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Title: Blade Runner(TM) (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) Author: Philip K. Dick Rating: Not available Avg. Score: 5 Submit Comment Hits: 25

Review of Blade Runner(TM) (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)

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Comments for Blade Runner(TM) (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)

• Posted on 2008-02-24
  So much more than "Blade Runner"!
  
  This is NOT the movie. It is bigger, deeper, more meaningful and philosophical -- one of Philip K. Dick's best books ever. (It has been explained to me that the primary significance of the movie "Blade Runner" was that it presented a fully imagined future.) I wish I could get this book with the original title, so much more revealing of the core -- "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (I owned it years ago, and wore it out -- wish I had bought extra copies then!)
  Score: 5
• Posted on 2007-12-10
  My Second Experience With Philip K. Dick
  
  I bought this book because I am planning on buying the completely massive and awesome collection of Blade Runner movies. I saw this at the bookstore for $5 (This exact edition) and so I bought it and read it in two days, finishing it yesterday.
  
  As an introduction to the world of the movie (Which I haven't seen yet) it is simply awesome and astounding. The world of the book is so expertly crafted with what really amoutns to a small amount of description and detail. The characters and story are well thought out, and it fits the form that I have come to expect from Philip K. Dick even though I've only read this and The Man in the High Castle-no real ending, just an odd one.
  
  The book is really just truly brilliant, and even after only one read-through I can honestly say that it is one of my favorite books ever. Also, it is much easier to read than some of his other books. I struggled through The Man in the High Castle for awhile until I got used to it and then I kind of got it and understood it and kept going, but this was one that I could just pick up and read an it's just awesome.
  
  I highly recommend it to anyone interested in science fiction at all, as it is a true classic as well as one of the few Philip K. Dick books still available fairly widely.
  Score: 5
• Posted on 2007-06-30
  Just as fun reading as it is to watch the movie
  
  When I saw Blade Runner for the first time I realized that I had just seen something that was original, smart and that related to me in many, many ways.
  
  I found out that it was loosely based on the book, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and decided that if the movie is as good as it is and it's a condensed version of the story in the book, than the book should be just as good, if not better.
  
  I ordered it from Amazon and started reading. I was only a few pages in when I realized just how "loosely" the movie was based on the book. The book was an entirely different experience.
  
  This book is filled with compelling drama, deception, sci-fi, and 1940's crime-noir style storytelling (complete with the classic femme-fatal) and it does not dissapoint.
  
  Sure, you already paid to see the movie, and you might be thinking, "Why would I pay to read the same story?" You aren't. You will be pleased with this book emensely - it's a completely different story.
  Score: 5
• Posted on 2007-06-18
  thought provoking but less than great prose
  
  Androids takes place in a not-so-distant future where a world war has spread a cloud of radioactive dust across the globe, many forms of animal species are extinct, many of the survivors have emigrated to colonies on Mars and the remaining humans are encouraged to emigrate, except for those who have been tested and classified as "specials" meaning the ones with diminished mental abilities because they have been affected severely from radiation. Emigrants are given androids, very sophisticated robots, as slaves. As the technology gets better, newly manufactured androids become more and more human-like, both in appearance and behavior, to the point that they are very hard to distinguish. Discontented androids sometimes kill their masters and find ways to smuggle themselves to earth, in hopes for a better life. In the post-world war earth, life is regarded so precious that owning and caring for an animal is both considered a highly moral life and a status symbol. Because real animals are so rare, many people have fake, very sophisticated and real-like electronic animals that they care for and hide from their neighbors the fact that their animal is fake. On the one hand there are bounty hunters who catch and kill androids, human robots which dreamt of a better life, evidently with some feelings. And on the other hand there is the value which people place upon animal robots. On the one hand there are intelligent, sophisticated androids like the one who made a successful carrier on earth as an opera singer; on the other hand there are hunters who emotionlessly kill her without regard to her artistic talent, or there are simple-minded specials. Throughout the plot, readers are given a lot to think about questions like what is life, what is empathy, where do you draw a line between the value of real and artificial life? It is a philosophical novel and the author puts all these questions before us with brilliant comparisons between characters. The only negative feeling that one might get is the unusual, somewhat simple prose style but overall, a very good, thought provoking novel.
  
  Score: 4
• Posted on 2007-03-24
  Things Pretending to be People
  
  This anti-robot novel is oft misunderstood by those who come to it with expectations formed by the pro-robot movie. The novel is essentially a paranoid fantasy about machines which pretend to be people. The pretense is so horrifyingly effective that a bounty hunter engaged in the entirely necessary task of rooting out and destroying these monsters finds that his own humanity has become imperiled.
  
  Originally entitled "DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP," this novel was re-titled "BLADE RUNNER" to tie it to the Ridley Scott film loosely based on it. It remains available under either title (and with separate entries on AMAZON), but it is the same book. The film studio wanted to market a "novelization" of the film, but PKD adamantly refused to authorize this, forcing them to instead market his original novel under the film's title. Good move, Phil!
  
  This decision, however, has led to confusion and/or disappointment when readers approach the novel with expectations formed by the film. Many reviewers here (whether they like the book, the film, or both) have commented on how different they are. Few seem to realize, however, the extent that they are in direct and fundamental conflict. Some praise the book for tearing down the distinction between man and machine or promoting other nihilistic views and pro-robot messages that the author would have found abhorent. Others pan it for lack of focus in failing to promote the film's pro-robot agenda as effectively as the film did.
  
  That conflict may be summarized as follows: The book is anti-robot and pro-human, and seeks to uphold the distinction between robot and human, and between illusion and reality, in the face of a most-insidious challenge. The film was pro-robot and anti-human, promoting the idea that a compelling illusion is equivalent to reality, and that its ruthless robots were, if anything, better than humans.
  
  The book glorifies the common man for his basic decency -- specifically his capacity for basic empathy and compassion -- and deplores the robots for their complete lack of these qualities. In the book, even a "chickenhead" (a mentally retarded human mutant) is infinitely more valuable than the smartest robot. The film on the other hand, glorifies the robot as a sort of superman ("more human than human") -- stronger, faster, more beautiful, more intelligent, -- who seem poised to inherit the future on a dying Earth. The film even seems to admire the robots for their ruthlessness.
  
  The book makes Deckard (the protagonist) human, and loyal to humans. The film has Deckard switch sides and join the robots. Indeed, in the film (not the book) Deckard may himself be a robot (the latter is never made explicit, but director has made clear it is what he intended). This means that, in the FILM, there are virtually no sympathetic human characters -- those characters who suggest that a man is worth more than a computer program are portrayed as bigots.
  
  In PKD's view, the androids are unquestionably monsters who must be destroyed. The irony, and the central problem posed in the novel, is that their ability to SEEM human (which,, in the NOVEL, is never more than meticulously-programmed fakery), means that those who must destroy robots risk damage to their own humanity in the process. Thus, the author approves of Deckard's wife, whose sympathy for the "poor andys" is evidence of her humanity, while still approving of Deckard's assignment.
  
  In the novel, the robots' increased ability to fool the VK test is merely an advance in programmed mimicry of human test responses. The film, on the other hand, treats the improved performance on the VK test as evidence that the robots are truly "human". But the film's robots do not demonstrate compassion in any meaningful way. The agenda of the film is NOT so mcuh to show that robots are as compassionate as humans, but rather to show that humans are as ruthless as robots (as evidenced, mainly, by their willingness to kill robots). This agenda is eerily similar to that of the TV androids near the end of the novel, who set out to expose human empathy as a myth.
  
  In the novel, the title question must be answered in the negative. Androids DON'T care about other creatures. It is humans who have the capacity care about other creatures -- ironically, even about androids -- even electric sheep.
  
  So many, even among the author's admirers, have missed the novel's true focus that it may be best to defend my interpretation with a quote from the author himself, made shortly before his death (quoted in the book "Future Noir"):
  
  "To me, the replicants are deplorable. They are cruel, they are cold,
  they are heartless. They have no empathy, which is how the
  Voight-Kampff test catches them out, and don't care about what happens
  to other creatures. They are essentially less-than-human entities.
  
  "Ridley, on the other hand, said he regarded them as supermen who
  couldn't fly. He said they were smarter, stronger, and had faster
  reflexes than humans. 'Golly!' That's all I could think of to reply
  to that one. I mean, Ridley's attitude was quite a divergence from my
  original point of view, since the theme of my book is that Deckard is
  dehumanized through tracking down the androids. When I mentioned
  this, Ridley said that he considered it an intellectual idea, and that
  he was not interested in making an esoteric film."
  Score: 5