Scan barcode
jnkay01's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
zoewrath's review
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, and Gore
Moderate: Sexual content
fernbell's review
4.0
I have heard of this book for awhile and actually checked it out at one time but didn't have time to read it then. With a challenge I was in I was finally able to read it. I liked the book as it made you think. What is the meaning of being human and what makes you human? was just some of the questions. There was a couple scenes it wasn't fond of but that was just me. I could see why they were put in. I didn't care for some of the essays at the end of the book. To me some of them just didn't work or should I say do the job I think they were meant to do. Now I will say some of them I liked. You will just have to read them and see if you feel the same. I didn't even realize that this was the basis of blade runner. I would say that I watched that so long ago I couldn't even tell you if I liked it then. After reading this I might have to check it out but sounds like a certain one above the others.
gerard's review
2.0
This adaptation is not additive to the original novella. Sometimes it is TOO faithful an apaption. Why interrupt a speech bubble with a rectangular box that reads "HE SAID"? Doesn't the speech bubble already imply that "he said"?
amazedemon's review
4.0
Like most of Dick's work, it's a tad depressing. Both Deckard and Roy were chubbier than I imagined. The world created by Dick and illustrated Parker and Blond is believable, with drug-assisted living, a flawed widely-accepted religion, and a human creation that while technically right is just wrong. Despite a mildly ambiguous ending, all the plot treads come together in a satisfying way.
halfmanhalfbook's review
5.0
Set in a post nuclear America, the population left is sparse as most are encouraged to emigrate off world to the colonies. The human population left are deemed to be either to low in intelligence, work for the mega corporations or law enforcement. Those going off world are often accompanied by androids, flesh and blood entities made by the Rosen Corporation with a limited lifespan.
Androids are not really allowed back on earth, but eight of the Nexus 6 model have returned to earth. Dave Holden was the bounty hunter for the North California area, and had retired two of them, before the third hospitalised him. Rick Deckard gets a call from his boss asking to assist in retiring the remainder. He accepts, mainly so he can actually afford to buy a real live animal, rather than the synthetic Suffolk ewe that he has at the moment. There are very few real animals left anymore, most were killed in the war, and he thinks that this will raise his social standing and help with Iran, his wife, who has been setting her mood organ to depressed frequently.
"Do androids dream? Rick asked himself."
First he has to demonstrate the method that the bounty hunters use to identify the ‘andys’ to the Rosen Corp. As he gets out of his flying car, he is met the head of the company, Elden Rosen, and his niece Rachel. Elden suggests doing the Voigt-Kampff, an advanced empathy test, on Rachel just to see how good it really is. She passes, but something doesn’t ring true, so he asks one final question at which point she then fails the test. Elden claims that this is because she had spent time in space, before returning to earth, and lacked normal human empathy, but Deckard’s suspicions are confirmed when she tries to bribe him with an owl that they have. She is a Nexus 6.
One of the androids on the run, Pris Stratton, finds an almost empty tower block; there is a single resident, John Isidore. He is one of the ‘chicken heads’, mentally weakened from radioactive poisoning, and forced to remain on earth. He works repairing the electric animals that people use to substitute for real ones. It doesn’t take him long to realise that Pris is an android. She tells john of life on Mars, and why she escaped.
“An android,” he said, “doesn’t care what happens to another android. That’s one of the indications we look for." “Then,” Miss Luft said, “you must be an android.”
Soon after, he nails the android that wounded Holden, but the attempt on the second, an android singer, fails. He is arrested, accused himself of being an android and taken to a police station. There he meets another bounty hunter, Phil Resch. They realise that it is a shadow police force, staffed by androids and manage to escape. They relocate Luft, the singer, in a gallery and she is retired. On the way home Deckard decides to spend his bounty money on a real live animal and buys a goat. His wife is thrilled but is less enamoured with the revelation that he cannot retire any more androids as he now feels empathy with them.
Pris is joined by two other androids, Roy and Irmgaard. The are not sure that they can trust John, but when they realise that the bounty hunters know their location they realise that their options are limited. Deckard takes a call from his boss, but even though he is tired, he is persuaded to go after them. He calls Rachel to help, and she meets him in a hotel where they make love. She tells him one of the androids is the same model as her, hoping that he will be reluctant to retire her.
"The electric things have their life too. Paltry as those lives are."
Deckard sets off on the mission, not knowing if he will succeed. Or die.
This is my second time of reading this. Whilst this didn’t have the same impact that first reading had, this is still a seminal work. PKD created a future world that humanity has all but abandoned, those that are left are suffering from radiation sickness and the world is barren, scoured of animal life and subject to religious and mood control by the government. Yet they do not want their own creations, the human androids, to reside here, preferring to keep them off world. The other clever thing that he does is to blend the real and the fake in such a way that you are not totally sure if Deckard is dreaming or awake, who is human, who is android and who holds the moral high ground. The tech is plausible too; cloning has been done, but not with humans, the mood organ could be the web. Sadly we haven’t got hover cars, or managed to move large numbers of people to Mars, but there is time yet.
The world PKD has created is not unimaginable too; he paints a picture of a bleak cityscape, derelict apartments, the pervasive spread of kipple (rubbish), the people clinging to things from the past with little hope for those that cannot leave and mega corporations that are seeking to control governments and populations. And in all this is a glimmer of hope, Deckard’s relationship with Rachel has made him consider that perhaps androids deserve as much of a place on the planet as he does.
It is not a book without faults, though. The prose is terse and lacking in lyrical quality, a number of questions get asked of the characters and story, but never get answered. It is not as far sighted as others that he has written, such as Minority Report and I am really not sure what part the religion had to play in the story, it seems to be shoehorned in. But it is a classic read, and through its film Blade Runner set the tone and standard for sci-fi films for years after.
Androids are not really allowed back on earth, but eight of the Nexus 6 model have returned to earth. Dave Holden was the bounty hunter for the North California area, and had retired two of them, before the third hospitalised him. Rick Deckard gets a call from his boss asking to assist in retiring the remainder. He accepts, mainly so he can actually afford to buy a real live animal, rather than the synthetic Suffolk ewe that he has at the moment. There are very few real animals left anymore, most were killed in the war, and he thinks that this will raise his social standing and help with Iran, his wife, who has been setting her mood organ to depressed frequently.
"Do androids dream? Rick asked himself."
First he has to demonstrate the method that the bounty hunters use to identify the ‘andys’ to the Rosen Corp. As he gets out of his flying car, he is met the head of the company, Elden Rosen, and his niece Rachel. Elden suggests doing the Voigt-Kampff, an advanced empathy test, on Rachel just to see how good it really is. She passes, but something doesn’t ring true, so he asks one final question at which point she then fails the test. Elden claims that this is because she had spent time in space, before returning to earth, and lacked normal human empathy, but Deckard’s suspicions are confirmed when she tries to bribe him with an owl that they have. She is a Nexus 6.
One of the androids on the run, Pris Stratton, finds an almost empty tower block; there is a single resident, John Isidore. He is one of the ‘chicken heads’, mentally weakened from radioactive poisoning, and forced to remain on earth. He works repairing the electric animals that people use to substitute for real ones. It doesn’t take him long to realise that Pris is an android. She tells john of life on Mars, and why she escaped.
“An android,” he said, “doesn’t care what happens to another android. That’s one of the indications we look for." “Then,” Miss Luft said, “you must be an android.”
Soon after, he nails the android that wounded Holden, but the attempt on the second, an android singer, fails. He is arrested, accused himself of being an android and taken to a police station. There he meets another bounty hunter, Phil Resch. They realise that it is a shadow police force, staffed by androids and manage to escape. They relocate Luft, the singer, in a gallery and she is retired. On the way home Deckard decides to spend his bounty money on a real live animal and buys a goat. His wife is thrilled but is less enamoured with the revelation that he cannot retire any more androids as he now feels empathy with them.
Pris is joined by two other androids, Roy and Irmgaard. The are not sure that they can trust John, but when they realise that the bounty hunters know their location they realise that their options are limited. Deckard takes a call from his boss, but even though he is tired, he is persuaded to go after them. He calls Rachel to help, and she meets him in a hotel where they make love. She tells him one of the androids is the same model as her, hoping that he will be reluctant to retire her.
"The electric things have their life too. Paltry as those lives are."
Deckard sets off on the mission, not knowing if he will succeed. Or die.
This is my second time of reading this. Whilst this didn’t have the same impact that first reading had, this is still a seminal work. PKD created a future world that humanity has all but abandoned, those that are left are suffering from radiation sickness and the world is barren, scoured of animal life and subject to religious and mood control by the government. Yet they do not want their own creations, the human androids, to reside here, preferring to keep them off world. The other clever thing that he does is to blend the real and the fake in such a way that you are not totally sure if Deckard is dreaming or awake, who is human, who is android and who holds the moral high ground. The tech is plausible too; cloning has been done, but not with humans, the mood organ could be the web. Sadly we haven’t got hover cars, or managed to move large numbers of people to Mars, but there is time yet.
The world PKD has created is not unimaginable too; he paints a picture of a bleak cityscape, derelict apartments, the pervasive spread of kipple (rubbish), the people clinging to things from the past with little hope for those that cannot leave and mega corporations that are seeking to control governments and populations. And in all this is a glimmer of hope, Deckard’s relationship with Rachel has made him consider that perhaps androids deserve as much of a place on the planet as he does.
It is not a book without faults, though. The prose is terse and lacking in lyrical quality, a number of questions get asked of the characters and story, but never get answered. It is not as far sighted as others that he has written, such as Minority Report and I am really not sure what part the religion had to play in the story, it seems to be shoehorned in. But it is a classic read, and through its film Blade Runner set the tone and standard for sci-fi films for years after.
oatcappuccino's review
5.0
I really ought to read more sci-fi. Anyway, this was so much better than I anticipated. A perfect roadtrip book, too.
kidbear's review
I literally do not know what to think. The whole time I was reading I felt like I was waiting for something, and it never came.
gengelcox's review
3.0
I re-read this novel, as I used it in my “What Is Humanity?” class in conjunction with the movie based on it, Blade Runner. As a longtime fan of Dick, I had read this quite some time ago, and still remembered quite a bit of it, so in this re-reading, I concentrated on the similarities and differences between it and the movie. In my memory, I thought that the two were quite different, and on the surface, they are. This is because the movie is but a subset of the book–the screenwriters took what they thought was the dramatic heart of the novel, but they didn’t necessarily discard the rest. It’s still there, surprisingly, but it is sublimated in images and character asides.
Yes, it’s a pulp novel. But Dick was a warped mind, and this is one of his best books of the “middle period” of work, between the science fiction where he honed his craft and before he moved into the metaphysical territory of his last novels (in particular, the VALIS trilogy). If you like this book, you owe it to yourself to try [b: UBIK|22590|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327995569s/22590.jpg|62929] and [b: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch|14185|The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch|Philip K. Dick|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1338461946s/14185.jpg|1399376], which are my picks for the best of the pulp novels.
Yes, it’s a pulp novel. But Dick was a warped mind, and this is one of his best books of the “middle period” of work, between the science fiction where he honed his craft and before he moved into the metaphysical territory of his last novels (in particular, the VALIS trilogy). If you like this book, you owe it to yourself to try [b: UBIK|22590|Ubik|Philip K. Dick|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327995569s/22590.jpg|62929] and [b: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch|14185|The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch|Philip K. Dick|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1338461946s/14185.jpg|1399376], which are my picks for the best of the pulp novels.