Blade Runner

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Summary: Sci-Fi with Mind and Heart!
Review: It's rare for something so hyped and well known to be this good. Almost all of Philip K. Dick's books are thought-provoking and enjoyable. However, in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (or "Bladerunner" if you prefer), the author went beyond his usual brilliance to hit upon a work of genius right up there with "Man in High Castle."

The story centers on the theme of artificiality and what that means. Is an artificial human really human? An artificial animal? An artificial God? That Dick even asks such complicated questions is incredible, but that he answers them in such a simple yet powerful way is unfathomable.

Perhaps most telling is the scene with the dead spider. How one can get so worked up about a dead arachnid is almost impossible to believe - yet it happens in both character AND READER! This book really opens one's eyes to the difference between origin (or how a thing comes to be) and importance (or what value a thing has).

One final note: Ridley Scott's famous movie version of the book is much different than the text. Though, Scott adds some very interesting and influential touches in his film that should not be ignored, it's really Dick's text that is the masterpiece. Read Dick first, and then see the movie.


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Summary: Dick's Most Popular Novel - Marvel at the Philosophy
Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is an excellent introduction into the sci-fiction/philosophical masterworks* (*emphasis on master - Dick is a noted literary genius) of Philip K. Dick because this is one of his best works and also most of you have seen a very close adaptation of this book, a film called Blade Runner, which unfortunately was released to box office failure shortly after K. Dick's death, only later to become a cult classic that no one has missed from their DVD collection.

Dick's books must be viewed along with writer's ambitions and warnings. In 1968 Dick wrote this story a year before man landed on the moon and yet describes a world somewhere closer to our own, in a `very soon down the road' roundabout way, as Dick does in all his books. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is no different, describing an environmental catastrophic event that leads to Earth's ruin, where humans have migrated to offshore colony worlds, where they get a free human cyborg - a replicant, to serve them. Back on the earth those who remain live in a world where everything is synthetic, the atmosphere radioactive, and where everyone dreams of owning a real live pet, and not a clone controlled by microchips and circuit boards, including our protagonist, Deckard, a professional bounty-hunter cop, with secret ambitions of replacing his electronic sheep with real ones before the neighbours found out how poor he is, so takes on a contract to hunt down and `retire' a group dangerous renegade replicants that escaped from the offshore world colony of Nexus 6, murdering people during the break out and who have managed to make their way to earth blending in with the local population.

Deckard who is looking forward to buying some real sheep goes to visit the Tyrell corporation where he uses, the now unforgettable, Voigt-Kampff test, to see if a human is a cyborg. The Voigt-Kampff test is the key to opening the philosophical mindset of this book - "Is empathy only a human condition?" with the psychology that a replicant will test negative for empathy during the test. The question then arises for Deckard, "has he ever retired a human by mistake?" Dick challenges us to think about this (look at the books title) as Deckard runs across the city retiring replicants who appear to lack empathy only to suddenly find himself up against a new type of Nexus 6 that does not lack empathy and has the ability to learn it. The book will keep you second guessing as to who is real and who is not, but at its heart the question Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in conjunction with Deckard's job, and his desire to own real sheep, leads him slowly down a path of questioning this own existence and reassessing his life and what he thought he knew. The book finished beautifully, answering these questions to the full with a bit of a revelation.

However we would do Dick a disservice, not to at least complement the writer's ability to craft the English language, and more importantly, edit his work to perfection. This is a page turner, without any interlude or boring descriptions. Everything will be absorbed at a fine reading pace. Dick also manages to come up with about 70% dialogue, all of it beautifully written with characterisation that actually goes somewhere. The story is also very exciting!

You will no doubt read another Dick book after finishing this one even if you do not like science-fiction. I also finished his awarding winning "The Man in the High Castle" and "UBIK". And why not? Dick is possibly the best science-fiction writer ever who does not write science-fiction. Maybe the only one that could that. I would read his whole chronicles (50+ books) just after having read this one.

Bravo - a whole new writer with a massive collection to read.

Rating:
Summary: What defines human life?
Review: Philip K. Dick deals with the question what is human and what defines humanity by comparing humans with humanoid robots.
In the course of the novel Rick Deckard, a bounty-hunter, whose job it is to kill humanoid robots, androids, that escaped from Mars starts to cast doubt on his assignments. Are androids really unable to feel empathy? They sometimes seem to be even more human than humans. But who is human and who is not? Is the test created to find out about the real nature of the protagonists really infallible?
And what about Rachel Rosen? On the one hand she occurs to be very cold and rational, but on the other hand she acts very emotional.
The novel makes everbody think about life, its meening and its value in a different and new way.



Rating:
Summary: DADOES: long time ago written, but still up to date
Review: The story is set in the year 2021 in which the world completely is destroyed. Most humans emigrated to Mars, where androids where build in order to be slaves. Those escape to Earth, where it is Deckard's job to "retire" them.
In this story there is a main and a subplot, which later flow together. The main characters of these two plots have to be looked at.
It is not obvious, if Deckard himself is a replicant or not. there are many clues which speak for and against this suggestion. That is one aspect which makes the book so interesting.
Trough Isidore, as a "Special" classified and for this reason not allowed to leave earth, one can clearly see that a human being cannot have a relationship with an android. He is very lonely and therefore starts a relationsship with a group of androids, which increasingly exploit him. Later, he, even as a "chickenhead" realizes this fact.
Even if the book was published in 1968, the treated subject is still up to date. It shows that technical development, which seems to be very useful, can one day become very dangerous.

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Summary: It makes you sleep
Review: If you want to read a book so boring that it makes you sleep, then this book is for you. I have never read a book that was so much a future take on today's depressing society. Where androids are commen and what it means to be human as no meaning anywhere. I guess we have this book and the film version to thank for turning science fiction into a video game genre now. (Thanks for nothing, Mr.Scott.)

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Summary: Dan R. Miller Place, NY
Review: First off, be advised that the book is very different from the movie. The movie was most enjoyable for its vision of a gritty dystopic future and its action sequences.

The book, like other works by PKD, is about ideas. There is little "action"-- the android killings are basically executions. PKD was never a "prose stylist" like Gibson, who could make a scene live and breathe. Rather, he's concerned with the "big issues"-- primarily, the meaning of human existence.

The book is more challenging than the movie. In the movie, the androids just seem like slightly stiff people-- people who had the misfortune of being created rather than born. While they commit evil acts in the film, the ending clearly wants us to empathize with the androids.

In the book, the androids completely lack any empathy with any other creatures. They care little when other creatures are killed, and seem to even lack a survival instinct. That is why the Voight-Kampff test is used to test for androids-- it measures emotional reactions to the death of other living beings, which androids lack. (This wasn't explained at all in the movie!)

What I found very interesting is that the Voight-Kampff test measures involuntary emotional reactions to the deaths of animals, which is taboo in this future world. (The radioactive dust has killed of many species, making them a rare and precious commodity.) Clearly, this can't be an intrinsic empathy that humans have-- we kill animals now! Is this "empathy" something we get from the society we live in?

The book also dwells far more on the "value" that animals have in this future world. The animals are supposed to be precious because many have been killed off by the war and the radioactive dust that lingers afterward. The Mercer religion in the book puts primary value on other living things. But how does this empathic "value" compare with the great monetary value of the animals? Rick Deckard constantly pulls out his Sidney's to get the money value of animals he sees, as someone would with used cars. What PKD does so great is show how the empathy cult of Mercer, which represents basic idealism and altruism, contrasts with the base capitalist valuation of these animals.

I found Mercerism to be one of the most interesting aspects of the novel. It seems to be the primary way through which people are able to merge together and share an empathic group consciousness. However, questions are raised as to whether Mercerism is literally true-- one can see clear parallels to Christianity. By showing a meaningful religion based on lies, I was reminded of Bokononism in Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle." Sadly, PKD never enjoyed the literary success of Vonnegut...

There is a lot going on in this novel-- one could probably write a novel about this novel. There are endless ideas and twists upon twists. However, don't come into it expecting anything like the "cyberpunk" action movie Blade Runner.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing like the movie - which is good
Review: Most people will probably pick up this book with the mistaken impression that it is very similar to the "famous" movie starring Harrison Ford in the mid-80's. While the current printings of the book share the same title, Blade Runner was originally titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The title change came as the result of the movie studio liking the story, but not liking the title. Thus, the current title, which is a complete non sequitur from the plot, was born. The film, while entertaining, is not the Orwell-esque vision of a possible future that the book is.
In the book, Rick Deckard is faced with, not only the challenge of hunting and capturing illegal androids, but with overcoming his own android-like existence. The world he knows is a cold amalgam of mood-stimulants, fake pets, shallow relationships, and an underlying desire to be something other than what he is. At the center of this world is a meaningless quasi-religious leader named Mercer. All morality and ethical codes are teachings of Mercer, who appears to Deckard as some sort of refigured Sisyphus. It is the search for meaning in these teachings (or in spite of them) that drives Deckard to rebel against social norms and his assignment.
The quest for identity and objective meaning in Deckard's self discovery is a theme of all of Dick's work, and is on display best in this book. For any fan of Orwell, Sinclair or Orson Scott Card, this will certainly be a great read.