Rating: 
Summary: a must in a any sci-fi fan's bookshelf
Review: Philip L. Dick presents a most disturbing vision of the future which may have shocked most readers when it was first published. After the proliferation of dark movie views of the possible future, this may be a candid story to the recent generation. A very consistent one yet sometimes it may not hold you tight enough in thrill(which happens to many writers). Unfortunately I saw the movie "Blade Runner" first, which has biased me to thinking of this book as a script, which in fact it is not. I favor a little bit Ridely's Scott interpretation as you may have noticed by not giving it 5 stars. However it is very much worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: The Best Book I have ever read
Review: This book is simply superb. It has meaning and substance, but at the same time provides the reader with action and excitement. You can also read it in two ways - the hillariously funny way or the brooding and dark way. In either case Dick still asks the fundemental questions about reality and whether the reps are being treated right by society. I've read this around seven times, own the directors cut of Bladerunner on video (watched it around five times) and own the game. This is definately one of the most interesting and enduring stories in the whole sphere of Sci-Fi.
Rating: 
Summary: Ridley Scott ran with this one
Review: While Phillip K. Dick should be credited for the idea that spawned the powerful and captivating BLADE RUNNER film, that is about all the credit he should be given. The book is initially intriguing, but ultimately fails to ask the important questions the film so perfectly presents. It may have been Dick's idea, but it will always be Ridley Scott's vision
Rating: 
Summary: Dump the book, but watch the movie!
Review: This is one of the very rare cases where first there is a book that becomes a movie; and then this movie is so much better than the book. Normaly it's the reverse (however this rule generally does not apply to books written to appear as additional merchandise with the new blockbuster). The movie (that thankfully did stray very far from this book) is "Blade Runner" - one of my all-time favorites. Maybe even the best scifi-movie ever. But the book .... . OK, I don't really like Dick. But still, this book is a low even for him. So take my advise: dump it, but get the movie ASAP!
Rating: 
Summary: Guess What?
Review: This book sucks. A fan of Blade Runner I is. A fan of this book I ain't. The plot dev is clunky. Character dev is next to non-existant. Silly twists and weak ending. I haven't read another other Dick novels but if this represents what he was up to... he was up to no good. Yes I do like SF... Pass on this.
Rating:
Summary: Futuristic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Review: In this futuristic novel, Rick Deckard is a post-apocalyptic bounty hunter contracted to "retire" fugitive androids, who winds up searching for the quality that makes him human - this is the engine that drives Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Surrounding the engine is a latticework of suggested alternate themes, which are introduced with spartan and objective efficiency. The accuracy and poignancy of Dick's prescience is only fully appreciated by keeping in mind the book's publication date of 1968, which is hard to do in light of its contemporary feel. The book's accessability is heightened by Blade Runner, its cinematic interpretation, which gives the reader a sense of familiarity with Deckard's world. The year is 2021, and the Earth has been ravaged by a nuclear war, of a forgettable albeit unavoidable origin. Most of the Earth's "normal", or genetically intact, inhabitants have long since emigrated to Mars. What is left is a society of undesirables, either "normal" inhabitants with fringe employment or genetic misfits (termed "chickenheads") given to schizophrenic behaviors. It is a society addicted to 24-hour vacuous t.v broadcasts, artificial mood stimulation and a cultish brand of religion/mysticism, called "Mercerism". Most species of animals have been eliminated or rendered near extinction, making owning a "real" animal a symbol of social distinction. Provision of a gratis sophisticated android servant is offered as an impetus for remaining inhabitants of Earth to emigrate to Mars; although, "chickenheads" are denied emigration or reproduction because of their perceived genetic inferiority. Posing a threat to this clearly delineated social order are independently thinking androids, escaped from Mars, and reverse-migrating to Earth. Deckard is hired to "retire," or terminate the fugitive androids, who are distinguishable only by their inability to invoke empathy for other androids or living organisms. Deckard's mission becomes confused when he begins to feel empathy for a female android, Rachael Rosen, further complicated his increasing more general antipathy to the task he performs. At its surface level, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is remarkable because of Dick's ability to project the moral difficulties posed by Tower of Babel-like advancements in technology. Present is the luddite concern of the problem of creating technology, which becomes capable of surpassing human invention. However, the book owes as much to Ken Kessey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) as it does its author's ability to foresee a technological Armageddon. The book's true concern lies in the eternal question of what it means to be human, which is compounded when humans attempt to classify individuals into clearly delineated categories and classifications. The same concerns Kessey expressed with the psychological classification of individuals in One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest are present in Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The difference is that Dick, in 1968, foresees the desire of individuals to be classified and receive artificial mood enhancers or detractors to deal with their classification -- a desire which emerged around the time of the millennium. (Now, isn't everyone some classification, i.e. ADD or maniac depressive, obsessive compulsive, etc.) Whereas, the mindset of Kessey's time was to react against any attempt to classify individuals. Also worked into the thematic stew is a curious examination of the role of religion and mysticism in the framework of an "advanced" society. Dick suggests the question of whether it is more important that people unite in their religious belief of a genuine religious article or whether it is merely sufficient for individuals to unite in a belief of something. Throw in a dash of the amorality of Camus and you have Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? With a sparsity of words, Dick has created a future of moral conundrums. It is a wonder that this work is not being contemplated, via multiple readings, by high school and college students throughout the country.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting concepts, but doesn't deliver
Review: There is some good stuff here, but Dick doesn't manage to pull the threads together to form a coherent novel. The characters in Electric Sheep, both the humans and the androids, never manage to evolve beyond the level of caricatures. This is probably the book's greatest weakness. In Electric Sheep the androids either try to blend into society, or they huddle together like pack animals (sheep, perhaps) and wait for Deckard to come along and blast them. They're uninteresting figures, demonstrably sub-human, and merely serve as stage dressing for Dekker's ruminations about life and death. Perhaps this is the point, but it makes for bland reading. Ridley Scott, in my opinion,, significantly improves on the material in using Dick's novel as the inspiration for Blade Runner (see the excellent director's cut, not the studio release with the corny voice-overs and the cut-and-paste ending). In the movie the roles are reversed. It is Deckard, the human, who is the tired has-been, and who up until the very end sleepwalks through his life. The androids, on the other hand, are the passionate ones. They are the ones trying to answer the big questions: "How much time do I have left?" "What is my relationship with my creator?" "How can I extend my life?" It is through watching the androids and their passion for life, killing, and finally mercy, that Deckard begins to ask what it means to be "alive". Electric Sheep was published in 1968, but the writing already comes across as dated, which would keep the novel from ranking high as literature (timelessness being a prerequisite). In the end Dick's capacity to invent an interesting concept far exceeds his ability to deliver. The prose reads, largely, like drugstore pulp. The action scenes are anti-climatic and unbelievable, and the characters are flat. There are some interesting ideas here: Mercerism as a controlling shared-experience technology based religion; empathy as the most valued of human emotions; the conversion of the class system and prejudice against "specials" - but those ideas just float around and are never really developed.
Rating:
Summary: Dick is better with ideas than characters
Review: After reading some of the other reviews here and then the book itself, I have some thoughts on, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (DADOES). This is the second Philip K. Dick novel that I've ever read (the other being, "The Divine Invasion," which I have reviewed). I think Dick really explores the question of what human means in this novel. His main character, Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police. He hunts renegade androids who have escaped from colony worlds (i.e Mars) and "retires" (kills) them. However, before he can retire the androids, he must verify that they are indeed androids. At this point, Deckard must administer the Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test, which measures instinctive emotional reactions to questions. As androids were designed without emotive capabilities (to distinguish them from humans; it seems they are otherwise indistinguishable), this is one of the few ways to identify them. Unfortunately, information emerges that says that sub-normal human with impaired with emotions could fail the test and thus be retired. I wish Dick had Deckard come to a scenario where he was very unsure about the status of someone standing before him, where he might have to take a chance... The setting of the novel is after what is called, "World War Terminus," in 2019. The World War Terminus seems to be some sort of global nuclear war, which has coated the planet in radioactive dust, which slowly killed many of the Earth's animals. "The legacy of World War Terminus had diminished in potency; those who could not survive the dust had passed into oblivion years ago, and the dust, weaker now and confronting the strong survivors, only deranged minds and genetic properties." (page 8) It retards humans, renders them infertile, ages them faster and has over non-lethal effects. I would have liked to know more about this fictional future war. One of the interesting historical quirks in the novel is that Dick predicted that the Soviet Union would still be in existence in 2019; of course one must keep in mind that Dick wrote the novel in 1968 (a 51 year projection). In this future decaying Earth, the mass media is still enormously influential. There are two main parties competing for human allegiance. There is "Buster Friendly" who is some sort of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week comedy television program and then there is Wilbur Mercer. Mercer is part of the futuristic religion of Mercerism; Dick largely leaves Mercerism unexplored. Mercer acts as a guide for Decker but says he does have all the answers... Buster Friendly then exposes Mercer as a Hollywood-produced fake. Even after this, Mercer is still there. The main purpose of Mercerism seems to be experiencing an emotional fusion with Mercer who suffers some sort of on-going persecution. To look at the title, it is necessary to go into the novel in some detail. The radioactive dust killed the gross majority of Earth animals rather quickly, so owning a real living animal is considered a major status symbol. As the animals are incredibly expensive, many people buy "electric" (i.e. synthetic, copies; analogous to the human/android contrast in the novel) animals as a substitute. The title is meant to express the paradoxical idea of whether synthetic humans (in one case of the novel, an android did not know it was, in fact, an android) dream of possessing synthetic animals. To look at Ridley Scott's interpretation of the novel in, "Blade Runner," (1982) will be next. As other reviewers have said, the film it is perhaps more accurate to say that the novel inspired the film rather than saying the film is based on the novel. I will look at differences and the pro's and cons of it. There were some substantial changes; the role of Roy Batty is significantly expanded. In the novel, he leads the last of the Nexus-6 androids (a new class of androids who can almost beat the Voigt-Kampff test). In the film and the novel, the lifespan of androids of set at four years. In the novel, it seems to be an arbitrary limit whereas in the film a cogent explanation is given. In the film, it is feared that after four years the androids (called replicants in the film; it carries more of a mass-produced ring to it) start to have emotional capabilities and would thus be able to blend in with humans. As a failsafe, the massive corporation that builds androids (Rosen Association in the novel, Rand in the film, I think) programmed their DNA to stop replicating after 4 years and thus any dead cells would not be replaced, leading to eventual death. The setting of the film is Los Angeles rather than San Francisco and I had a totally different mental picture of what Earth would look like. In the novel, one gets the impression that there are only a few thousand people on the planet, which is decaying away into nothing due to the dust. In the film, L.A. is a vibrant, somewhat decaying city where there is massive pollution but no dust. Generally, I didn't like the film though this may be simply because I'm not used to or a fan of the film noir genre. Near the end of the film, Deckard has to fight Roy Batty to retire him. In the novel, Roy just stands there and gets blasted. After some chasing, fighting and so on, there is the best scene of the whole film where Deckard is hanging onto a building by his fingertips about to fall off and Roy Batty is watching and then Roy catches Deckard just as he looses grip. Roy Batty then has the best lines of the film where he talks about life and then dies, as he is at the end of his four years. The great irony is that the hunted replicant ends up saving Deckard, his hunter who only knew his quarry due to a lack of emotions.
Rating:
Summary: Dazzling vision of a dark future world
Review: Philip K. Dick's name isn't a household one, but the movies "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall" are quite popular distillations, and to a degree corruptions, of his coolest notions: that what we think of as being reality isn't real, and what makes us human is our capacity to care about others, not our ability to think or our use of technology. "Androids" is the book that was ultimately filmed as "Blade Runner" after being rewritten by more scriptwriters than this book has main characters. The setting here is not a decadent futuristic super-city but a post-apocalyptic world, after nuclear wars have destroyed almost all non-human life on this planet. Androids here are straightforward villains, lacking the sublime human touches their on-screen portrayers brought to them; the ending is, in fact, quite different here, much less powerful than what was seen in the film---even Dick himself thought, and said, as much. Deckard, the book's hero, is a grumpy married man who just wants to do his job well and try to love his painfully unappealing wife, and he largely fails at both endeavors---even his affair with Rachael the android is pretty sad stuff, and when he finally gets a real animal as a pet (the ultimate status symbol), well...let's just say, you'll feel the end of this book like a brick tossed at your forehead. This isn't his best work, but it might well be the perfect vehicle for anybody who wants to get introduced to his morbid humor, incredible flights of fancy, and his penetrating, cosmic themes of life, love, artifice, decay, and confusion---in many ways, he was the first "cyberpunk" author, doing his best work at least twenty years before the term was even coined. If you don't constantly compare this book to the Ridley Scott/Harrison Ford movie drawn from it, you will have a very good time; it's quite spooky, cool stuff, not perfect but about as good as it gets. Dick was perhaps the most brilliant, twisted, visionary sf writer ever---see for yourself here.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good
Review: I found this to almost be a short story (maybe it is). It was nice because even though it is a pretty short book, it doesn't try to do too much. It really only has 1-2 "real" characters, but it pulls that off very well.
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