Book Review - Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Published by: Library of America
Publication Date: 1968
Format: Hardcover, 900 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Earth is a radioactive wasteland. There are cities where you can eek out a life but those that can have emigrated off planet, where they've been given an android servant to help with their new life. Every once in a while an andy escapes Mars and it's indentured servitude and comes to Earth and needs to be hunted down. This is where Rick Deckard comes in. He is a bounty hunter who tracks down the androids and retires them. He gets a sizable bounty for each andy he puts down and all he wants to do with that money is replace his electric sheep. At one time he had a live one and it was everything to him, his status in society secured. But it tragically died and he secretly replaced it with a replica. With the bounties from the six escaped Nexus-6 androids he could replace his sheep or maybe even get a goat. The problem is the Nexus-6 is next to impossible to distinguish from humans, and an andy already got the drop on his senior officer. Therefore his boss thinks it's wise that he visit Rosen Associates, the creators of the Nexus-6, to make sure the test capable of determining if an android is an android short of checking their bone marrow, the Voigt-Kampff test, still works. There he meets Rachael Rosen, the heir to the company, and, surprisingly, an android. Her ability to almost pass the test and his stirring of emotions for her confuse him. Could the line between human and android be thinner than he's ever thought? At least he's able to retire his first target without a problem. The second target once again makes him question his job. Luba Luft is a famous opera singer, and an android. A clever one who turns the tables on him and gets him arrested. At the police station he starts to question everything. Who is in power? Are androids secretly among us? Is that their master plan? Could even he be an android with implanted memories? After Luba Luft is taken care of Deckard administers the Voigt-Kampff test on himself. He is human, but has empathy for the androids. But what does that matter now that he has the money to buy a goat? But will the goat satisfy Deckard and his wife? Or will he still think of Rachael. There are also three more androids to account for...
If you are not a reader of science fiction you most likely know Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as the book that became the film Blade Runner. That's why I picked it up to read over twenty years ago. I read it straight through without sleep on an overnight train to New York City and it confused the hell out of me because it was nothing like the film. And I'm including all the versions of it out there. It's best to take the book on it's own terms. Because if you read it through the lens of the film you will be disappointed and confused. They are akin to each other but feel like distant cousins. In fact this is a weird instance in which both the book and the film have amazing cultural impact on their respective fields but are two disparate stories. Yet both stories can be boiled down to the question, what is it to be human? And Dick posits that what makes us human is empathy. But how do you quantify empathy and success in Dick's world? That's through the owning of an animal. If you are poor you can only afford a cheap electric imitation animal, but if you have a real animal you are not just showing that you have money, you are showing that you are a more successful human. The fact that characters painstakingly poor over the pages of Sidney's Animal and Fowl Catalogue like gambling addicts at a horse race is both amusing and tragic. They are junkies looking for their next hit of upward mobility. To prove that they are worth something. Which is why the revenge of the android Rachael is so perfect, she emasculates Deckard by taking the one thing he truly loves, his goat. Proving that it's the androids who understand what it is to be human more than the humans. Deckard wanted the goat to prove something, whereas the androids don't want anything other than to experience what it is to live. Luba Luft is the prime example of this. She's an opera singer who goes to a museum to take in the Edvard Munch exhibit. She is part of and an enthusiast of culture. If art is the purest form of the human condition Luba Luft is just as human if not more than Deckard who only wants a goat. And as for the religion? Mercerism? I'm not sure how even Dick himself felt about that. He was drawn deeply into religion and in the book it's a way to connect to other humans. It's really the one thing that the androids can't experience. And yet it is a lie. So will people willingly believe a lie to feel connected? I think as we see with Deckard and his toad that people will believe anything if they are desperate enough.
Post a Comment