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Summary: An excellent and entartaining novel
Review: This is definately one of my very favorite sci-fi novles of all time. I must have read it 3 times withing the first month of receiving it as a Christmas Gift. I think that it blow Blade Runner out of the water.
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Summary: Blade Runner is a joke compared to this.
Review: I could never understand why Ridley Scott thought if he removed the theological aspects, the other main character (Isadore), the concept of empathy and the artificial animals and replaced them with shallower characters, long boring pans of a crowded (huh?) world, slow-motion violence and a cheese-ball narration (ei. "my name is Rick Deckard, I'm a killer" and that's it) he could improve upon the story. The movie took some of the plot and none of the theme. The only question it left me asking is "why the hell did they give this guy such a big budget to make this snorefest?" Dick was rightfully purturbed when he read the first draft of the script and said it was a load of "crap". Scott might as well have changed the names and simply said "inspired by the works of Phillip K. Dick" or some such thing. If you haven't guessed yet, I don't like the movie. Having read the book first, and still leaving a lot of room for changes, I was still disappointed at every turn. The book, in typical PKD style forces us to question our fragile reality. Can we draw lines on where life starts. Being nothing but a mass of super encoded information ourselves what stops a computer that can hold just as much info from being alive and does religion spring from the well of life or is it a side effect of it? If our existance is tattered and dismal enough can we not chug on without empathy for our fellow man, do we need an instrument that can give it to us or else fall into oblivion? And if this is the case and we kill what we perceive as inhuman yet we define humanity as empathy than should we not erase our selves? Or are we doing so as we speak? The questions can go on and on. The book (as all later PKD works) will change your precepts if your not to brainwashed or shallow to let it. If you think the book needed more action then stick with Arnie movies. (Speaking of which, Arnold was in an even more failed attempt to bring PKD to the big screen in Total Recall, a stupid, n! eedlessly violent action flick that was based on a short story. It took a long time for American action-movies to take the cue from John Woo and his contemperaries who proved cinematic violence holds a strange and twisted beauty, too late I guess for Ridley Scott)
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Summary: A slight change in style.
Review: Philip Dick (THE science fiction writer of the 60's and 70's) has created a story which challenges us with examining our perceptions of reality and the definitions of our morality. Blade Runner glazed over my favorite element of the story (Isidore) and changed the point of it. Though we are apparently supposed to believe Dick has embodied himself in the main character Deckard (Rick/Dick-get it?) I believe he has divided aspects of personality between two contrasting characters, Deckard and Isidore. Deckard is forced to violate himself in order to survive; Isidore is a reject who adheres to social rules of morality more closely than do those who impose those rules on others. Blade Runner was an 80's action movie with a moral subplot; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a moral story with a cop-action backdrop. Though Dick's cynical humor appears less than in other novels (Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; Flow my Tears the Policeman Said) it is still a very good novel. All Dickheads should read it. I know it turned me into one.
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Summary: To Fully Appeciate the Movie, you MUST Read this Book!
Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? sounds like a very strange title. This book is about the life of a "blade runner" whose job is to kill androids (known in the film as replicants or skin jobs) that have landed on earth. Reading this, you will realize how horrible the situation was for people in the movie. This explains why people were leaving earth, and why the rejects are the only ones left. This book questions our humanity, and is one of the best I have ever read.
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Summary: To sum up, one very fine book.
Review: An interesting title from one of my favorite authors, Phillip K. Dick (The man in the high castle, flow my tears the policeman said). It has a good plot and is well written. It is easy to follow, it has action, interesting characters, some good plot twists and only one flaw. It gets sort of weird near the end but other than that, one of the best reads of my life.
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Summary: Something you might not know...
Review: I remember reading an interview with Philip K. Dick shortly before his death, in which he discussed the making of "Blade Runner" and his reasons for writing the book. He said that his inspiration came from reading the diary of a Nazi prison camp commandante who complained that he was having difficulty sleeping because of the noise of crying children in the camp. Philip K. Dick was, of course, appalled at this incredible lack of empathy and asked himself, "What does it do to your own humanity when you lose your ability to recognize the humanity of others?" People familiar with Dick's other work will see the pattern. He majored in German in college and was preoccupied with the Nazis, who appear as embodiments of evil in a number of his books. I think "Do Androids..." exemplifies his creative ability to sublimate that preoccupation into a story that most people don't even realize comes from that particular source. Regarding the debate over the relationship between "Blade Runner" and the book, I think both manage in different ways to capture Dick's mood and philosophical preoccupations. The movie is excellent, hypnotic in its visual imagery. The book is also excellent, but in a more philosophical, intellectual way.
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Summary: Even better than the movie!
Review: I watched Blade Runner, the movie, a few years ago and couldn't quite grasped the implication (I was very young then, 12 or 14). Having watched the show again, read the book, listened to the soundtrack and played the game, I would say that Dick's version of Blade Runner is far more superior than the movie. The book explores the themes of what is real and unreal? Are replicants unhuman? Who are we to decide who is real or unreal? Who is God? For me, it painted a very possible scenario of the future -- Earth could very well end up up LA, 2019. I'm reading the rest of Dick's collection!
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Summary: It's life, Rick, but not as we know it...
Review: Sometimes one wonders why some people even bother to read. If you are a fan of the movie Blade Runner, and you are a little disapointed by this book, then shame on you. You shouldn't be reading books in the first place then! Rarely can movies capture all the themes and ideas of a book, and rarely can books capture the artistic cinematography of film. The two media are separate. Treat them as such. What Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are about is the routine of police bounty hunter Rick Deckard. His job is to hunt down and "retire" fugitive androids. But what the movie only scratched the surface of is WHY those androids are fugitives. Fans of the character of Data from Star Trek, or of the computer Mike from Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress will find the familiar theme of what it is that defines the difference between artificial intelligence and artificial life. This is the realization that Deckard comes to and must deal with: these androids are not mere machines with off-switches, they are living creatures, aware of their own existence and their own mortality. In the post-nuclear holocaust world that Deckard exists in, humans define life by their ability to feel empathy. Empathy for the lives of each other, empathy for the lives of the remaining animal species of earth decimated by fallout, or empathy for artificial life. Eventually, Deckard questions his own ability to feel empathy, and therefore, his own humanity. For if being alive is about feeling empathy, then how can he truly be alive without feeling empathy for the living machines whose job it is for him to kill. In the film version, Rutger Hauer's performance as one of the androids briefly captured the theme of the book, but it was never really explored and was instead sacrificed for artistic license. If you were intrigued by special effects, skip this book and rent Terminator 2. If you were intrigued by the question of artificial intelligence and artificial life, then you may want to ask if androids really DO dream of electric sheep.
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Summary: The book meant a lot to me, the review sorta says that...
Review: Absolutely incredible. Dark, nihilistic, theological sci-fi with a hilarious satirical edge. Questions the values of society, as well as the very meaning of life and redemption. How deep is it? Well, I'm doing a paper comparing it to Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"...deep enough for you?
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Summary: "Androids" Are a Dream of Their Own
Review: In Philip K. Dicks novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", Dick explores humanity not only in the near future, but also in the present. Although written in the sixties, Dick had a keen eye on what makes humans tick, emotionally as well as intellectally as he explored the life of Rick Deckard in the year of 2021. The cult classic hit movie BLADE RUNNER was loosely based upon this novel, however fans new to the book should be warned: the book is superior and vastley different from the movie. In the year 2021 Earth is slowly recovering from a world war that has destroyed most of the animal population and drives the healthy humans onto other outworld planets, namely Mars. Existing animals are taken care of by the humans unable or unwilling to leave Earth,and according to society, it is a sign of prestige and honor to take care of these animals. Humans have developed not only androids to assist colonists on other planets, but also electronic animals so humans unable to afford expensive live animals are able to keep their dignety with fake animals that look almost real. Already in the begining of the book, Dick has established a world that fits his unique style. Quetioning what is reality, identity, and consiousness is Dick's specialty. And nowhere else can you find that more prevulant in his protaganist Rick Deckard's conflict with himself as he pursues 6 renegade androids\replicants from the off worlds. During his pursuit, Rick encounters not only the replicants but also other characters that further Rick's journey into what seems is self-discovery.
Dick has not only established himself in the genre of scince fiction with his work, but has also showed what a true writer is. His ability to explore the characters lives in this particular story and expanding the readers awareness is a sign of pure genius. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" has this written between its pages.
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