweal, published by Commonweal Foundation on March 12, 2010. The length of the article is 866 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: A Russian lear: 'The Last Station'.(Screen)(Movie review)
Author: Richard Alleva
Publication: Commonweal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 12, 2010
Publisher: Commonweal Foundation
Volume: 137Issue: 5Page: 18(1)

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This digital document is an article from Semana, published by Spanish Publications, Inc. on August 31, 2003. The length of the article is 573 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: La vida es una caricatura.(American Splendor )(Resena de pelicula)
Publication: Semana (Magazine/Journal)
Date: August 31, 2003
Publisher: Spanish Publications, Inc.
Volume: 9Issue: 548Page: 32(1)

Article Type: Resena de pelicula

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This digital document is an article from Actual, published by Editorial Contenido, S.A. de C.V. on April 1, 2009. The length of the article is 465 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: ¢Corte y queda! Duplicidad: Clive Owen y Julia Roberts en romântica competencia.(Reseòa de pelîcula)
Author: Jesûs Guzmân
Publication: Actual (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2009
Publisher: Editorial Contenido, S.A. de C.V.
Volume: 15Issue: 187Page: 84(1)

Article Type: Reseòa de pelîcula

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This digital document is an article from National Catholic Reporter, published by Thomson Gale on September 29, 2006. The length of the article is 952 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: Cobblestones and feats of magic: 'The Illusionist' delights with old-fashioned pleasures; 'Man Push Cart' a portrayal of loneliness.(Movie review)
Author: Joseph Cunneen
Publication: National Catholic Reporter (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 29, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 42Issue: 42Page: 20(1)

Article Type: Movie review

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In Cox's humorous sci-fi classic, a man trades his soul to the Devil — and is happier for it! ... Read more