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Summary: The best fiction story ever written
Review: A very intriguing story that once you start reading, you just can't stop. Also recommend the soundtrack.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated science fiction?
Review: I think this book is flawed in its construction. I'll give an example: after the main character discovers a complete android infrastructure, a shadow social world, he does nothing about it. He has killed his target, and the existence of the shadow society no longer interests him. This is absurd, the same as the fact that the androids had engaged humans to kill androids, and these humans had never heard of the real thing. The book presents interesting possible future problems on androids, but I don't like the way they are handled.
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Summary: Wheres the action
Review: This book starts out really good and sets you up for a fast paced adventure about a bounty hunter out to kill androids. But when it comes down the actually hunting its boring. All the action sequences are under a paragraph and in the end you feel cheated. However, if you plan to read a well written and good story this is a good book. But if action is what you desire, go to the next one on your list to read.
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Summary: This is not the film, but is just as good.
Review: Whenever a really good book is adapted into a really good film, the combined package is more than the sum of the parts. That is the case with this book and subsequent film. Other examples of excellent duets are "Solaris" and "Angel Heart/Falling Angel". (Board games being made into films rarely make it in my book, as exemplified by Clue.) What I like about these couples is that the book and the film both take a different spin on the core matter resulting a more interesting, multi-layered story content. In this particular case, the two are quite different, but the book delivers some nice background and some meaty details which would have been difficult for the film to digest and present. The Deckard of the book is decidedly not the Harrison Ford of the film, and he is [unhappily] married ! He also comes off more as a working stiff rather than the self confident, independent and assertive movie Deckard. Realism can be so dicey in film, but it is the very heart and soul of literature of this type. Consider Ian Flemming's own James Bond, who in the book Goldfinger, worries about about money, repairs to his car and consumes Benzadrine before going to the Casino with his boss to give him confidence, and later questions if he perhaps took too much. In a nutshell, this illustrates the difference between the two Deckards. I now berate myself for not reviewing the book as a book, but as a companion to the film. The story involves a man living in a future Los Angeles, several years after a murkily described world war. The successful types have all left earth and went on to colonize other planets, while leaving the "losers", riff-raff, poor and an infrastructure (like law enforcement) behind on Earth. To our way of thinking, it does not seem so bad. Even the lowliest dirtbag gets to ride around in a hover [car/van?] and housing is plentiful. However, amongst the peculiar futuristic twists in logic and shifts in standards, the population has fallen so drastically that it now vogue to live in very crowded areas, in close proximity to one's neighbours. The cultural outcasts on the other hand, may live alone in a huge completely empty appartment building, or block, or neighbourhood. In another twist (considering the new Japanese electronic pets) The afformentioned war killed off much of the animal life on the planet, and one of the most coveted posessions is a real live animal pet such as a rabbit or a horse. For the lower class, electronic substitutes provide an acceptable facade, the way a bicycle can substitute for a BMW. One of the tasks for the law enforcement division is the elimination of human electronic substitutes who are patently not acceptable, as their presence on Earth is indicative of massacaring their human former owners and escaping. The reason these androids escape to Earth differs in the book and the film, but the basically attempt to hide and merge. However, their inability to demonstrate any sort of empathy (an exclusively human reaction) eventually reveals them to be artificial. Deckard's job is to track down these articial humans, apply an empathy test and destroy them when he determines them to be androids. (He has never, apparently, killed a human by mistake). A new type of android is developed that has memories implanted from real people. This new type may or may not be detectable by current testing methods and Deckard lands up in the middle of attempting to earn large bonuses tracking several of these new androids down and killing them. Inevitably, there is some confusion, with some telltale signs prompting one to think that some humans are androids, and some androids are human. This raises the philosophical question about the substantive difference between the androids and humans, the ethics of terminating an otherwise completely convincing human. If I had read this book before seeing the film, I would have described it as being a little quirky and eccentric. However, taken in the complete package, as I have described, is is both an extremely rich foundation *and* extension of the film.
Rating: 
Summary: his best
Review: It's January 2021 and Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police Department. He hunts down and "retires" rogue androids (andys). Thanks to technology from companies like the Rosen Association, it's getting increasingly hard to tell the androids from the humans, but there is an empathy test that Deckard can administer; androids don't feel empathy for humans or for each other. Meanwhile, due to the devastation wreaked by nuclear fallout from World War Terminus, animal life is nearly sacred and pets are status symbols. Deckard and his wife have an electric sheep just to try and keep up with the Joneses. Also, the fallout is starting to impact the genetics and fertility of humans, so the government is advocating emigration to Mars, running a Public Service Ad that warns: "Emigrate or degenerate! The choice is yours!" Amidst all of this, a new religion has arisen called Mercerism. It's founder, Wilber Mercer, is an empath who is taking all of mankind's suffering upon his own shoulders. Adherents transmit their pain to him through Mercer Boxes and receive inner peace in return. Now Deckard has been given the assignment of retiring a gang of 8 andys and, to his own horror, he finds that he is starting to develop feelings of empathy for these humanoids while Mercer is telling him that it's wrong to kill the androids, but that he has to go ahead and do it anyway. This is my favorite of Philip K. Dick's novels. It deals imaginatively with the big themes that are central to speculative fiction, especially what is it that makes us human. And, unlike some of his other books, he maintains the momentum of the basic story line throughout and keeps everything reasonably coherent. GRADE: B+
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Summary: What is consciousness?
Review: The best science-fiction is not about making predictions of the future(that's a simplistic adolescent take on science fiction), the best science fiction makes a point about the human condition, it makes the reader consider or realize an underlying truth about life here and now. This novel is a good science fiction book. In it Philip K. Dick, seems to implicitly ask "What does it mean to be alive?", "What is consciousness?" "Can consciousness exists indepedently from a physical body?" (The androids have a consciousness but not a human body), "Is the psyche just a collection of thoughts?" and "is there a psyche at all?". This novel seems to ask these questions, and although they are never answered (and thus the "?" in the title), it creates a sense of wonder in the careful reader. The whole novel has an existentalist tone; and in the end, Decker is portrayed as resigned to just accept life as it is. Please don't be deceived with the cover, this book has little in common with the movie (although the movie is also great!). You should think of this novel as different story (although both movie and book follow a rough outline). The movie was inspired by this novel, and even captures a little of the same essence as the novel; but this book can only be appreciated in its own merit.
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Summary: Do not compare it with the film!
Review: Blade Runner - the book - was one of the few books that made me a sci-fi fan. I was impressed both by the author's style and ideas. Even if today one's vision of the future would be rather different than the one described in the book, it still impacts the reader. After all, a robot world is not too far away, and specialists affirm that robots will soon be better than man, which they are already in some fields. I think that the subtitle of the book "Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep" reveals what the underlying subject is; namely, that human beings can kill without any emotions an android, but at the same time dream to own one -- less sophisticated and disguised a an electronic animal. And be ready to love it and to take care of it. This paradox, which is the strength of the book, does not appear at all in the film "Blade Runner". If the latter is a really good thriller, with good actors and a convincing screenplay (in both versions), it does not translate Philip K. Dick's fear that in the future, our emotions will be distorted to the point that a man will not be able to make the difference between real feelings and needs.
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Summary: Buy without the Blade Runner cover - suffers from excess
Review: Philip K. Dick books are quickly written books wildly careening between ideas and mixed up plots. He's like a literary anarchist, eschewing structure and command in order to throw everything at the reader. When it works, it's brilliant. When it doesn't work it's horrible. Many times you'll finish a Philip K. Dick book exclaiming "That's it???? Where's the ending?" and other times you'll wonder why such a great idea got passed off to such losers. This book is one of the latter. There are some great ideas throughout including the emotional machine where you can choose your emotions for that day or hour ("today I will be indulging in a deepseated depression" - "he wasn't sure whether he should push angry or concillatory") as well as the company that keeps making these artificial humans better in order to make Decker's job more difficult. THere are also the robot sheep that exist solely in order to give the illusion that humans still have live pets. Unfortunately the plot peters out somewhere in the middle and you are left with a confusing mess. No resolution to it, no reason why we should care about these people. Philip K. Dick writes about losers. Sometimes they are losers that you want to read about and other times they are losers that you want to forget. This is an interesting book but not Dick's best. My personal favorites are Man in the High Castle, Eye in the Sky and Martian Timeslip. Last recommendation - Ripley Scott streamlined many of the plot elements from this book and made them into one of the definitive science fiction thrillers (are there any cities in these futuristic movies where it's NOT raining all the time?) and it is an amazing movie. This book has none of the stylistic elements of that movie. While that movie feels like a trip to a smoke-filled jazz bar where everyone is wearing tuxedos and evening gowns despite the rain, this book feels like a trip to McDonalds. There is such a vast difference between the book and the movie that I would recommend the book that DOESN'T have a movie picture on the cover. The only place where this is even more true is the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest cover with Jack Nicholson (portraying the main character who is described as 6'5" with flowing red hair and large muscles) Pretty good book to complete your Philip K. Dick collection, but don't buy it as your first Dick book.
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Summary: Press a button to want to press a button.
Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep cannot be easily compared to the following movie, for they are both great in their own way. The book provides necessary explanations for the characters' actions, great plot, lots of cool sci-fi motifs. The movie (Director's cut, of course) lacks nothing - it is beautifully rendered by Ridley Scott with great imagery of a dystopian futuristic (according to the 80's) world. My recommendation is that you read the novel and see the movie - it is the only way to fully enjoy the wonder of artificial intelligence embedded in an almost human body. A must for any sci-fi/fantasy/cyberpunk reader and anyone who even for a second experienced the fearful greatness of paranoia.
Rating:
Summary: rare when a book isn't as good as the movie
Review: Usually, one reads the book then goes to the theater or turns on the television and is disappointed. However, while the movie lacks the complexity of this book, it at least gives us even to care about some of the characters a little bit. Perhaps it is the science aspect that is bringing me down -- I'm just not buying the premise of the book. Perhaps it is the view of humans' need for religion -- but I'm not buying the idea that the fake can replace the real for most people. All in all, I was disappointed.
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