Rating: 
Summary: A Lot Different than Blade Runner
Review: While I definitely enjoyed this novel, I'm surprised more people who've seen the movie Blade Runner before reading the novel (probably most readers) aren't at least somewhat disappointed. The novel moves along pretty quickly, and like most PKD novels, is easy to read, but I do have a couple of complaints. First, the androids that Deckard had to hunt down were somewhat of a letdown. The story builds up to a climax where you expect an explosive ending, at least somewhat of a struggle between Deckard and the androids, but it didn't come across that way at all to me. It was really anticlimactic. In that regard, the movie was more effective. Second, I'm still not too clear on the whole Mercerism thing. I wish PKD had gone into more detail about Mercerism and fleshed things out a little bit. Still, it's a pretty entertaining novel. Of the PKD novels I've read, it ranks around the middle. My favorite is The Man in the High Castle, and I think I'd recommend it for people who haven't read any PKD novels yet before I would this one. One other comment: if you're still interested in the world of Blade Runner, the sequels written by K.W. Jeter aren't too bad at all. Like PKD novels, they're easy to read, and though they're not great, at least you can spend more time (sort of) in the world originally constructed by Philip K. Dick.
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Summary: Reality does not escape unscathed (another PKD ...)
Review: Dick is often accused of: weak characters, careless prose, illogical plots. Let's get this issue out of the way at once and say that these charges are often true. In "...Electric Sheep" I was bugged by Rachael turning from innocent into conspirator between scenes, and by the potential hinted at but then dropped in Deckard's meeting with the other bounty hunter (this idea was eventually realised in the director's cut of "Blade Runner"). However, this is no reason to dismiss him immediately. It is only after reading "...Electric Sheep" that I finally "got" this writer. His books are snapshots of a mind at the point of snapping, as reality collapses all around. This is the persistant feature of his work, and goes some way to explaining his books' imbalances. His stories are obsessive nightmares that play out in his head, rather than conventional realistic narratives. The trappings of reality are present, but in distorted form (in this post-apocalyptic world all the animals are robots, and fallout is gradually rendering the population sub-normal), and, as the story progresses, reality is alarmingly invaded and undermined by dream logic (in this case the real-world appearance of a fictional religious figure). This entropic pattern, reproduced in most of his books, may be due in part to Dick's personal history of hallucination and mental disturbance, but has a wider interest to us: he shows, in allegorical form, how weak is the foundation for our faith in the world's knowableness. (The easiest introduction to Dick's work is probably "A Scanner Darkly"; for an interesting look at Dick's techniques, see the essay in Stanislaw Lem's "Microworlds")
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Summary: father of modernscience fiction
Review: as the title indicates, I consider Phillip K Dick one of the fathers of modern science fiction along with Robert Heinlein. This is the only book of his that I have read, but I am well versed in science fiction and cyber punk. The book is strong, the writing style is typically sci-fi, fairly straight-forward with periods of techno-babble which later make sense. THe plot is interesting and thought-provoking, and when Kurt Vonnegutt wrote about sci-fi authors in Breakfast of Champions, I think he must have been thinking of PKD. This is science fiction as well as philosophy, and I recommend this book. If you like it, I also recommend you read Neil Stephenson (Snow Crash, oh yeah), Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game), Robert Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), and whoever it was that wrote Neuromancer, I forget his name. All of their books rule but the ones I mentioned were my favorites.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Masterpiece from the Mind of Philip K. Dick
Review: This is Philip K. Dick's best known work thanks to the Ridley Scott movie. The movie is an action-packed special effects extravaganza whereas the book is more introspective philosophical affair. The novel tells the story of one day in the life of bounty hunter Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford in the movie). He lives in early twenty-first century San Francisco. A nuclear holocaust has wiped out most life on the planet. Most species are extinct, vast areas of the planet are uninhabitable and many people have migrated to colonies on Mars and other planets. Androids have been developed to function as workers on these colonies but they are forbidden on Earth. It's never made clear why they are forbidden on Earth but the penalty for coming to Earth is death and Deckard is the man who hunts down and kills the androids. Much is made over mankind's newfound love for all forms of life. The peripheral character John Isadore finds a bug outside his apartment and is filled with joy at having found a wild living creature. Isadore is a "chickenhead," genetically damaged and mentally enfeebled by the nuclear fallout of World War Terminus. Isadore starts to live with three of the androids that Deckard must retire. It comes out late in the story that the androids are not mechanical robots but rather artificially created living beings with a 4-year life span. This explains why it is so hard for the bounty hunter to tell if someone is an android and why psychological testing of one's empathy with other living creatures is needed. There's a funny scene where Deckard discovers that Rachel Rosen is an android by noting her lack of reaction to a description of a babyskin wallet. There's little point in trying to link all the plot points that are odds with each other. Dick wrote most of his novels in a hurry and not everything makes sense or is holistically consistent. That's okay. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is great escapist science fiction that I'll take any day over The Scarlet Letter or somesuch literary torture.
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Summary: A look into a possible future...
Review: This book was a bit of a surprise for me. When I started reading it, I had no idea that it was the book Blade Runner was based upon. Of course, I haven't seen the movie either, so this wasn't really an issue. About the book though, it was highly interesting. It was nothing particularly new in idea, though at its time it may have been. It is about androids and their intelligence, basically. The main character is a bounty hunter, paid to kill these androids posing as humans. The one discretion I had about this was that Phillip K. Dick decided to give these androids a sense of life. These androids wanted to live, but knew when it was time to end it. It seems that artificial intelligence should remain just that...artificial. How can you program a machine to feel emotions? I know this is a fantasy book and that anything should be possible, such as their hover cars, but this struck me as a little far fetched. The book was very well written, smooth to read. The vocabulary usage was just enough to emphasize complicity but simple enough to be easy to read. I would recommend this to people who are interested in artificial intelligence, human reactions/emotions, or science fiction. One more thing. The ending. Though I will not ruin it by telling everyone what it was about, I will say that I liked it. Phillip K. Dick could have made it a lot worse or a lot better, I don't know. This middle ground ending was good though, somehow not quite fitting yet still working for this plot. For the 200 some-odd pages that this book is, it goes pretty quickly. I am looking forward to reading other titles of his.
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Summary: ELECTRIC SHEEP? REAL PEOPLE? COOL BOOK!
Review: This is the first novel by Phillip K. Dick that I have ever read (up to this point it's all been short fiction) and it's great sci-fi. There's a reason that Dick (like Heinlein) is considered a legend in the science fiction genre because he was light years ahead of its time. Blade Runner is all about duality and the contrast of living and artificial beings. It's a great book to read and then discuss with other people because it easily lends itself to open-ended themes and symbolism. The nice thing about the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is that it tells a similar and yet different story than the sci-fi classic movie Blade Runner. You can enjoy both in their own medium and rest easy knowing that you're reading and watching a classic tale.
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Summary: Brilliant, Disturbing and Weird
Review: Phillip K. Dick wrote some really mind bendingly weird books and this is one of them. It is good science fiction that reflects the absurdity of our society.
Rating: 
Summary: Some interesting themes but...
Review: ...overall a bit of a disappointment. The issues that Dick talks about, a society which degrades ''handicapped'' people, robots who are almost human but are in a sense ruthless because they kill humans to get to earth, are intriguing but the story never really developes and the end, in my opinion, is horrible. Some might see a hidden philosophical message in the ending but to me it was just an abrupt one which didn't make any sense. Other parts of the book are also confusing. I know that some people say that if you want a sci-fi book which is mostly based on reality, at least to a certain degree, Philip K. Dick is not the author whose stories you want to read. Nonetheless I had the feeling that parts of the story were just so far off that it really interrupted a good storyline. The characters never really develope and one has no clue as to why Deckard acts like he does when he meets Rachael in San Francisco. (I know I didn't) Gotta give props to Ridley Scott who turned this average book into one of the best sci-fi movies ever. If you're a big Blade Runner fan you might want to read the book just to get another view but in the end you'll be happy that Scott's movie is based
loosely on the book.
Rating:
Summary: Read the book first...
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, more than its inspired movie Blade Runner. The film was so visually strong that a lot of plot and conversation passed right by me. I do recommend reading the book first-by first seeing the film, I found myself being distracted by comparisons and contrasts.
I recommend this book to even the most naïve reader to the world of cyberpunk. I think the main reason I found it enjoyable was that the book maintains a constant flow-not necessarily an easy read, but not cluttered by computer lingo that can be confusing to the layperson. The interactions between humans and androids were much more intricate than that in previous books I have read, for example, Deckard and Rachel's relationship. Rather than being cluttered with a bunch of cybersex talk, they engage in very emotional conversation. If you are timid about jumping into the genre of cyberpunk, this book would be a good place to start.
Rating:
Summary: My God this book is good
Review: I read this book before seeing Blade Runner, and I'm glad I did. "Do Androids Dream?" is more of a philosophical novel than a science fiction film. Basically, the premise is, "what are the philosophical implications if robots became virtually indistinguishable from humans"? In 1968, this was a mind-blowingly new idea. The vision of Philip K Dick is absolutely fascinating. For example, in order to maintain the difference between androids/replicants and humans, the government has invented a new religion, based on the idea that killing animals is highly immoral. Yet today we eat animals every day. This belief-system has artificially made a moral code which androids fail to understant.
It's a little like the blacks after the Civil War - invent white supremacy, disallowing the blacks from making their way in society as normal people - and whites can then point at them and say, AH HAH! I told you blacks need us around to help them! Look how (...) their lives are! OBVIOUSLY they are inferior! Philip K Dick makes many references to the Afro-American experience in this novel, and the theme is most disturbing. There are many, many other, even more interesting, themes in this novel; including those seen in the film. If replicants show more mercy than humans, does this not grant that they have greater "empathy"? This is a vast theme, and one that is successfully portrayed in the film. Roy Baty has a chance to kill Rick Deckard (in the film), yet he chooses to save him. This novel bears so many re-readings. For instance, yesterday I reread the part where Deckard gives the Voigt-Kampff test to Rachael the replicant (it also appears in the film!) I noticed for the first time, that the questions that Rachael does not react to are the ones concerning killing animals! Again, this is an artificial moral code, so the only reason she feels no "empathy" to wasps, butterflies etc. is that such moral codes were never natural.
ALso, she fails to react to a question about killing babies. The reason this is so is that replicants cannot have babies, and so any emotion towards "children" are denied them... To anyone hesitating before being this book: There are some aspects of this book that may turn one off. First, there is little or no action, and no film noir style. That part (great as it is!) is only in the film version. Secondly, the novel is in Philip K Dick's bizzare, almost childlike style. Do not look for brilliant prose (although there are some gems), or brilliant dialogue. Thirdly, Philip K Dick was desperately poor all his life, and all his books were written VERY fast in order to make enough money to live! Thus, the book is not as well polished as it could be 0- although it's better than some others. Fourth, there are some parts of the book that are - well - strange. VERY strange. Philip K Dick was the master of strangeness. If you prefer books where both feet of reality are kept firmly planted on the ground, this is probably not for you. Fifth, the book is extremely rich in religious imagery, especially towards the end. Although these are my FAVOURITE parts of the book, if you find religion a bore, or disturbing, then maybe this should be given a miss... BUT - if you don't mind your mind being stretched - if you don't mind a rather ropy style - if you LIKE PHILIP K DICK or GREAT GREAT IDEAS - then read "Do Androids Dream" now! Oh, and by the way, because of Blade Runner the Movie, this book has sold more copies than all PKD's other books put together. It was the event, the film was, that made PKD a name as a great writer - some two months after he died of a stroke... Oh well. Thank you Ridley Scott, and thank you Blade Runner. You have opened PKD's books to a wide, wide audience...
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