Rating: 
Summary: A good book, especially for it's time
Review: Do androids dream of sleep opens up into a whole new world, one that you would not expect to be written about in the 1960's. P.K. Dick looked ahead, and wrote what he saw.
Fans of the movie should be warned, you will see more depth to the characters here, but, not in the same sense that the movie showed you.
The movie was "based" upon, meaning, in my terms..
It was butchered to fit the likes of the director, and writers.
If you like a good story, and a fast book, read it, and you will find yourself reading PK Dick a lot more.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly overrated
Review: Very dissimilar from Bladerunner (a nearly empty world, for example, instead of an overcrowded one), and not nearly as deep or meaningful as some claim. There is plenty of better SF out there; read it instead
Rating:
Summary: Realities
Review: "People had already stopped laughing about SF, but had not started reading." K. Dick once said. It's a pity, as most people would get really impressed at how much literary consistency a book like "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" has in its 224 pages.
The author, Philip K. Dick, is known as one of most prolific writers in modern American literature. Compared with Borges by the also SF writer Ursula K. Leguin, and with Kafka by the cartoonist Art Spiegelman, K. Dick has a unique way of presenting his reality. The singular of the word reality maybe is not the best way to represent K. Dick's writings. Realities, shifting unstable realities, are more close to what K. Dick accomplishes with his books, never leaving the reader on a safe ground.
"Do androids dream of electric sheep?" is a good example of Mr. Dick ability. The main plot is the story of a cop specialized in killing runaway androids, locked in an empty earth were all smart people had already set sail for space colonies, and starting to feel strange about his job. Rick Deckard, the cop, is a good man, who's biggest dream is to have a REAL animal, flesh and blood, which is very expensive in a world were everything have been replaced by metal and circuits. This story is a perfect scenario for K. Dick show us how volatile is our notion of real. As the book goes, he twists around everything that he himself gave as certain in the beginning. Deckard MAY be an android implanted with memories of somebody else, Mercer, the modern equivalent of Jesus, MAY be a god or a fake, Isidore, a retard, MAY be the only one to understand the truth of this world. All this "mays", together with a precise and hard way of writing, makes "Do androids..." a test for your notion of reality. But, in nowadays, who really has a precise notion of reality?
For all that, and much more, "...of electric sheep?" is a burst of creative writing, as good as any really inventive book, anywhere and anytime, not just a "good SF book". I was going to say that "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" is a "modern classic", but I gave up. There is nothing of classic in this book, and everything of modern. K. Dick's style is absolutely new, absolutely tuned with our days. The best is to call it, perhaps, a "modern modern book".
Rating:
Summary: Lessons from the fall of man that never happened.. yet
Review: Having read this book for the the third time I am only just now grasping the delicate message that Phillip K Dick so carefully wove into this novel. Despite the sucess of "Bladerunner", a movie that only slightly borrows from the book, and I think this is to the better.
Centered around a gravely wounded earth, that may or may not be dying, "Do Androids..." is a story about one man amoung the multitudes of humanity comming to the realization that he "feels" for the androids that he is employed to track and kill. The vehicle for his conversions is the bleakness that he feels within his own soul... I feel that he struggles with this inner sorrow right to the end of the book, with his discovery at the end being a glimmer of salvation, until his wife shuts it out...with the line "...its electric you know...", and you realize the signifigance of his struggle... his search for meaning, for reason to be, and a reason that the "andys" are not allowed to be. In his job, killing rogue androids, he gives a test, and empathy test, to determine the response... different for humans and androids, it is through this test that I feel he comes to pity that which he is forced to destroy. In the bleakness of the environment and that of his own soul, you can sense the struggle to continue, to go on living a human life. This is why I feel the title sums up Deckard's inner question... "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep." Do they feel as he does, only in a machine-like, autonomous manner, is his bleakness mirrored in the bleakness felt by Pris in her sorrows at the deaths of her friends... is this not a form of empathy. Does this not defy his reasons for judging them. I feel the lesson from this book is one of Mankind keeping a closer, more compasionate view of the thinks we alter and create. For us to realize that feeling is an unmeasurable quality... a thing beyond programming, or construction. It is a thing discovered. And I think Phillip K Dick answers this well.. by giving us no answer at all
Rating:
Summary: An excellent story, a lousy author
Review: While the story is facinating, the author's lack of mastery of the english language can often get in the way of enjoyment. You most likely know they story - Blad Runner was based on this. I don't wish to give too much away but it does try to answer the question of what makes us all human
Rating:
Summary: Great book, just finished it!
Review: I found this book very exciting. However there is a deep underlying philosiphy to it. I can't explain it, but there is much more going on than appers on the surface. All in all I would recemend this book to any avid sci-fi reader
Rating:
Summary: The book is always better than the movie...
Review: "BladeRunner" is one of the better Sci Fi movies of all time -- yet it pales compared to the book.
"Androids" is much more than the movie would lead you to believe. As with all of Dick's books, beneath the swirling surface lies several haunting subplots, and as always a bittersweet sense of melancholy.
If you've never read any of Dick's work, this would be a good book to start on. A caution: I have found some of his work more reminiscent of Burrough's "Naked Lunch:" wild, paranoid and twisted. One has to be in the right mood ...
For further reading I would start with "A Scanner Darkly,"
"Flow My Tears the Policeman Said," and "The Man in the High Castle"
Rating:
Summary: must read scifi. the future is now.
Review: See the movie, read the book or vice versa. One of the best sci-fi books to ever grace a library shelf, or the big screen. The source for "Bladerunner". Must read. Scary novel about future science, detective work, society, philosophy, slavery, murder and death. In this age of organ transplants, cloning, medical miracles and computer marvels, Androids are just a step away. For other references and plays on this book listen to Public Radio's "Ruby" series by ZBS Media
Rating: 
Summary: If you're a fan of Blade Runner, and never read it ...don't!
Review: I first picked up this book many years ago when reading the blurb that this was the book on which the movie "Blade Runner" was based.
Now the movie "Blade Runner" starred a then relative unknown in Harrison Ford, and was as dark a sci-fi movie as I had ever seen. To me, the pictures, the lighting, the sound and the plot raised questions about what is humanity, and where is the line between humans and inhumans crossed by either side.
The movie I rate among the best sci-fi movies of all time.
The book on the other hand was a disappointment.
In part this may come from my enjoyment of the movie, but I found the book much drier, and lacking in atmosphere.
The characters don't seem as clearly defined and the end came across far too loosely.
For lovers of the movie, some will enjoy it but others, like myself, will wish they hadn't bothered to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Phillip K. and Ridley S. ask "what is human?"
Review: Not only did Phillip K. Dick produce an amazing work which is more philosophical and intellegently reflective than 99% of other sci-fi, he touches on the BIG question - "What is human?"
But the real triumph is director Ridley Scott's movie based on the book. How many times has a movie been better than the book on which it's based?
Twice? Maybe...
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