A Scanner Darkly by Richard Linklater & A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

It is the future, seven years from right now. In America 20% of the population is addicted to substance D. The drug affects a persons brain and forms a disconnect between left and right hemispheres. Agent Fred is undercover and trying to break up a drug ring but he has starting using Substance D to gain access to the group, things have gotten weird. In fact Agent Fred is a member of the circle but since his brain is operating in two hemispheres he doesn’t even know which one he is. Then there is Nu-Path rehabilitation center that no government official can even get into, so of course they are hiding something…but what? A Scanner Darkly is an excellent book and movie about a paranoid society in the very near future.

Blade Runner by Ridley Scott & Do Androids Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the movie based on it’s story Blade Runner, were both the last of it’s kind. There aren’t the huge mega-million dollar feature films that dazzle and amaze as well as engage and enlighten anymore. On the science fiction front, since Philip K. Dick’s death in 1982, there has not been an author that gives a human and real perspective, no real humanity. These two pieces are monolith’s among the pebbles of their peers.

The story follows a “blade runner” which is essentially a bounty hunter of androids. Four androids have escaped from a planet where they are basically kept as slaves. They have come to find their creator so he can undo whatever it is that exterminates their lives after 6 years. Both the film and the book stand the test time and are as relevant today as the day they were written.