“Life which we can no longer distinguish; life carefully buried up to its forehead in the carcass of a dead world.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?



Top shelf Philip K Dick exploring a tangled web of heavy themes like: what it means to be human, the nature and limits of empathy, love, religion, God, entropy, animals, decay. I had mistakenly put off this novel because HELL I already saw the movie. How can you improve upon THAT movie? Well, the book is better. A cliché, certainly I know, but it is spot on with this book. The movie captures a piece of the PKD mad genius, but it is a 2D representation of a 3D Dick. IT is an android, an artificial sheep of a movie that moves, bellows and behaves perfectly but doesn't have the spark the sizzle or the depth of the novel and IT was a HELLUVA good movie. Anyway, I'm caught up in a PHDickathon and just ordered a bunch more of his novels off EBay, so I should at least have room to softly land my tattered soul after this amazing novel. Next up? 'Ubik' or 'a Scanner Darkly'.

This is one of those books where I like the idea and the messages more than the actual read.

The Horror or Heaven Goodreads group is reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep this month so I decided to join in.

I haven't read much sci-fi recently, but there was a time when it was about all I read. Books like this, written in the past, imagining what today's world might be like, are particularly fun to read on one level. The characters use video phone, but they need to pick up receivers to talk. Someone needs to make a call, so they have a fifty cent piece to insert into the public phone.

But it wasn't all fun reading. As you can imagine, a dystopian future is dark and depressing. A world war devastated the planet. Many of the citizens take off to colonize Mars. Many animals that once were abundant on Earth have become extinct. For the citizens remaining on Earth, it's a sense of pride to own and be able to care for a live animal. In fact, a large part of this book focuses on the main character's desire to have a live animal to care for. But that isn't the primary focus of the book.

Andies (androids) are given to folks as incentive to leave Earth. Not all of the Andies enjoy their servitude and flee back to Earth. It's the job of Rick Deckard to track down these androids and "retire" them. He's a bounty hunter. Rick's job causes him many moral dilemmas. If an android doesn't realize it's an android, is it ethical to tell them they're not human, or to go as far as to kill them? Do androids have desires and dreams? And, as the title suggests, can they dream of caring for animals, or electric animals? These are all questions that had my brain working overtime as I read, and long after I read. As technology continues to advance, I believe these are ethical questions that should be considered before technology outpaces our tech ethics. If that makes sense.

The action and character development were very good. While most characters were either androids (cold and detached), or humans making horrible ethical decisions, there was one supporting character I fell in love with. He gave me hope and kept me reading when things felt bleakest. I need that in a book or else I'll give up on it. The world building was terrific, by the way. I felt every bit of darkness and despair that was left in the world after the war.

I'd recommend Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to anyone looking for a good dystopian sci-fi book. It's the basis of the Blade Runner movie. I haven't seen it, but I've been told the movie is more devoted to retiring androids and less devoted to the ethical questions and the quest for animals. Of course, now I need to watch it. If you decide to read this, please let me know what you think of it! I'm settled on four out of five stars. It was very good! Happy reading!

Update: Đây là bài review mình viết để đăng trên trang web tổng hợp review sách của Nhã Nam, có chỉnh sửa nhiều so với bài review gốc bên dưới, khám phá những góc nhìn khác, những cách hiểu và ý nghĩa khác của câu chuyện sau khi có tham khảo và đọc qua một số review trên báo. Mọi người đọc thêm cho vui ha: http://sachnhanam.com/nguoi-may-co-mo...

Old review:

Chào mừng đến với thế giới khoa học viễn tưởng trong tương lai của tác giả Philip K. Dick, nơi loài người đã trải qua Thế Chiến Cuối, để lại một Trái Đất bị bao phủ bởi bụi phóng xạ và những tòa nhà bỏ hoang sau cùng trở thành rác tự sinh. Đa phần nhân loại đều đã di cư lên Sao Hỏa để sinh sống; những người vẫn còn ở lại Trái Đất thì hoặc là không có đủ tiền để di cư như Rick Dickard - thợ săn tiền thưởng - hoặc bị “đánh dấu” là những người đặc biệt, có khiếm khuyết về trí tuệ như tên não gà John Isidore.

Thế Chiến Cuối cũng đã khiến gần như toàn bộ tất cả các loài động vật bị tuyệt diệt; những con vật máy như con cừu máy của Rick Dickard được tạo ra để phục vụ nhu cầu nuôi động vật trong nhà cho những người như Rick, không đủ tiền để kiếm cho mình một con vật thật. Và Rick Dickard - sống giữa một cuộc hôn nhân nhạt nhẽo, nơi cảm xúc của hai vợ chồng hoàn toàn có thể được điều khiển và thay đổi bởi máy móc, và một thế giới tại sở làm nơi anh là chuyên gia ngồi đồng văn phòng trong khi đồng nghiệp thì gặt hái biết bao vinh quang và tiền bạc vì đã thu hồi được thành công hàng loạt người máy - không có mong muốn nào khác hơn ngoài việc săn cho được nhiều người máy, kiếm được nhiều tiền thưởng để có đủ điều kiện sắm cho mình một con cừu thật.

Cơ hội đã đến với Rick khi có tin một nhóm các người máy Nexus-6 - bước tiến mới nhất trong công nghệ làm người máy bầu bạn cho loài người trên Sao Hỏa - đã trốn về Trái Đất, trà trộn giữa loài người. Rick lên đường thực hiện nhiệm vụ, đầu tiên là với bài test Voigt-Kampff giúp xác định và phân loại giữa người và máy, cùng buổi gặp mặt đại diện tập đoàn Rosen - tập đoàn bao thầu sản xuất người máy cho Sao Hỏa - với sự hiện diện của cô nàng Rachel Rosen đầy cuốn hút.

“Người Máy Có Mơ Về Cừu Điện Không?” được Philip K. Dick đặt trong bối cảnh năm 1999, thế nhưng cảm giác của nó mang đến cho người đọc, cùng những ý tưởng được tác giả lồng ghép và thể hiện trong câu chuyện, về sự đối đầu giữa người thật và người máy trong bối cảnh hậu tận thế, thì hoàn toàn không cũ một chút nào. Với câu chuyện chính là việc Rick Dickard đi thu hồi, hay là thủ tiêu, những con người máy Nexus-6 đang “sổng chuồng”, Philip K. Dick cũng phơi bày lên trang giấy những thực trạng đã và có thể sẽ xảy ra, nếu một ngày kia loài người lỡ tiến đến cái thì tương lai mà tác giả đã dựng nên trong quyển sách.

Đó là sự ngầm cản đường của tập đoàn lớn như Rosen trước việc một đại diện pháp luật, thực thi công lý bắt buộc phải thủ tiêu những sản phẩm do chính tập đoàn ấy làm nên. Và Rick Dickard - “con châu chấu” đơn độc trước “cái xe” khổng lồ về quyền lực và tiềm lực là Rosen - đã phải sử dụng tất cả trí thông minh và kinh nghiệm bài test Voigt-Kampff và đi thu hồi người máy của mình - để vượt qua cái bẫy mà Rosen đã dựng nên, để nhìn ra được sự thật về Rachel Rosen, rằng nàng chính là một con người máy chứ không phải người thường.

Và còn đó sự thấu cảm - cái lằn ranh mong manh phân biệt giữa người và máy. Sự thấu cảm đã được tôn thờ lên thành một loại tôn giáo - đạo Mercer - với những giờ và những người kết nối với máy thấu cảm để được trải qua cơn đau, để được chảy máu vì bị ném đá, cùng với Wilbur Mercer, một “lãnh tụ tinh thần” của loài người vẫn hàng ngày hàng giờ bấu víu vào khả năng thấu cảm để giữ cho phần người của mình không chết như bọn người máy. Ở một cái thế giới mà người máy có thể giống y chang người thật, và chỉ có xét nghiệm tủy của một cái xác đã chết mới có thể biết liệu kẻ đã chết đó là người hay là máy, thì sự thấu cảm lại càng là một “tài sản quý giá” để Rick Dickard gìn giữ trong cuộc chiến đối đầu với đám người máy Nexus-6, và để anh có thể vững lòng thực hiện trọn vẹn công việc của mình.

Ấy thế nhưng chuyện gì sẽ xảy ra nếu người máy đột nhiên cũng có thể thấu cảm, hay Rick Dickard đột nhiên lại thấy thấu cảm với người máy, thấy muốn làm tình, muốn lên giường cùng với một ả người máy như Rachel Rosen? Mọi chuyện sẽ thật đơn giản cho Rick, và cả câu chuyện trong cuốn tiểu thuyết này, nếu không có điều ấy xảy ra. Và vì thế, vốn dĩ cách mà tác giả kể “Người Máy Có Mơ Về Cừu Điện Không?” đã hấp dẫn lắm rồi, thì nay, câu chuyện đã được nâng tầm lên thành một tác phẩm không chỉ là khoa học viễn tưởng đơn thuần, là hai bên người và máy đối đầu với nhau, là một nhân viên săn tiền thưởng đi thực thi nhiệm vụ của mình, mà nó còn là một câu chuyện nhân sinh giàu triết lý, phảng phất màu tôn giáo, như chính lời giới thiệu của Nhã Nam ở bìa sau cuốn sách. Nó khiến chúng ta phải suy ngẫm, từ những thay đổi mà Rick Dickard đã trải qua, với con người máy Luba Luft trong dáng hình một cô ca sỹ opera gợi cảm, và với Rachel Rosen. Thấu cảm là ranh giới mong manh duy nhất giữa người và máy, và Rick Dickard đang đứng hai chân ở hai phía của lằn ranh ấy trong cuộc đấu tranh quyết liệt để sinh tồn.

Đây thực sự là một cuốn sách đáng đọc ngay cả đối với những ai không phải là fan của thể loại khoa học viễn tưởng. Bởi như đã nói ở trên, “Người Máy Có Mơ Về Cừu Điện Không?” hoàn toàn không phải là một cuốn tiểu sci-fi bình thường. Và giờ thì mình đã hiểu vì sao Philip K. Dick lại được xưng tụng là một trong những bậc thầy của thể loại khoa học viễn tưởng thế kỷ 20, là “nhà tiên tri”, “triết gia sci-fi”, “Kafka giữa giới truyện ba xu”. Nguyên mẫu của bộ phim “Blade Runner” là đây. Kiểu này phải kiếm phim xem ngay khi có thể quá, rồi còn “Blade Runner 2049” nữa ahhhh!!!!!!

-tYou’re surely not suggesting that I could be an android?

-tWell, let’s look at the evidence. You have no empathy whatsoever….

-tWhat? Where is your evidence for this outrageous statement?

-tProtest all you like, but you can ask anybody. You’re notorious. You’re an empathy free zone.

-tWait, I think it’s clear what’s happening here. You are in fact the android, and you have had a false memory implanted into you to make you think you are human.

-tNot so, you have had a false memory planted in you to make you think that I have had a false memory planted in me.

-tOh, this could go on all day. Let’s bring this to a swift conclusion. I will test you with the well known Glurk-Flachsborker android test.

-tI have no knowledge of that test. As you well know, the standard android test is the Blunt-Lampedrechananian test.

-tYou have just made that up. To expose your ridiculous lie, I will test your imaginary test with my test test. This is the well known Klunt-Felchclamp test. Please allow me to test your test immediately.

-tThis Klunt-Felchclamp nonsense is a mere delaying ruse. As anyone knows the only test to test a test is-

-tI have an ostrich.

-tI have a squirrel. So ner ner.

-tMy ostrich knows you are an android. It told me.

-tYou can stick your ostrich up your arse.

-tTechnically I could not but technically you could stick your squirrel up your arse. Which you should now do.

-tYour ostrich is an android.

-tYeah well you’re an android, your squirrel is an android and your mum and your dad were both big fat androids and your sister was the biggest android in town.

-tAndroid.

-tAndroidyoidyoidy.

-tAndyandyandy! Andyandyandy!

“If I only could
Be running up that hill
With no problems …”

Do you recognise this? Perhaps it’s even a earworm for you, as it is for me at the moment.

“And if I only could,
I’d make a deal with God,
And I’d get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
With no problems.”

These lines are part of a weird and wondrous ballad by Kate Bush, which after a steady climb has just reached number 1 in the UK charts. This is a very odd phenomenon for a pop song, since it was originally issued in August 1985, and was popular then too, eventually peaking at number 3. The resurrection of “Running Up That Hill” is due to its prominent focus in a current TV series, “Stranger Things”. This Netflix horror-drama series is set in the 1980s, and “Running Up That Hill” is a major plot element.

But why would an English pop song from almost 37 years ago fire the public’s imagination world-wide at the moment, and what can it possibly have to do with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by the American writer Philip K. Dick?

The answer is as puzzling as the question, and lies in the enigmatic and mysterious nature of both. Kate Bush’s original song is about a couple making a deal with God for empathy and understanding. Only by actually being in each other’s place for a while, she says, could a man and a woman understand each other. Perhaps the most direct connection between the three is that they deal with the difficulties of life’s paradoxes. In Kate Bush’s song, climbing a hill is a metaphor for facing her difficulties. “Stranger than Fiction” uses this same metaphor, in that the viewpoint character feels that only a miracle of understanding and show of support could help her climb the mountain of life’s challenges before her.

The same concept occurs in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? but this time the the hill is not merely metaphorical but also a strong visual image. It is a virtual reality, which is tapped into every day by most of the people on the planet, to achieve mass empathy. Centring on one mysterious figure “Mercer”, it has a quasi-religious function, in that it provides spiritual comfort. Everyone takes place in the ritual together, as a collective consciousness all crammed into Mercer’s head. It’s a continuous circuit: empathy leads to a sense of community; such a community leads to empathy.

This is certainly a powerful image, struggling up a hill, but did Kate Bush invent it? Or Philip K. Dick, with his “empathy boxes” and Mercerism?

In fact neither did. It is, as they say, as old as the hills, and comes from Greek mythology. In Homer’s “Iliad” and other works of Greek mythology, Sisyphus is condemned to an eternity of pushing a rock up a hill in Hades (hell) as punishment for trying to cheat Death. Mercer’s unending climb up the barren hill strongly resembles Sisyphus’s task. And yet this is all for the greater good. Mercerism has two major tenets: to be empathic to the individual, and also to work for the good of the community. Mercer himself is both a Sisyphus figure, but also a deity.

However, this is all getting a little ahead of itself, so where does it all start?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the sort of intriguing title that you cannot forget. For decades I had been aware of the book by an American writer Philip K. Dick, and even knew that it was in a genre I enjoy, but I had never actually read it. It was unusual: a dystopian novel, first published in 1968, a time when the word “dystopian” was not bandied around nearly as much as it is now. Fashions in Fantasy and Science Fiction follow trends, and the trend now is towards dark stories, especially for young adult fantasy novels.

Dystopian novels describe a society which focuses on what is contrary to the author’s—and the readers’—ethos. Their popularity is a recent development, and follows large scale social changes. We have a new awareness of larger societal and global issues, such as technology, climate change, and an ever-growing human population. A graph comparing the two extremes of fiction: the formerly popular utopian fiction and its opposite, would show a huge pinnacle in dystopian novels now, and it is still rising. A large number of those are often post-apocalyptic novels, such as this one.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco. All life forms on Earth have been decimated by the recent nuclear global war called “World War Terminus”, in 1992. Because Earth’s atmosphere has been polluted by radiation, the United Nations has encouraged mass emigration to off-world colonies, to preserve humanity’s genetic integrity. An added incentive is the provision of robot servants: androids or “andys”, which are manufactured on Mars by “The Rosen Association”.

As well as the humans who have stayed on Earth, there are a few animals, although most animal species are now endangered or extinct. Immediately it is clear that these animals are prized possessions. In fact to own a live animal is a status symbol; those who cannot afford a live animal make do with an electric one, which is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

We begin the novel with Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who has the job of “retiring” (i.e. killing) six Nexus-6 model androids, who have escaped from Mars, and are living unrecognised within the Earth’s human population. They are the latest model of android, and highly intelligent. Because they are made of organic matter, they are almost impossible to distinguish from real people, except that they have a shorter life span. Rick is living a humdrum life with his depressed wife Iran, and wishes he could earn enough money to be able to afford buy a live animal. The couple have a black-faced sheep, but unbeknownst to their friends and neighbours, it is not a living animal, but an electric one.

“He thought … about his need for a real animal; within him an actual hatred once more manifested itself toward his electric sheep, which he had to tend, had to care about, as if it lived. The tyranny of an object, he thought. It doesn’t know I exist. Like the androids, it had no ability to appreciate the existence of another.”

To stave off the boredom and dissatisfaction she too feels, Iran, like many other people uses a machine called a “Penfield mood organ”, to change and control her mood.

“And I finally found a setting for despair.” Her dark, pert face showed satisfaction, as if she had achieved something of worth. “So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who’s smart has emigrated, don’t you think?”

This “empathy box” links her up simultaneously to other users, in a virtual reality. As mentioned, the virtual reality centres on one character, Wilbur Mercer, who climbs neverendingly up a hill, sometimes being hit with crashing stones. Acquiring high-status animal pets and linking themselves to empathy boxes appear to be the only two ways characters in the story strive for any sort of fulfillment in their lives.

A secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man who has been judged of low intelligence, and is a “chickenhead” as they are colloquially termed. He has failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test, and must stay on Earth. He moves from deserted building to deserted building, eking out a living with his basic job. He has no sense of self-worth, and feels isolated and outside human society, because of how others view him:

“You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all. I mean before they came here I could stand it … But now it has changed. You can’t go back, he thought. You can’t go from people to nonpeople.”

But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting—do you see? I guess you don’t. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it ‘absence of appropriate affect.”

John Isidore forms a friendship with  the fugitive androids, and this raises questions about intelligence, trust and acceptance. Ironically, this character, who is judged to be of subnormal intelligence, displays the strongest instance of empathy in the entire novel, in a scene which remains horrifically unforgettable to me.

When John Isidore inadvertently catches a spider, a living animal, he is delighted. Proudly he shows it to the androids. But they cut off four of its legs one by one, to see if can walk around with only four legs. John Isidore, despite his mental deficiencies, acts with great empathy when he drowns the spider to end its suffering. He could have sold the creature for a large amount of money, since animals have become largely extinct and thereby have become a status symbol. However, he cared far more about the spider’s experience than about the profit it could have brought him.

The story revolves around how to be human—and even more pertinently—who is the more human. It is typical of Philip K. Dick that he would present us with this conundrum. Philip K. Dick’s short stories typically explores various philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and all those are at the core of this novel. His work is full of perplexing questions and paradoxes which lie just beneath the surface. The more layers of the onion you unpeel, the more paradoxes you find. Very neatly, right at the end of this novel there is a further paradox. Mercer is exposed by popular presenter Buster Friendly in a day-time television programme to be a fake. Mercer is really an actor named Al Jerry and his world had been created on a soundstage.

The novel’s central theme is to explore the importance of empathy in an increasingly technological world. Humans are struggling to find any relevance to their life in a dying world. The increasing presence of androids on Earth threatens humanity’s feeling of self-worth, and only Mercerism appears to give humanity a sense of unity. Empathy has becomes the overarching uniting factor. Otherwise we are left with the empty horror of Edvard Munch’ s “The Scream”:

“The painting showed a hairless, oppressed creature with a head like an inverted pear, its hands clapped in horror to its ears, its mouth open in a vast, soundless scream. Twisted ripples of the creature’s torment, echoes of its cry, flooded out into the air surrounding it; the man or woman, whichever it was, had become contained by its own howl. It had covered its ears against its own sound. The creature stood on a bridge and no one else was present; the creature screamed in isolation. Cut off by—or despite—its outcry.”

As we read, we question. What is real and what is an artificial construct? What is true, and what is false? Is there any such thing as an individual desire, or is everything now a collective desire, through the empathy box? The more we read, the more we come to the conclusion that everything is a sham, illustrating the hypocrisy behind people’s motivations to maintain unity.

The empathy boxes are a case in point. What is real, and what is not? Characters in the novel use the box to send them into a type of virtual reality, in order to obtain “real” experiences and emotions. However, on disconnecting with the box, they must then deal with the real world. Do they alter their behaviour when they discover  that many of the images they experienced in the empathy box were created by a Hollywood actor. and thus the events they faced in the box were not real in any sense at all? Intriguingly, the answer is no.

To most humans, Mercer has become a messianic figure who has succeeded in uniting humanity under a spiritual umbrella in uncertain times. They would prefer to accept the pretence, rather than live in a world where human emotions are becoming increasingly absent, and irrelevant. An individual example of the dichotomy is of Rick Deckard, who says that he feels empathy towards androids and can no longer hunt them. He even wonders at one point if he himself is an android. Mercer tells him that it is indeed wrong to hunt androids, but that he must do it anyway, continuing the hypocrisy of the religion.

“An android … doesn’t care what happens to another android. That’s one of the indications we look for.”
“Then, … you must be an android.”

“Everything is true … Everything anybody has ever thought.”

It doesn’t really matter who Mercer is, or even whether he exists at all. His tenets are valid, because people believe in them. Even if it is based on false principles, they feel a sense of hope in these very principles, which have become real to them.

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”

It is an existential paradox.

In 1982, a film was made based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and called “Blade Runner”. Many aspects of the novel were changed, but enough remained for subsequent editions of the novel to be titled “Blade Runner”, largely due to the film’s success. This film is now probably much more famous than the book which started it all. Much later, in 2017, elements and themes from the original novel were again used in the film’s sequel “Blade Runner 2049”. This novel is still very relevant, just as Kate Bush’s ballad is.

“If I only could, I’d be running up that hill.
If I only could, I’d be running up that hill.

It doesn’t hurt me.
Do you want to feel how it feels?
Do you want to know that it doesn’t hurt me?
Do you want to hear about the deal that I’m making?”

But perhaps the last word should come from Philip K. Dick himself. This is part of a speech he made in 1972, called: “The Android and the Human”:

“Our environment—and I mean our man-made world of machines, artificial constructs, computers, electronic systems, interlinking homeostatic components—all of this is in fact beginning more and more to possess what the earnest psychologists fear the primitive sees in his environment: animation. In a very real sense our environment is becoming alive, or at least quasi-alive, and in ways specifically and fundamentally analogous to ourselves … Rather than learning about ourselves by studying our constructs, perhaps we should make the attempt to comprehend what our constructs are up to by looking into what we ourselves are up to.”

A guy just wanted to have a pet, OK? :/

Rilettura del capolavoro intramontabile di PKD, che ha dato il là al film Blade Runner e tutto un filone di film di fantascienza, dove il futuro è oscuro, desolato, sporco e dove gli uomini e gli androidi sono quasi la stessa cosa. Cosa farà il nostro protagonista, Rick Deckard, il cacciatore di androidi? E le pecore elettriche?

Questa seconda lettura del romanzo, è stata una storia molto differente dalla prima. Conoscendo già la storia, sia per aver letto precedentemente il libro ed avendo visto diverse volte il film (anche se differente dal libro in alcuni aspetti), comunque l'inquadratura della storia ce l'avevo in mente. Così parto e ritrovo molti degli aspetti che rendono PKD uno tra i miei scrittori preferiti in assoluto. Sono quelle profetiche immagini dal futuro, un futuro di degrado, un futuro inquinato, apocalittico, dove specie vivente sono estinte per colpa di guerre e devastazioni nucleari. E dove un uomo qualunque cerca di capire o semplicemente cerca di vivere e conoscere il senso della vita.

PKD, mente brulicante di idee, che spara letteralmente su carta, prima di tutto per sopravvivere, si sa che la fantascienza non è mai stata considerata letteratura, ma soltanto "palta" da riviste di second'ordine e quindi pagata male e pochissimo. Così PKD scrive, scrive e scrive a profusione senza fermarsi mai... Quante ne sapevi!

Capolavoro era e capolavoro rimane, superconsigliato!

“It's the basic condition of life to be required to violate our own identity.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Having hooked up all the iridescent wires from my XC-23 Weird and Crazy in Fiction Test Machine to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, I’m here to report results showed the needle registering a maximum ten out of ten on each and every page. Quite a feat. Quite a novel. But then again, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised - after all, this is Philip K. Dick. One of the most bizarre reading experiences anyone could possibly encounter. Rather than attempting to comment on plot or the sequence of events (too wild to synopsize), here are ten ingredients the one and only PKD mixes together in his outlandish science fictional stew:

Rick Deckard - the novel’s main character, a bounty hunter on the city police force assigned to track down and destroy human-like androids that have emigrated illegally from Mars. The year 2021, the place San Francisco in the aftermath of nuclear war, deadly dust everywhere, many species wiped out. The government says androids must remain on Mars and continue doing all the dirty work for humans who have migrated to the red planet. Darn! The problem is androids, especially the most recently improved version with their new Nexus-6 brain unit, have been given way too much intelligence.

Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test – Fortunately, bounty hunters can administer a test to determine who is human and who is android. The central dilemma with androids – without the very human capacity to feel compassion for others, an android is nothing more than a solitary predator, a cold killer capable of murdering humans left and right to eventually take over. A true stroke of PKD irony since there are a number of instances where androids appear to have deep feelings and empathy for each other and even humans. Meanwhile, the human bounty hunters are expected to eliminate or “retire” androids with no more feelings than if they were disassembling a vacuum cleaner. This philosophical conundrum emerges repeatedly throughout the novel.



John Isidore –Since he scored low on his IQ test, labeled a special and chickenhead, Isidore can’t emigrate to Mars. He lives alone in an empty, decaying apartment building on the outskirts of the city and drives a truck for an animal rescue company. When at home Isadore watches hawkers and comedians on his TV when he's not grabbing the handles of his black empathy box that enables him to fuse his feeling with all of life, a major tenet of the new religion of Mercerism, founded by that superior being, Wilbur Mercer. Such belief and behavior leads to yet another area of PKD-style philosophic inquiry. However, by the end of the novel it becomes clear anyone, human or android, should think twice before putting their life in the hands of a chickenhead.

Buster Friendly – Leading TV personality and all-around funny guy who makes announcements and pronouncements on what’s real and what’s fake on topics near and dear to the hearts of the remaining survivors. Topics can range from the latest reports on nuclear fallout to his biggest rival, Wibur Mercer.

Mood Organ – In this futuristic world, there’s no need for drugs and for good reason: men and women like Rick Deckard and his wife have a “mood organ” where they can simply set the dial for a stimulant or a tranquilizer, a hit of venom to better win an argument or even set the dial for a state of ecstatic sexual bliss. Obviously there’s some upside here. 2021 isn’t that far away. Lets hope inventors are hard at work as you read these words.



Rachael Rosen – Beautiful daughter of Eldon Rosen, founder of a major manufacturer of androids. But wait: Is Rachael a real human or could she turn out to be one of those very intelligent Nexus-6 androids? Time for Rick Deckard to take out his equipment and give Rachael the Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test. Either way, Rachael infuses serious energy into the story. One of my favorite lines is when Rick Deckard asks himself after a phone call with Rachael. “What kind of world is it when an android phones up a bounty hunter and offers him assistance?”

Happy Dog Pet Shop – One of the largest pet shops in the Bay Area, they currently have an ostrich in their display window, the bird recently arrived from the Cleveland zoo. What a prize! Rick Deckard is hooked – he stops and stares at the ostrich as he walks to work and later places a call to check on their asking price. Whoa! The price is outrageous. Rick knows he would have to eliminate an entire string of androids just for the down payment. But, my goodness – to own one’s very own ostrich.

Kipple - As John Isidore states as a matter-of-fact: “Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there’s twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.” Sounds as ridiculous as the medieval idea of spontaneous generation. Perhaps we should take into account that John Isidore is, after all, a chickenhead.

Luba Luft – On the list of androids, Luba is currently a leading opera singer for the lead company in San Francisco. Come on, Rick Deckard, do you really want to eliminate someone (or something) that is making such a formidable contributing to the arts? PKD has Rick and a fellow bounty hunter discuss this very question as they follow orders from their higher-ups.

Real and Electric Animals – Creatures of all stripes and varieties add much color to the story. In addition to the above mentioned ostrich, there’s a horse, a sheep, cat, goat, spider, donkey, crow and toad. Some are real, others electric. A PKD book worth reading to discover the truth down to the last four-legged wiggly.


“Damn her he said to himself. What good does it do my risking my life? She doesn't care whether we own an ostrich or not. Nothing penetrates.”
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick, American Science Fiction author (1928 - 1982)

I love Blade Runner—and so it is with pleasure, and a sense of completion, that I am now able to state (almost) the same for its source material. The parenthesized qualifier admits to the differing status of the two: whereas BR is an absolute classic, one that declared itself boldly, influencing the design and feel and look of all subsequent dystopian cinematic fare, a movie cast to perfection and narrowing its gaze to the more umbrageous and feral of Dick's thematic threads, the book casts a wider net, tries to do more in what feels like less space, and thrusts Deckard's existential enigma and soteriological Mercerism to center stage while having the larger android cell tailored to the service of the philosophical concepts Dick wished to incorporate and explore in a fashion that combines Nabokov slumming with Moorcock in Cornelian mode. And for my money, it's the Mercerism that proved, in the end, the most compelling of the novel's threads—let's face it, the alternate police station represented the kind of overly complex, ridiculously conceived and executed stratagem that was done to death definitively by Dr. Evil—with animals promoted to fetish status, a projection of nature murdered by our atomic pollen, and Wilbur Mercer's Sisyphean struggle to gain the crest of the hill in the face of the shadowy particle assaults by unseen and unknown haters—ie, ourselves shat out and animated by despite—adeptly tailored to our modern, gray-shrouded condition. Fuck it, just a few weeks ago I tumbled down into the Tomb World, so when Dick brought the reader into this nethermost environ, I recognized it and felt its familiar rattles and empty comforts. The movie wisely opted to leave that element within the pages, with the result that its freshness and applicability to this different vision of post-apocalyptic America enhanced the book without detracting from the former's superb qualities in the slightest.

The thing is, it's a copacetic relationship—and perhaps the most gratifying aspect of it all? That the filmic version is, in this way and others, of enough substantive difference from its textual progenitor to prove complementary rather than replicative in effect: two astutely conceived and executed visions of a fractured future—as much satire as science, as much philosophy as fiction—reflected through the empathic prism that is Rick Deckard. And while Dick's prose can become a bit pedestrian and choppy, it's yet aptly suited to the pulp-noirish essence of his stories, allowing the stimulative and disquieting elements of his fictive originality to rise to the surface and pull the reader fully into their heady current. You groove to novels like these with that signature bell going off in your left ear, gnawing on jerky and chain smoking, not with peach coolers and cobbler and a nice plate of crackers n' cheese.

i read it twice just to write a 15 pages essay, lmao. i better get a good grade or i'll jump off a bridge.

Maybe a 2.5? I don't know... Honestly, I don't really know how I feel about this book at all. All I know is that I was underwhelmed.
I think it just wasn't the right time for me to read this. Maybe in a few years I'll give it another go, because I liked the concept.