Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

I have complex feelings about this book.

Pros: Excellent writing, and world building. Good science discussion for it's time. I found the desire to have a pet, and the scarcity both funny and sad.

Cons: I didn't find the characters very likeable.
(Rant) The sci-fi trope of men wanting to have sex with android women is just disturbing to me...

Finally got around to reading this. Glad I did. A true science fiction classic, I'm keen to read more Philp K. Dick.

I rarely say this but... I'd rather just watch the movie.

This story was a bit of a mess that I found hard to follow. Everything seemed to just be happening “because”. The story didn't flow well and I found myself hating every single character. The film has me empathizing with both androids and humans but this book had me hoping the whole planet would just implode. Only ranks two stars instead of one because of its cultural significance.

1960s dystopian sci-fi/fantasy is probably my favourite genre. So it's surprising that it's taken me so long to get around to reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Maybe it's because I never really ‘got' Blade Runner, I liked it - sure - but it never blew me away. I've read a couple of Dick's other novels and really enjoyed them but I was slightly afraid that I'd feel let down by this. I needn't have worried.

From the beginning, when we meet Deckard, the scene is futuristic but remains mundane. This is a grubby little future, probably due to mankind being a grubby little species. In this San Francisco a live animal (all species are rare due to the radioactive dust blanketing the Earth) is an expensive status symbol kept in a cage on the roof. Here electronic replicas are imperceptible from the real thing but substantially cheaper to own.

Deckard works as a bounty hunter, retiring androids hiding around the city. These are perfect human copies except they struggle to understand (and therefore replicate) empathy. As he hunts them down Deckard questions those around them and ultimately himself. Do we empathise for him, for the androids, for Isidore (who seems to feel too much)? Is an electric animal worth less than a real one if you love it? Is an android less alive than a human? Can you have empathy for the creatures you have to destroy and still kill them? Is the maiming of a real arachnid worse than the retirement of 3 false-humans (that really got to me! I'm not a fan of the many-legged but Pris was so cold and detached)?

Deckard himself reminded me of Philip Marlowe, he had that world-weary 1930s private dick about him but lacking the one-liners. I found Dick's writing perfectly descriptive, the characters and scenery popped into being as I read. It was often absurd, sometimes funny and ultimately it made me ponder on what life really means. Plus, I was able to believe in this dystopian future despite it actually being set nearly 30 years ago!

Really liked some of the elements PKD introduced in this one.

9/10

This is a very good book and I'm writing this as someone who hated the movie.
The film is very boring in general and now even seems shallow compared to the book.
Point off only for the cringe worthy nonstop dialog about animals.

I'm glad I was able to see what Blade Runner (1982) was based off of. It was an interesting premise, like the movie, but equally as problematic. Why would Rick describe Rachel as being almost child-like and then still sleep with her? I would've liked to see a bit more world building in the book, too.

I don't know how I feel about this book. I don't know if I would rate it 3.5 or 4.

In my opinion, the main premise of the book is between reality and virtual/unreality.

The main point being the thin line between android and humans. What makes human “real” and androids not. If Mercenism is in the end, reality or a lie.

The question goes even further than that, throughout the book, as a reader, you find yourself reading through events where you keep wondering if what is happening is real or not (e.g: Dickard's meeting with Phil Resch)

However, I find the execution lacking in many ways. The book is trying to tell too much and doesn't take the time to do so. As a result, events are rushed and major elements are left underdeveloped.

Some characters make no sense to me, for instance, I don't understand Isiodore's character. He is clearly the personification of empathy but he has no adding value to the story.

And the ending is, in my opinion, a mess.

A strange experience! It reminded me of a short story, and I really wish it had been longer. It was very hard for me to separate it from the - very different -film. Scratch that, it was impossible.

So it was an odd reading experience. I felt I gained a little more insight into the film, insomuch as when I re-watch it I'll be looking out for signs of certain aspects of the book - similarities between characters, aspects of their personalities, details about the culture they live in.

But all that feels like it's on quite superficial and trivial level. The book really is very different from the film in overall feel, plot, character, and details.

It's not as good, but it is good in other ways. There is a definite religious theme, and an exploration of what it means to have faith, to lose it. Even a fairly profound, if brief, exploration of whether it matters if the thing you have faith in really exists or not. That, I did not expect, and would have relished a deeper examination of.

All in all, enjoyable, somewhat thought-provoking, left me with unanswered questions and wanting to understand more... that at least it shares with the film.

This book was really great. I read it in less than a week, so you know it was good lol. Check out my review here. https://youtu.be/C-tNajEs-cE

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.

This is a strange book.

I'm so confused about mercerism

“It's the basic condition of life to be required to violate our own identity.”

This is a science fiction classic that all fans of the genre should read!

Firstly, i'm a massive Blade Runner fan so I always expected to enjoy this book, I've read a few books by Philip K. Dick in the past and I've loved some thinking others (Man in the High Castle) could have been epic but sadly failed.

I wont go into the story because if you dont at least know the story to Blade Runner... where have you been? but I will say this is a very atmospheric book like so many other true classics of the genre, your pulled into this futuristic noir world that questions what it is to be human, what separates us from truly advanced androids? Empathy.

We follow Deckard who is a bounty hunter, the bounty hunters hunt androids who have assumed human identities and this opens up so many worms, you grow attached and fall in love to find out your lover isnt human... how would you feel?

Over all, I loved this book and would highly recommend it!

Ну, так... В принципе, все самое главное вы уже знаете. Где граница, когда машина становится человеком, что делает андроида человеком? Этот вопрос, пожалуй, главное, что можно почерпнуть из книги. Местами интересный сюжет, немного всяких фантастических дивайсов, притянутый за уши, но ок, сеттинг. Желательно посмотреть оригинальный фильм, чтобы легче было все это представить.

Написано, как часто на Западе бывает, не очень. Слог, все-таки, — слабая их сторона. Под конец уже еле дочитывал.

I feel like I am supposed to love this book because it's “classic” sci-fi and I love sci-fi... but I did not love this book. I didn't love the original Blade Runner movie that took its inspiration from this book either, but I did really like the ideas and the question of what it means to be human. And I liked that in the book as well. For that matter, I liked the book better than the movie... but that's not saying that much since I don't care for the movie. (too violent and painfully slow pacing.)

The debate continues. What do you believe it is that makes you human? If you can't tell humans apart from androids - if they look, eat, think like you - why do you treat them differently. Blade Runner beautifully adapted this book to further explore these philosophical conundrums.

*3.5
Read in my bind-up

This is the classic sci-fi novel upon which “Blade Runner” is based. It's been a while since I saw the movie, but from what I recall, the film is more noir than the novel. The novel has more androids to “retire,” and the novel also features a religion that doesn't exist in the film (Mercerism). Having sex with androids is illegal in the novel, while one of the androids in the film was built for that purpose IIRC (being a “pleasure model”).

Deckard is also an active police officer rather than a retired one.

The novel ruminates much more on the line between “alive” and “not alive,” and the dignity of the living, with a parallel story about a “chickenhead” (a man mentally deficient due to radioactive fallout), discussion about Mercerism and the worth even of spiders, and the fact that Deckard desperately wants to own a live animal rather than a fake, electronic one. But they're so expensive!

I still need to wrap my head around some of the novel in which consciousnesses seem to fuse via Mercerism, but this is a quick book to read, very interesting, and probably belongs in a modern canon of American (or perhaps Western) literature, as it's a representative work by Philip K. Dick, who wrote a number of famous sci-fi stories that got turned into movies. Everyone knows “Blade Runner,” and everyone should read this book.

The thing to remember is that while Bladerunner is based on this story, it was used for setting and a few of the characters, but a number of the details and plot are loosely used or discarded. However, it is a very good story and it leaves you considering what is real, what isn't, and whether or not that is okay. Deckard and Rachel are about the same as their characters, same with Pris, though the final battle against Roy is not as climactic. We at least get a little more detail of why the world is the way it is, though you don't get the sense of a crowded place. It feels largely abandoned and there are good reasons for it. You do get more of a settled ending here but it also left open the possibility of further writing in this universe.

AM I ALIVE? WHO AM IIIIIIIII?

I really enjoyed Blade Runner. I have yet to see the movie, so maybe that helped. Philip K. Dick knows how to write to me. This book kept me guessing and wondering what was what. It was a nice feeling...

It surely has some historical value, but I didn't like the book, it is build on stereotypes and I feel it a lot like perpetuating hate speech.

A lot more fun than I thought it'd be! I read this mostly since it was like paying a tithe into the sci-fi community; like, ugh, it Simply Must Be Read (eventually). And certainly I enjoyed Blade Runner; but mostly for its atmospheric set design (yeah Moebius), moody music (yeah Vangelis, yeah synth) and, oh wow, do I love Harrison Ford (luv ya big time). So I figured this'd be a kinda dated, kinda whatever obligatory read that would make me just want to listen to the OST again.

Imagine my surprise when: the electric sheep are real! Literally real! OK, I thought they were a metaphor! But get ready for lots of fake animals, and Rick Deckard pining after them with great bourgeois yearning. It is initially trashy-feeling, but grows into an increasingly wonderful plot point/prop.

Imagine my further surprise when: I really enjoyed this! I'm a troublemaker and always say Ghost in the Shell is the One True Cyberpunk Tale; since, honestly, I could never hear any of the mumbly Blade Runner dialogue over all that rain, and they spend a lot of time in Ghost in the Shell explaining philosophical issues to each other (in a good way). But here! In this book! Suddenly it's all clear and - complicated and nuanced and heartstring-pulling and omg am I an android? I certainly have bourgeois yearnings! And as much as I enjoyed the crunchy, slimy body-horror type stuff of Blade Runner's props and set design (JR Isidore, what a great character; those weird tiny puppets?!), this book had some truly surreal sections which were - gosh - startlingly weird and fun. Like, that Mercer stuff. Wtf was up with that wonderful, weird Mercer stuff?!

A book to pick apart at length, over coffee. Definitely recommended.

PS I heard once, on the winds of the internet, that Paul Giamatti had been tapped to play Philip K. Dick in a biopic. IMAGINE THAT. That would be so cool.