Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Story
Review: As of now, I have completed three Philip Dick novel; A Scanner Darkly, The Game Players of Titan and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. While all were thoroughly engrossing, particularly A Scanner Darkly, this story rings most accessible. Rather than deal with elements such as psychic and telekenetic powers, or the consequences of drug abuse, Dick lays out a story universal in both symbolism and characterization. While the movie exploits the idea of Rick Deckard being an adroid through a contrived and unsatisfying climax, the book requests we view Deckard as a human facing mental anguish, which borders on a stale mechanical existence. Dick's use of machine life questions our beliefs on human's motivation on topics ranging from friendship to religion. In addition, the ease by which one can understand the story is simple compared to his other novels. The ending, while glum, is satisfying because Deckard's journey to the truth allows him to surmise the phoniness that has spread among the humans he lives with.
Rating: 
Summary: Thoughtful and intelligent.
Review: Most people at this stage have seen 'Blade Runner' the excellent film adaptation of this book. But it is important to remember that the movie is an adaptation, one which explores certain themes within the book. But it does not explore all the issues raised in the book, and it is only one interpretation.The book explores a number of important and universal themes. One is the theme of love and care and empathy. It contrasts the attitudes of various individuals in terms of how much they can love or empathise with other creatures. Why is an electric sheep less deserving of love than a real one? Why are androids less deserving of love than people? Why do we objectivise some beings and empathise with others? What does our love for other people or animals say about us as people? Dick sharply contrasts the empathy of humans with the coldness of androids in the spider leg incident. This scene is powerful and disturbing. The book delves into the area of social status, as evinced by animal ownership. Deckard is prepared to beggar himself to have a large animal. Size matters, it is a statement of self worth, but in Dick's world it goes even further than this. Animal ownership is equated with humanity. To own an animal and care for it is not only a statement of career success, it is a statement of personal worth as an individual. The book also explores themes such as intellectual discrimination (Chickenheads), future slavery and rights of synthetic life forms, spirituality and religion. The interlacing of spiritual aspects into this book is done extremely well. The appearance of Mercer and his interaction with the real world does not jar at all. It is well handled by phasing in the spirituality at a time of extreme psychological stress. All in all this is an intelligent and thoughtful book. Don't think you know the story because you saw the film. There is much more in here than ever made it onto the screen.
Rating:
Summary: For Goodness Sake, Give the Man a Sheep!
Review: I avoided reading this book for quite a while; in fact, I thought I would never read it in my lifetime. But one evening as I browsed around in the bookstore, I picked it up and began skimming the first page. Twenty minutes later when the clerk announced over the intercom that the store was closing, I had to tear myself away from it. The next day I came right back and bought it. I've always been a huge fan of the "Blade Runner" movie, and I've read quite a bit about the movie and how it was adapted from the book. Knowing that basically only the names of the characters and the basic premise were the same, I didn't like what I heard about the novel and how it differed from the fantastic world that Ridley Scott created for the big screen.
But after reading just the first few pages that evening in the bookstore, I was hooked. If you are a fan of the "Blade Runner" movie, you absolutely can't go into this novel wanting to read about the characters and events in the movie. If you do, you will be disappointed. For all intensive purposes, it is an entirely different story. However, you will experience deja vu during certain sequences, such as the Voigt-Kampff test with Rachael. Much of the dialogue is identical, but the differences in the story line make the scene fresh and exciting. On the other hand, if you hated the "Blade Runner" movie, don't turn away from this book either. As I said, the two are practically two different stories. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is essentially the story of a man, Rick Deckard, who is stuck on a war-ravaged Earth because of his job and his lack of money to move off world. He is unhappy with his life, what he has accomplished, where he's headed, and what other people think about him. His largest agony is, in this world where real animals are a rarity, extremely expensive, and a status symbol, he can't afford a real sheep. He has to make do with an inferior electric sheep whose inanimate quality must be kept secret from the neighbors lest they think less of him. Deckard soon becomes obsessed with buying a real animal and will do almost anything to possess one. When Deckard has a chance to make extra money at his job of killing androids, he jumps at the chance. This will allow him to buy a real animal after all. However, throughout the events in the novel, we see that Deckard is really on a quest to give his life meaning and to find out who he really is. Filled with detail and amazing creativity, Philip K. Dick's Earth is indeed strange but believable. Dick has a talent for making the absurd seem ordinary, for merging an idea with a human element. It isn't the story or the science fiction or the plot twists that keep you reading (although they are intriguing) - it's the connection you feel with Deckard. You care about Deckard and want to know what happens to him. You relate to him, struggle with him, feel pity for him, and hope desperately that he will find what he is looking for. Even though "Androids" is extremely readable and enjoyable, there is much more going on in this short novel than meets the eye. It says a lot about human nature and human desire. The issues are serious and important: global destruction, endangered species, nuclear war, technology, social status, empathy...but overall, it questions the humanness in us all.
Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal in it's best moments
Review: Philip Dick is known to everyone these days, but some of his best work is actually unknown. This book is great, but I found it less intriguing than his short stories. Dick himself once said that he doesn't like novels because they don't cut to the chase. Having said that, some of the best moments in this novel are when the protagonist (Deckard) chases his bounty and at some point does not know whether to kill them or not. He is torn knowing that they are so close to being human, that they could actually be, if only they dreamt of electric sheep. Dick's plot machinations are great, and he proves it time and again here. There is a sudden shift in the plot which shakes you up and makes you read the book more carefully. Amazing writer who comes up with sci-fi terms (not acronyms, but cool sounding words like precogs, conapt, vidscreen, inertial, teep) like they are in some candy jar in his attic. Witty in a dry sort of way (when Deckard and his wife discuss what mood they should choose from the mood organ) and profound when he wants to be. PKD has given me a renewed love for Science Fiction. Definitely for the more paranoid among us. I recommend it heartily.
Rating: 
Summary: Seen Blade Runner?
Review: If you have seen Blade Runner don't worry about it spoiling the ending, completely different messages. Everything of Dick's I have read have been wild, inventive, and extremely interesting. I would recomend trying to completely forget Blade Runner (or vice versa) while reading this book, only the names and a few constructions are the same. I actually preferred Blade Runner's main theme, but if you are into sci-fi, you absolutely must read something by Philip K. Dick (Scanner Darkly, Ubik, Three Stigmata of Palmer Elderich, for instance) if you have not already.
Rating:
Summary: Does Phil Dick Dream of Electric Scott?
Review: Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Millennium, 1968) This short novel is best known these days as the basis of Ridley Scott's finest film, Bladerunner. The two are as different as night and day, but the two are roughly recognizable in places, in the same way some people will say "you look just like your father" to an adopted son. And since it's been a few months since I committed any great literary heresies, it's high time for one: Ridley Scott took the meat of this novel and adapted it into something greater, asking some hard questions that Dick avoided (or, perhaps, never thought to ask). For those who've been living under a rock since Bladerunner's 1982 release, the story involves Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter whose specialty is androids. Androids are no longer supposed to live on Earth; they were created as servants and workers for the mass of the populace, who migrated off earth after a nuclear war left most of the planet devastated. (Those reading the book after seeing the movie are likely to wonder where the huge population of LA comes from, given the mass exodus stage up Dick gives us. Oh, yeah, and the book is set in San Francisco.) Those hardy souls who are left Earthside try to eke out a living however they can, and everyone raises animals. There aren't enough animals to go around, though, and not everyone can afford them, so some people have android animals. Those who have android animals keep such things a grave secret, lest their neighbors shun them. (Deckard and his wife, conspicuously absent from the movie, own the electric sheep, also conspicuously absent from the movie, of the title.) You will notice that very little of the above description matches the film version. Neither does much of the book's action. The number of androids loose on earth is larger in the book, and they go to great lengths to try and off Deckard before he offs them (no descriptions of how here, lest I ruin the book for enterprising readers), leading to some of the book's most surreal, and fun, passages. By the time the reader gets to the end, there are questions in his mind as to whether any of it's real at all, or whether it's existed nowhere but in Deckard's head. The most pressing question in my mind, though, was why Harrison Ford didn't have himself an electric sheep in the movie (and why Rachel, a teen in the book, was played by the much older Sean Young). Had Dick's writing style been as stark and minimal as Scott's vision of the future, the book would have worked in spades. However, Dick tended towards melodrama here, and some of the books passages come off as amusingly overwritten given the subject matter therein. Definitely worth reading for Bladerunner fans, but those attempting Dick for the first time may be better off with his brilliant novel Valis. [Three and a half stars]
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Protagonist, Compelling Setting
Review: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" describes a day in the life of Rick Deckard, android bounty hunter. The story takes place on a future Earth. The planet is dying and many people have moved to off-world colonies. Most earth flora and fauna has died and therefore the remaining humans aspire to own as many real animals as possible. In a pinch, even an android animal will do (as long as no one finds out). The law forbids humanoid androids from living on Earth. On this particular day, Deckard is charged with "retiring" five highly advanced androids. I found this book difficult to nail down. Perhaps it was because I've seen the movie "Blade Runner" many times and kept making comparisons between the book and movie. The plot, while interesting, really just provides a framework for Dick to explore Deckard's character as Deckard struggles with issues of his own humanity. This is made more obvious at the end of the book when Deckard and another character have strange quasi-mystical experiences. I re-read the last few chapters a couple times to see if I could figure out exactly what Dick was getting at. He lost me. I still enjoyed the book. Deckard is an interesting character living in a compelling post-apocalyptic world. If you're a big fan of the movie, you'll enjoy reading the story that inspired it.
Rating: 
Summary: You don't need to read this...
Review: The novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K. Dick is the futuristic story of Rick Deckard. Rick is a bounty hunter who is assigned to "retire" humanoid robots, who live unnoticed in the San Francisco of 1992. Throughout the course of the book, Deckard finds himself caught between his own feelings and the requirements of his job to kill.
The book is very complex and fairly difficult to understand, whick makes one read a passage again, in order to see through it. Philip K. Dick made up some technical terms, because the action plays in the future. Those terms though, sometimes make the action look ridiculous, since we know today what 1992 really looked like.
The story did not attract me much and I was quite bored reading the novel. Still, there are some interesting aspects about it, such as Dick's definition of what human life is all about, which gives the story somewhat of a profound stroke.
I can recommend this book to those of you who are into science fiction and feel like reading about a dark and disturbing vision of the future.
Rating:
Summary: good sci-fi book!!
Review: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick is a science-fictionary novel which deals with the issue of genuine and artificial life. In it, protagonist Rick Deckhard, a bounty-hunter with the duty of "retiring" escaped androids, runs into uncertainty about his true origin himself.
The mainstream religion by 1992 is the so-called Mercerism, its leader being the Christ-like Wilbur Mercer.By holding on to "empathy boxes", Mercer's followers go into fusion with him and everyone else connected to the boxes. Empathy is an important human trait throughout the novel, since it cannot be felt by the humanoid robots. By trying to uncover Mercerism as a swindle, the androids even try to disprove the concept of empathy itself - as something the humans have made up in order to inhabit a virtue the androids are not able to experience... I believe that this is a pretty good book, so I advise you to read it if you have time. And if you have some idea of how they produce these androids you might want to contact me (jtesch@gmx.de), I am interested in it but I couldn't find out.
Rating:
Summary: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
Review: Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androits Dream Of Electric Sheep?" is about a Californian bounty hunter whose job it is to track down and kill androids, that have escaped from another planet.
Philip K. Dick makes in his very thrilling novel a point about the quality of humanity by depicting a society that defines human life by the ability to feel empathy. This definition makes sense within the novel, because the lack of empathy is the only criteria to tell apart human life from artificial life. Rick Deckard, the protagonist of the novel, undergoes a rapid development, that finally changes his view of life. Other important aspects that are mentioned in the novel have similar existential quality, such as the importance of religion or the influence by mass media on our society.
If you don't mind a very futuristic and somehow dark setting you will enjoy a compelling story that once you started, can't put down anymore.
| 
