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A review by khornstein1
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
4.0
My husband's pick for book club...so I started off thinking, "I don't really like science fiction." Well, that's a lie. I do. But there's never enough time once I get through my fave historical fiction, realistic fiction and memoir/bio picks.
So...this book takes place in 2019 and it seems an appropriate time to read it. Dick is prescient in his vision of life in the future (the book was written in 1968), and includes video calls (FaceTime), self-driving cars, droids and perhaps most disturbingly a religion called Mercerism which revolves around people trying to feel empathy (or really feeling anything) through connecting with stories they are seeing via reality TV.
Droids..ha-ha! Well, they're coming...and my friends who work at MIT say that it is really scary as to what they're being programmed to do as well as the whole AI field in general. Then again, I hope they'll be serving me donuts at the rest home. I talked to friends about how scary I found Westworld (not because of the robot element but because of the question Dick raises as well: what does it mean to be human?) If you don't believe humans have souls, what is the difference between a lump of cells and a person-made being? And if robots are programmed to have feelings, how are those feelings any different from what humans now experience? It's kind of mind-boggling.
I was going to take off two points for sexism, but then I remind myself: 1968! The novel then brought up other questions: other than Iran, who is human, the other women are droids and programmed to have "feminine" traits as well as be killers...an idea that Westworld well-develops with Dolores and Maeve. Westworld also explores the whole animal droid thing as well which I found the weak part of this book...then again, aren't we all supposed to have those little animal droid helper things in the not-so-distant future?
So...clunky writing at times, and confusing at the beginning, this book lays out some thoughts that continue to inform our times, and raises questions for which there are no straightforward answers. It's worth a read, and it's making me think I should read "Children of Men."
So...this book takes place in 2019 and it seems an appropriate time to read it. Dick is prescient in his vision of life in the future (the book was written in 1968), and includes video calls (FaceTime), self-driving cars, droids and perhaps most disturbingly a religion called Mercerism which revolves around people trying to feel empathy (or really feeling anything) through connecting with stories they are seeing via reality TV.
Droids..ha-ha! Well, they're coming...and my friends who work at MIT say that it is really scary as to what they're being programmed to do as well as the whole AI field in general. Then again, I hope they'll be serving me donuts at the rest home. I talked to friends about how scary I found Westworld (not because of the robot element but because of the question Dick raises as well: what does it mean to be human?) If you don't believe humans have souls, what is the difference between a lump of cells and a person-made being? And if robots are programmed to have feelings, how are those feelings any different from what humans now experience? It's kind of mind-boggling.
I was going to take off two points for sexism, but then I remind myself: 1968! The novel then brought up other questions: other than Iran, who is human, the other women are droids and programmed to have "feminine" traits as well as be killers...an idea that Westworld well-develops with Dolores and Maeve. Westworld also explores the whole animal droid thing as well which I found the weak part of this book...then again, aren't we all supposed to have those little animal droid helper things in the not-so-distant future?
So...clunky writing at times, and confusing at the beginning, this book lays out some thoughts that continue to inform our times, and raises questions for which there are no straightforward answers. It's worth a read, and it's making me think I should read "Children of Men."