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A review by halfmanhalfbook
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Omnibus by Philip K. Dick, Blond, Tony Parker
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.