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sookieskipper's review
4.0
The story questions human nature in general and raises several new questions in its wake. If empathy and morals can be programmed and made to evolve in an AI based on the environment they are in, how close would they come to humans? The future Dick gives us is believable in the way it has devolved into carcass of depleted morality.
tykewriter's review
3.0
This is a novel I should have read years ago. Certainly, it's a work I have long anticipated, but for a whole variety of reasons never got round to until now. Shame on me, that's all I can say.
While I enjoyed Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and comparing it with my recollections of Bladerunner was fascinating, it made me realise just how much Ridley Scott's movie adaptation has steeped my mind and coloured my perception of Dick's original.
I'm a firm believer that novels are better than the movie (and concede that it is often an unfair comparison because they are entirely different mediums for storytelling), so it's kind of embarrassing to admit that I enoyed the movie more than the novel. Go figure.
It's my own fault, for not getting round to the book soon enough. There was no chance of ever reading the book before the movie, since it came out when I was 13, but perhaps if I'd not left such a gap between seeing the film and reading the book (or even managing to grab a copy of the book before Bladerunner cropped up on the tellybox) then I might have read things differently.
Alas, my head is filled with images of Rutger Hauer as Roy Baty finishing off his creator at the Tyrell Corporation, or delivering his soliloquay about memories and tears in the rain...
All the same, I'd recomend the novel. Like I said, I enjoyed the book -- it was a thought provoking read and well worth the experience. At least now I get the title...
While I enjoyed Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and comparing it with my recollections of Bladerunner was fascinating, it made me realise just how much Ridley Scott's movie adaptation has steeped my mind and coloured my perception of Dick's original.
I'm a firm believer that novels are better than the movie (and concede that it is often an unfair comparison because they are entirely different mediums for storytelling), so it's kind of embarrassing to admit that I enoyed the movie more than the novel. Go figure.
It's my own fault, for not getting round to the book soon enough. There was no chance of ever reading the book before the movie, since it came out when I was 13, but perhaps if I'd not left such a gap between seeing the film and reading the book (or even managing to grab a copy of the book before Bladerunner cropped up on the tellybox) then I might have read things differently.
Alas, my head is filled with images of Rutger Hauer as Roy Baty finishing off his creator at the Tyrell Corporation, or delivering his soliloquay about memories and tears in the rain...
All the same, I'd recomend the novel. Like I said, I enjoyed the book -- it was a thought provoking read and well worth the experience. At least now I get the title...
danarama's review
3.0
I rate this a big fat "Meh".
I don't regret reading it, but certainly won't compel me to read any of his other stuff.
I don't regret reading it, but certainly won't compel me to read any of his other stuff.
racheliswriting's review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
scottish_kat's review
4.0
I really, really liked this book. I like almost all of Philip K Dick's book, and this is definitely in my top 3.
jessiqa's review
4.0
THERE ARE SOME SPOILERS IN THIS ONE. SORRY.
There's some Androids on Earth illegally and it falls to Rick Deckard to eliminate them. That's the basic gist of the story. He falls in love a little bit with an Android named Rachel and has a strange religious experience with Wilbur Mercer. His marriage is a bit strained and he tries like hell to get a live animal.
I watched the movie Bladerunner once while in high school an again while in grad school about five years ago.I watched it again a couple of days ago after finishing this book. I had only the vaguest recollections of the movie when I started the book, but I knew that either I remembered very very little or that the film version diverged greatly from the book. Turns out both were true. The movie seemed to take some of the characters and the basic storyline, and that's where the similarities end, leaving a good book behind and making an equally good movie.
Enough about the film though. I have decided to name my next pet Isidore, I liked him so much. He was one of my favorite characters and I wanted to hug him again and again throughout. The bit where he's trying to fix the ailing cat not realizing it's a real cat instead of an electric one is so endearing. There's just too many such moments with him; I love it.
I wasn't prepared for a Deckard who was so fixated on animals. True, most everyone is in this story, because true living animals are so rare, but this man was near obsessed, keeping a copy of Sidney's Price Guide in his pocket at all times. Of course, a man as stressed as he had to have some quirks.
Mercerism. Despite the fact that this is left completely out of the film, the name Wilbur Mercer was somehow familiar to me anyway. Perhaps it's one of those things I picked up by osmosis, being both a geek and a librarian, I dunno. Nonetheless, the Mercerism parts of the book proved to be the most confusing parts. I couldn't tell whether the author was ridiculing or praising religious experiences. Either way, Deckard was far more confused by his experience with Mercer than I, poor fellow.
This book is terrific. As a said, if you've already seen the movie, it's not exactly or even nearly the same. Just treat them as two separate entities and you'll get the most out of it you can. It's great and I recommend it to anyone who likes hardcore science fiction.
There's some Androids on Earth illegally and it falls to Rick Deckard to eliminate them. That's the basic gist of the story. He falls in love a little bit with an Android named Rachel and has a strange religious experience with Wilbur Mercer. His marriage is a bit strained and he tries like hell to get a live animal.
I watched the movie Bladerunner once while in high school an again while in grad school about five years ago.I watched it again a couple of days ago after finishing this book. I had only the vaguest recollections of the movie when I started the book, but I knew that either I remembered very very little or that the film version diverged greatly from the book. Turns out both were true. The movie seemed to take some of the characters and the basic storyline, and that's where the similarities end, leaving a good book behind and making an equally good movie.
Enough about the film though. I have decided to name my next pet Isidore, I liked him so much. He was one of my favorite characters and I wanted to hug him again and again throughout. The bit where he's trying to fix the ailing cat not realizing it's a real cat instead of an electric one is so endearing. There's just too many such moments with him; I love it.
I wasn't prepared for a Deckard who was so fixated on animals. True, most everyone is in this story, because true living animals are so rare, but this man was near obsessed, keeping a copy of Sidney's Price Guide in his pocket at all times. Of course, a man as stressed as he had to have some quirks.
Mercerism. Despite the fact that this is left completely out of the film, the name Wilbur Mercer was somehow familiar to me anyway. Perhaps it's one of those things I picked up by osmosis, being both a geek and a librarian, I dunno. Nonetheless, the Mercerism parts of the book proved to be the most confusing parts. I couldn't tell whether the author was ridiculing or praising religious experiences. Either way, Deckard was far more confused by his experience with Mercer than I, poor fellow.
This book is terrific. As a said, if you've already seen the movie, it's not exactly or even nearly the same. Just treat them as two separate entities and you'll get the most out of it you can. It's great and I recommend it to anyone who likes hardcore science fiction.
kerrianne's review
2.0
Each book I read I realize with renewed clarity how much I want to read stories that move me, make me think, make me laugh, make me ponder futures I might not otherwise. I don't, as it turns out, want to read about an android bounty-hunter who is so unlikable and one-dimensional so as to make what happens to him within the story completely irrelevant. To me, anyway. This book started with such promise. It's bizarre, to be sure, but I can dig bizarre, especially when well-written, which this book was, until about the middle, when something strange happened and it stopped being interesting and started being predictable and then skipped straight to being wholly bored with itself.
[Two stars for what is maybe the worst (or at least, the most uninspired) ending in the history of book endings, and for making me miss Wesley Snipes.]
[Two stars for what is maybe the worst (or at least, the most uninspired) ending in the history of book endings, and for making me miss Wesley Snipes.]
kawai's review
4.0
The place this book occupies in the sci-fi canon is well-deserved: I haven't read another book quite like it, and despite its age, the language and vision remain fresh and, generally speaking, unappropriated by more modern sci-fi writers. It moves at quite a clip, and despite some opening stumbles in describing a piece of technology that goes on to be inconsequential in the greater plot (the mood organ), there are few wasted pages in the book.
The story's finest moments come late, when you are forced to consider who the narrator really is, both in his relationship to the androids he's hunting and to a larger religion/cult known as mercerism. Intertwined throughout are explorations of class and environmental degradation (rest your cackles, anti-environmentalists; there's no polemic here) that manage to be both subtle and clear.
During the denouement, the plot moves in a direction I couldn't have guessed, even pages before it happens; and the conclusion manages to be both touching and haunting in a way most sci-fi books would do better to try and emulate. A book that stays with you for days after you've finished it, and both enriches and diverges from the classic movie with which many of us are familiar.
The story's finest moments come late, when you are forced to consider who the narrator really is, both in his relationship to the androids he's hunting and to a larger religion/cult known as mercerism. Intertwined throughout are explorations of class and environmental degradation (rest your cackles, anti-environmentalists; there's no polemic here) that manage to be both subtle and clear.
During the denouement, the plot moves in a direction I couldn't have guessed, even pages before it happens; and the conclusion manages to be both touching and haunting in a way most sci-fi books would do better to try and emulate. A book that stays with you for days after you've finished it, and both enriches and diverges from the classic movie with which many of us are familiar.
voidslantern's review
2.0
it's a 1.5 star and i don't really have anything to say about this book rather than i read it after liking the newer movie
zeftonresident's review
5.0
Why precisely the word "Dystopian" always conjures up images of massively controlling governments, Orwellian nightmares made incarnate by complacency and apathy, the constant monitoring of every action made by an individual on a global scale I'll never be quite sure. But Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? can definitely fall into the dystopian category, if only for painting an image of the future that isn't chipper and cheerful, but one that is filled with grime and covered in an omnipresent haze of either storm clouds or pollution, either way they give the sense of foreboding that accompanies many a nightmare vision novel.
There is something I always liked about Dick as a Science Fiction writer, something that he had in common with Wells; that the story was to take precedence above everything else. The fables he creates, the settings, characters, and pieces of the world he constructs from imaginative obscurity serve to drive the story along and can be explained later along or in the reader's own mind. The set pieces don't become the focal point of the story, it is always, bloody always, about the characters and their interactions with each other or the world around them, be it real or otherwise.
The world in Sheep?, though, is quite real. Split between two narratives, one of Rick Deckard and the other of John Isidore, it romps through a city of decay and wastes, where a farm animal becomes a status symbol and androids roam about, some illegally from Martian colonies. Deckard hunts the fugitives, Isidore, unwittingly, helps them hide until the final few chapters in which the two narratives begin to describe the same situations.
Dick is Dick, there is no other to really describe him as a writer. This is what he did and he did it well.
There is something I always liked about Dick as a Science Fiction writer, something that he had in common with Wells; that the story was to take precedence above everything else. The fables he creates, the settings, characters, and pieces of the world he constructs from imaginative obscurity serve to drive the story along and can be explained later along or in the reader's own mind. The set pieces don't become the focal point of the story, it is always, bloody always, about the characters and their interactions with each other or the world around them, be it real or otherwise.
The world in Sheep?, though, is quite real. Split between two narratives, one of Rick Deckard and the other of John Isidore, it romps through a city of decay and wastes, where a farm animal becomes a status symbol and androids roam about, some illegally from Martian colonies. Deckard hunts the fugitives, Isidore, unwittingly, helps them hide until the final few chapters in which the two narratives begin to describe the same situations.
Dick is Dick, there is no other to really describe him as a writer. This is what he did and he did it well.