“The Eclipse/A Scanner Darkly” (1977) is the best novel by the cult American writer Philip K. Dick (1928-1982). The author himself considered it his most successful work and valued it more than any other of his works. Although the novel is considered to be a fantasy, there is not much science fiction in it. Apart from the fact that it is set in California in the 1990s, the only thing that adds to the fantastic flavour is a few unknown technologies that made the novel a forerunner of cyberpunk.

“Eclipse” is a postmodern novel with a double bottom. On the one hand, it is a fascinating detective story (drug subcultures, an undercover police agent) that keeps the reader in suspense until the last page, and on the other hand, it is a philosophical story about the tragic split of a person and the search for his or her own identity. Where are the boundaries of the human self? Am I really who I think I am? And what unpleasant secrets will the surveillance of the self reveal? The protagonist of the novel, Bob Arctor, aka Fred, a secret agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency, and at the same time a drug addict who is hopelessly hooked on Preparation C, a new dangerous drug that has swept America, is trying to find an answer to these questions.

This is the first edition of the novel “Eclipse” in Ukrainian, as well as the works of Philip K. Dick in general.