Rating: 
Summary: One of Dick's four or five best
Review: If you are coming to "Do Androids Dream..." by way of "Blade Runner", the film (loosely) based on the book, be warned: the two are similar only in their most basic plot outlines. As is typical of Dick in his prolific middle period (roughly 1962-1970), there is a lot going on in this novel. The main theme, dehumanization, is amplified by each character and situation, but Dick creates a rich environment that is equally compelling as the way that theme is explored. In short, Rick Deckard's job is to kill renegade androids, a job he finds taking its toll on him. Sadly, he's not the only one who is feeling dehumanized: witness the existence of the Penfield Mood Organ (one of Dick's most touching inventions), through which one can alter one's state of consciousness by dialing the appropriate setting (such as "the desire to watch television, no matter what's on"); witness the cult around Wilbur Mercer, a vague messianic figure whose (literally) uphill struggle and persecution an individual can share by grasping the handles of a little black "empathy box"; witness Buster Friendly, a television personality bent on exposing Mercerism as a sham; and, lastly, witness the popularity of artificial animals (such as the electric sheep of the title) in a post-apocalyptic world where most real animals are either dead or sterile from radiation. That Dick manages all of these sharply drawn ideas (and more, as well as a number of interesting characters) while still keeping the plot moving swiftly and ruminating on the nature of humanity is a tribute to his brilliance. "Do Androids Dream..." is not a perfect book -- there are a few loose ends at novel's close -- but it is a rich and rewarding one that retains its impact as the years pass. As a summation of several of Dick's ideas, it may also be the ideal introduction to this author's work. Jason Kruppa
Rating:
Summary: Timeless SF
Review: Though much science fiction of yesteryear is now dated and reads blandly, SF visionary Philip K. Dick was well ahead of his time and his best works, including this masterpiece, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This book works on two levels. On the one hand, it is an exciting, fast-paced, and highly entertaining SF action adventure. This facet of the novel was, of course, captured in the movie Blade Runner. However, it also has a deeper, below the surface, entirely different meaning to it. In this book, Dick asks us what it means to be human. If you read this book and dig below the surface to the core themes, you may find that the answer may be a lot different than you think. Whatever level you take the book on, it is a masterpiece-enjoyable, entertaining, and yet literary and profound. Even the seemingly wacky title is perfect. Read.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Science Fiction
Review: The title of this novel clearly demonstrates that this book is going to deal with some man-machine sociological technological "issues". That it does. When reading a biography on the author, I found out that he only made something like $9,000 on the book (which is disappointing), yet it was a sci-fi hit in the theater, grossing millions. Five Stars.
Rating:
Summary: One of Dick's four or five best
Review: If you are coming to "Do Androids Dream..." by way of "Blade Runner", the film (loosely) based on the book, be warned: the two are similar only in their most basic plot outlines. As is typical of Dick in his prolific middle period (roughly 1962-1970), there is a lot going on in this novel. The main theme, dehumanization, is amplified by each character and situation, but Dick creates a rich environment that is equally compelling as the way that theme is explored. In short, Rick Deckard's job is to kill renegade androids, a job he finds taking its toll on him. Sadly, he's not the only one who is feeling dehumanized: witness the existence of the Penfield Mood Organ (one of Dick's most touching inventions), through which one can alter one's state of consciousness by dialing the appropriate setting (such as "the desire to watch television, no matter what's on"); witness the cult around Wilbur Mercer, a vague messianic figure whose (literally) uphill struggle and persecution an individual can share by grasping the handles of a little black "empathy box"; witness Buster Friendly, a television personality bent on exposing Mercerism as a sham; and, lastly, witness the popularity of artificial animals (such as the electric sheep of the title) in a post-apocalyptic world where most real animals are either dead or sterile from radiation. That Dick manages all of these sharply drawn ideas (and more, as well as a number of interesting characters) while still keeping the plot moving swiftly and ruminating on the nature of humanity is a tribute to his brilliance. "Do Androids Dream..." is not a perfect book -- there are a few loose ends at novel's close -- but it is a rich and rewarding one that retains its impact as the years pass. As a summation of several of Dick's ideas, it may also be the ideal introduction to this author's work. Jason Kruppa
Rating: 
Summary: Cool Cyberpunk before Cyber was Cool
Review: A lot of people credit Gibson for the cyberpunk genre. However, you'll find many of the themes right here: alienation, our relationship to machine intelligence, the fusion of worldwide cultures, the noir-world of moral relativism. This is the story that the film Bladerunner (excellent in its own right) was based on. However, it is important to realize that the film was very loosely based on it; there is one scene in the book that is virtually identical to the film, but beyond that it is quite different. Unfortunately, I find that Dick can really meander towards the end of his longer works (unlike his tightly plotted short stories). Thus, I can only give it four stars. Nevertheless it is a timeless classic that will be of interest to anyone interested in what the future of man-machine interactions might hold.
Rating: 
Summary: Well, that was convoluted and not terrible insightful
Review: I should preface this review by saying that I'm a huge fan of PKD, or atleast his short fiction. I rank him as possibly the greatest short SF writer ever. However, his novels stink to high holy hell. The book reads like 3 or 4 short stories that have somehoe been slammed together and fused into some unholy spawn of the underworld that contains almost nothing resembling a coherent story. There's obviously supposed to be a deeper question brought up by this book of "What it means to be alive", but it's horribly executed. The characters are often placed in unlikely situations and their reactions make little sense. The plot twists double back on themselves far too quickly for someone to actually follow. Often times the location and surroundings randonly change in the middle of a paragraph with little to no warning. Even the final "religious revelation" of the main character seems trite and cliche. There are themes of religion vs mass media, artificial vs natural life and even good vs evil, but none of these are drawn out to anything resembling a conclusion. Some of them never get past the set up stage. Overall I was incredibly disappointed in this book and would recommend against it.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Science Fiction
Review: The title of this novel clearly demonstrates that this book is going to deal with some man-machine sociological technological "issues". That it does. When reading a biography on the author, I found out that he only made something like $9,000 on the book (which is disappointing), yet it was a sci-fi hit in the theater, grossing millions. Five Stars.
Rating:
Summary: Idios to Koinos Kosmos: Attraction, Empathy, and Androids
Review: This book, known for its tie-in to the SF blockbuster film Bladerunner, is a distinct beast. One of Dick's best, most fully developed, and imagined novels, it takes place on a radioactive wasteland-Earth in the not-so-distant future, after a war that killed virtually all animals (whose prices, even when no specimens are available, are kept in auction guide-like catalogues called Sidney's Animal and Fowl), and necessitated lead codpieces to protect the human germ line in the minority not turned into "specials"-radioactive rejects such as one of the book's two male protagonists, Jack Isodore. The main, tough male character is Rick Deckard, a married bounty hunter who steps up to the plate after his senior colleague is killed in the line of fire. One thing that I don't think comes through in the film, but which is a major focal point of the book, is the metaphorical, metaphysical status of the weak, the feminine, the loving-emotional-animal axis so central to our mammalian human being. As always in Dick, it helps to look beyond the action to the philosophical or metaphysical verities that are being expertly explored through the condensed tool of his nonpareil fiction. Here it occurs to me that the "being-a-man" coolness (i.e., emotionlessness) of the prototypical-and ideal-1950s male is here what is being taken to task. In non SF pulp forerunners to a book like Androids-in the works of Raymond Chandler and his hardboiled ilk, that is to say, in detective fiction-the desirable femme fatale is resisted as the detective (the "private dick," as the slang goes) solves the crime. In Androids-which is a kind of metaphysical detective story-the Deckard character makes a mistake of falling for Rachel Rosen, an attractive young female with attractive small "Irish" buttocks, large grown up-woman eyes, and a Jewish last name. She at first appears to be the daughter of the head of The Rosen Association, a rich corporation at the forefront of extraterrestrial android manufacture. The Voigt-Kampff test, however-a sort of polygraph that asks pointed questions trying to stir human-style empathy, such as what would one think about a couch made of human hide-reveals that she is a Nexus 6, the most advanced type of organic robot. It is interesting both that Rosen is given a Jewish name and that the Voigt-Kampff test is thought in the book to be ineffective in detecting certain schizophrenic patients. For Dick's true topic is not technology and hovercar chases but empathy. With his bounty money Deckard replaces his electric sheep with a real goat, bought from the Rosen Association at considerable expense. This is a huge status symbol. The book opens with a marital dispute over a Penfield Mood Organ, a device that can program emotions, even rather exotic ones such as 481, "awareness of the manifold possibilities of the future," 888, "the desire to watch TV, no matter what's on it," and 594, "pleased acknowledgment of a husband's superiority in all matters." Moreover, the main religious figure, and the number two personality on the planet after TV celebrity Buster Friendly, is Mercer, an old man whose experience of climbing up a rocky hill while stones are thrown at him can be accessed by anyone with an "empathy box"-a black box with two handles that somehow conveys not only the experience of being with Mercer, but his actual wounds as he makes his Christlike trek. When Deckard must wrangle with his mission-to kill other AWOL Nexus-6 andys, some of them females with the same alluring form of Rachel Rosen, with whom the bounty hunter makes the plunge-the reader is forced to contemplate what it is that truly ties him to others, what makes him better (or not) than an animal, a what-who-by turns insures and interrupts his essential loneliness. He is a detective on a mission to kill that which he loves-a difficult proposition, and one that all life in principle faces. The woman, the goat, the sexy android, his wife, the escaped androids, and even a spider with its legs being torn off all provide the opportunity for reflection on the status of life's common unity, and its ability to recognize itself in itself. Near the book's end Deckard finds a toad-it may be the last one on Earth-and brings it home to his wife, who discovers it is electric. Of course, we too are, in a sense, electric, although our maker(s) are not corporations we can locate by browsing through the Yellow Pages. As biologist Jean Rostand wrote, "Biologists come and go. The frog remains." The beauty and sadness of Dick's world is he presents us with a believable scenario in which the frog is gone. Metaphysics disguised as science fiction: a meditation on loneliness, solipsism, and empathic connection in a vast universe where, ultimately, we must take on faith that the idea of what the Greeks called a Koinos Kosmos (shared universe) when all we can feel directly is our own, individual, Idios Kosmos (private universe). The Hebresque paramour, Rachel Rosen, is the killable other, identified as such by signs so subtle, we might, as any private dick knows, be guilty of displaying them ourselves. When you consider that the trait sought for that separates the android organic machine from the "real" human is precisely the capacity to empathize, you realize that this is a major work by a master.
Rating:
Summary: An intelligent, thought-provoking masterpiece of sci-fi
Review: In 2021, after World War Terminus, life on Earth has changed forever. Those who were not killed either emigrated to other planets or chose to remain on a tainted planet. With most species of animals dead, live specimens are prized possessions, and for those who can't afford a live animal, companies build artificial ones. Some even build artificial humans. Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter, sent to find and to retire rogue androids, or "andys," who manage to find their way back to Earth. The government has banned them, fearful of what they might do, especially since they blend in so well with regular humans. But, the more contact that Rick has with the Nexus-6 android Rachel, the more he begins to question what life is. Can an artificial life form have empathy? What happens when a human starts to have empathy for an artificial life form? Philip K. Dick's masterful novel deals with these issues in a fast-paced, realistic environment. All the characters are finely drawn, especially the andys, and the intelligent story keeps your attention. I also found it relevant with what's going on in the world today. It's one of those novels that I just couldn't put down. A superb sci-fi novel.
Rating:
Summary: Seen the movie? You'd better read the book too!
Review: This 1967 novel inspired the classic movie _Blade Runner_, and it remains Dick's most popular book because of that association. But because the movie altered so much of the original, the book has a vibrant life away from it...and it's an incredible achievement. Bounty hunter Rick Deckard (married in the book version) goes on the search for the Nexus-6 androids loose on a nearly abandoned Earth where wildlife has come close to extinction. Dick explains the background much more thoroughly than the movie, and places special emphasis on the absence of genuine animals on Earth; Deckard's desire to possess a real animal instead of a robot copy becomes the focal point of his struggle to define his own humanity. John Isidore, a mentally deficient "chickenhead" who falls in with the androids (never called 'replicants' as in the film), is the other symbolic half of this confrontation with what it means to be human; the movie would change him into William Sanderson's diseased inventor. Throughout, Dick uses his piquant humor and dead-on satire to enthrall the reader. A classic SF novel, no arguing about it, and it lead to a classic, if extremely different, SF film. A fascinating read. Even if you claim to dislike science fiction, you need to pick this one up. It may change your opinion of the whole genre. (And make you want to read more Philip K. Dick --there's a lot more great stuff out there!)
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