Reviews
Great food for thought at points but very much lacking in terms of plot and entertainment.
I don't know why I hated this so much. I just felt like it was so damn confusing all the time and the characters and plot were not very well written. The idea of them was good but not the way it was delivered. Very disappointed in this.
** spoiler alert ** 3,5* . if it's so hard to kill the nexus 6 types why did he manage to kill them all within seconds? most of them didn't even try to protect themselves?? also what's up with that whole mercerism thing? 😭 it was fine, the movie was better, more action packed and with better storyline. but i'm glad I read it, it wasn't boring.
Meandering
My taste for Philip K. Dick's style of writing has changed since I made that first journal entry. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and felt that it helped fill in a lot of the holes of the film even though there are so many changes between novel and film. Interestingly, the androids (not called replicants), though more talented than they are in the film, are more obviously different than the humans. They lack empathy and faith (though faith is shown to be a human weakness throughout). Decker is not the ambiguous lone wolf that he is in the film; he is married, albeit not necessarily happily but somewhat comfortably. Rachel is not the completely naive child in a woman's body that she is in the film; she is a full-fledged femme fatale! Many of the other names are changed and the setting changed (from San Francisco to Los Angeles) but one can see how the book inspired the film. Regarding San Francisco, I enjoyed seeing Dick's vision of the city post nuclear war. Especially chilling was ghost town peninsula. Realistically, San Francisco would not be a good choice for survivors to congregate given the weather patterns (replace 10 months of daily fog with 10 months of daily fallout). A better choice would be Dublin/Pleasanton as they are in the rain shadow of the Hayward Hills but at the time Dick wrote this novel, these cities wouldn't have been more than just farming communities. Finally the inclusion of animals (whether fake or real) in the film take on new meaning after reading the book. The word "dream" in the title refers more to the aspiration to own an animal than for the thinking of an animal when asleep. So the question posed by the title isn't so much: "Do androids count sheep when they're asleep?" to "Can androids love life enough to aspire to own a pet?" It goes back to the central theme of empathy. What will happen to society when androids are built well enough to empathize with living things? Or, if androids keep android pets, is that an equivalent empathy to a human keeping a completely biological pet?
Había huido de la novela durante dos años. Tengo un recuerdo, demasiado vago tal vez, en el que me encontraba en una cafetería acompañado de alguien que leía a Philip K. Dick por primera vez. Le pregunté "¿Cómo así?" y me respondió algo sobre Blade Runner, la de 2017 con Ryan Gosling en su ciudadela de neón y los posteriores edits demasiado patéticos como para ser tristes a secas. En la primera lectura llegué hasta la escena en la que Rick trata de comprar el animal de su vecino sin éxito y, pese a que me reí un poco, confieso que me dejé desorientar por unas cuantas lecturas pendientes. Luego llegó el anime de Pluto, basado en el manga homónimo de Naoki Urasawa. Una de las reseñas que leí, apena salió su primer capítulo, fue "No vean esta basura. No pierdan horas de su vida para, al final, ver que los robots también tienen sentimientos". Conciso, supongo, pero no es el caso a final de cuentas. Podría creer, a riesgo de quemarme las manos, que Pluto es la aceptación posterior de lo que en su momento planteaba Do Androids..., en una situación en la que las apariencias legitiman la esclavitud. Si Philip K. Dick pensó en los andies como subalternos, máquinas renegadas a la obedicencia y la actitud dócil, Urasawa pensó que su aceptación, sobre todo mediática, radicaría en su uso como marionetas-o-fuerzas del órden. En otras palabras: si le das un arma a un androide humillado, no huirá de las colonias marcianas; si le das un arma, le enseñas a dispararla y lo crías como a un humano, podría ser una excusa pequeña para iniciar una guerra. Quisiera ver la primera película y sentir la desolación de los últimos capítulos: la benevolencia de la ironía transformada en sapo, un redimirse nulo en forma de moscas básicas. Por desgracia, sí me vi 2049.
This book lacks an engaging plot or a strong jittering climax. I'd even go ahead and say that plot-wise, the ending pages might have been the most boring. What's special with the book is how it permeates with thoughtful questions about human existence, and how it is riddled with ironies from start to end. It's way different from the movie, and it's based on an Earth destroyed by nuclear radiation, with almost all of the human population having emigrated to Mars. What makes us human? The book considers empathy the litmus test for humanity, something which "androids" don't show. While humans continue to show empathy for the upper echelons of the society through connecting with them from the "empathy box", they never show that empathy for people with disabilities both mental and physical, the so-called "specials" (who show as much empathy as any normal human). Moreover, if humans have real emotions, why do they need empathy boxes (which were later proved to be fake), to connect to others? If they have real emotions, why do they need a Penfield mood organ to simulate those? Throughout the book, the line between androids and humans keeps getting blurrier and blurrier. Deckard's life takes a 180 when he interacts with Luba Luft and Phil Resch. A bounty hunter who's ready to kill androids without a thought, he feels that a talented singer like Luba deserves to live. He mistakes Phil Resch for an android who deserves to die, only because he loves killing androids. This complete reversal of emotions evokes newfound feelings in Rick, and he goes on to make love with the android Rachael. From a merciless android-killer, he turns to having feelings for androids. Is it wrong to have feelings for someone who does not have emotions? While the book considers androids to not have empathy, all I can think about is one question: if frames of metal and circuits do end up having empathy along with every other emotion, what is it that would truly make us "human"?
An interesting blend of thoughtful sci-fi and unexpected, fantastical near-surrealism. Not all of it has aged gracefully, and it can be a bit clunky. But reads quickly, and it’s undoubtedly a hugely influential and compelling pondering of humanity.
Good but I had a hard time understanding anything
The author could imagine a future where people fuse their minds with each other, but not a future where women are anything but receptionists, secretaries, or housewives. Also, he felt the need to describe the tits of every female character, sometimes more than once. Putting aside from the author's gross sexism, the book was pretty weak. Rick felt he couldn't do some things; then in the next paragraph he felt he could; then in the next paragraph he felt he couldn't - and on and on for the entire book. And all that Mercer stuff! It was so poorly written I still don't understand what he was going for. Hard pass on this book, not a good read.
I would have rated it 5 stars if it did not have such a weak ending.
why does he focus so much on her boobs
The mystery is interesting, but the prose is flat and boring so I didn't really care when anyone died.
I liked it. Once again and this time's a final. Great story with an intriguing premise and a somewhat sad character that's just rolling with the punches most of the time. You like your sci-fi? You'll like this one. I don't know if it would be better if I was to go into this one without having seen the movie first but I did. And for that reason I'd always read about Deckard and picture Harrison Ford. Always. Not that I didn't like the movie or anything, but that still remained. And of course the book is better than the movie here too, except for that it ends rather quickly like Philip K. Dick wanted to wrap things up? Don't know why or what happened but it feels that way and leaves you wanting more. He built a great world that makes you wanna read more, which is why I'm reading the comics too and going to see what's up with the next Blade Runner book the Edge of Human by K.W. Jeter. Anyway, should you read it? Sure. Before watching the movie? Yeah if you haven't watched it yet, read this one first.
an amazing science fiction book. so great.
Makes you more inquisitive than Blade Runner did, but falls a tad short of the movie's engagement. The story follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter, out to kill rogue androids who resemble humans, and in the process, identifies and questions his own morals and existence. Dick's portrayal of everyday, domestic animals as a status symbol is especially fascinating. But it's his ability to create a pseudo-alive, polluted environment on Earth and struggle to feed it with empathy that makes this book a winner.
4.5/5
If you love classic sci-fi stories with that dystopian, cyberpunk aesthetic, you’ll find a lot to love about this story. While a lot of science fiction takes a stab at posing bigger questions or tackling societal issues, Dick delivers on asking the simplest, yet toughest, questions while never beating us over the head trying to force HIS answers on us as readers. We are left with a lot to consider within ourselves and while that makes this book sound dry or academic, it’s still an incredibly fun adventure that will satisfy anyone looking for a great sci-fi cyberpunk style romp.
A seminal work of sci-fi that deals with the nature of what it means to be human. It's ultimately about the nature of empathy. Dick describes empathy as the defining trait of humanity; it’s what makes us different from every other creature, including the androids. So what happens when we aren't emphatic? What happens when we kill creatures that can feel and think? Does that make us inhuman? The answer just might be yes.
It's hard to give a lower rating to a classic, but I have to be honest. This story was slow and I barely got through it. I think a big part of my distaste for the story was the Mercer concept. I enjoyed the question of what really is the difference between living and artificial intelligence, and a couple twists that were decent. But overall I wanted more.
maybe sci-fi just isn't my thing
Revolutionary for it’s time for sure. I enjoyed the movie adaption more but this filled in all the gaps for me.
A short book that’s fun to read (love Deckard’s dry wit), super imaginative (written in 1968!), and packed with important questions and themes (AI, morality, empathy, religion, consumerism)
Highlights
lungless, all-penetrating, masterful world-silence.
Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill.
In addition, no one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won.
“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression,” Iran said.
A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.
First sentence
It had not merely become silent; it had stopped existing, scared into its grave by his knock.
This book is slow to read but contains beautiful expressions like this.
The toad, he saw, blended in totally with the texture and shade of the ever-present dust. It had, perhaps, evolved, meeting the new climate as it had met all climates before.
Like moths turning black during the Industrial Revolution in the soot-blackened UK of the 1800s.
“Im afraid,” he said, ”that I can’t stop being Mercer. Once you start it’s too late to back off.” Will I have to climb the hill again? he wondered. Forever, as Mercer does…
cf. Plato’s cave allegory; the Death of God is irreversible; Sisyphus
“Wilbur Mercer! Is that you?” My god, he realized; it’s my shadow.
cf. C.G. Jung; it would seem that Mercer is Deckard’s Animus/Anima archetype; Mr. Sloat even refers to him as an “archetypal entity”; but he is male.
“I love you,” Rachael said. “If I entered a room and found a sofa covered with your hide l’d score very high on the Voigt-Kampff test.”
Thinking this, he wondered if Mozart had had any intuition that the future did not exist, that he had already used up his little time.
Damn her, he said to himself. What good does it do, my risking my life? She doesn’t care whether we own an ostrich or not; nothing penetrates.
...but Mercer, [J.R. Isidore] reflected, isn’t a human being; he evidently is an archetypal entity from the stars, superimposed on our culture by a cosmic template.
Whatever that means.—The reader is surprised by this passage after Isidore has been introduced as a “chickenhead,” not so much because the passage is so profound as because it is so pretentious; not yet knowing that Isidore is quoting Mr. Sloat.
to keep the planet habitable for the remaining population the junk had to be hauled away occasionally…or, as Buster Friendly liked to declare, Earth would die under a layer—not of radioactive dust—but of kipple. […] “There’s the First Law of Kipple” he said. “Kipple drives out nonkipple. Like Gresham’s law about bad money. And in these apartments there’s been nobody there to to fight the kipple.”
cf. second law of thermodynamics; “kipple” is entropic ruin; even after a nuclear holocaust, it is neglect in the face of entropy that kills people.
God, he thought, and reshut the door. He was not ready for the trip up those clanging stairs to the empty roof where he had no animal.
lungless, all-penetrating, masterful world-silence.
Mors certa, vita incerta, as Mr. Sloat occasionally declared.
“Death is certain, life is uncertain.”—May refer to “Mors certa, hora incerta”, “Death is certain; merely its hour is not.”—It is less than completely plausible that Mr. Sloat would “occasionally declare” such a thing.
First, strangely, the owls had died.
In addition, no one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won.
To say, “Is your sheep genuine?” would be a worse breach of manners than to inquire whether a citizen’s teeth, hair, or internal organs would test out authentic.
You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.
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