What is there that is new can be said about it? a very great deal (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
Date:	14/11/00 (185 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Characterisation; real people with intricate and appropriate lives, A+

Disadvantages: Science; dubious, C-

Number four in the SF Masterworks series. Famous, notorious, as Blade Runner, the movie novel that made America sit up and notice Philip K. Dick - after it had ignored him for the previous twenty- seven years.

What is there that is new can be said about it? As a fan, if not Otaku, then a very great deal.

One essential point has to be cleared up; it was never a technological novel. I think it was K.W. Jeter- who claims not to have been portrayed as Kevin in Valis - who accused Phil of not knowing how a lightbulb was supposed to work. Phil's science fiction is frequently either very gritty, near future, or sometimes ultrascience, beyond coherent description anyway. See Rautavaara's Case for an example that if it doesn't make your spine run cold, then I feel sorry for you.

In any case, it was always only props for the actions of the people. A Doctor Who wobbly set would have been adequate. As for togetherness between human and android - nonsense. A perversion of the literary intent.

The grandiose glass and steel monoliths of the movie were never what Phil had in mind for post- World War Terminus San Fransisco. What is happening is that a shattered, post holocaust civilisation has picked itself up just far enough to be able to run away, to the colony worlds- purely systemic- but someone has to stay behind and keep it on it's feet. In the long term, all causes are lost - except the need to strive for a good cause. Ocasionally you can find one again, as eventualy happens to Deckard. Eventually, after long hard struggle.

In a way, actually, Blade Runner is a far better satire on Vietnam than The Forever War; It contains a fictional religion, popular after the war, which has many interesting elements- little mysticism, great practical concern on not doing harm, in which he rewrites the christian Fifth Commandment, to read that Thou Shalt Kill Only The Killers. If everyone were a perfect mercerite, the only ki
llers would be the androids, and some poor tormented soul would have to hunt them down and kill them.

Enter policeman Rick Deckard. Key differences from the movie; he is married to a shrewish woman (Phil too often cast female characters in the role of predators, bloodsuckers with few if any redeeming features), officially employed by the San Francisco Police Department, and an economically and emotionally struggling minor functionary, who owns the electric sheep of the title because he can't afford a real one. Being able to care for something is the key tenet of Mercerism; fake animals the logical American reaction thereto. Androids are despicable, because they have no facility for empathy; and if this book has a serious flaw, it's that it's too concerned with being than becoming; I would like to have seen more of where he thought empathy arises from.

Most people are Mercerites; a noble, gentle belief coming far too late - is the wake of a thermonuclear war the only place and time we would learn to do this? Jack Isidore, Chickenhead, is one of the Everymen that litter Phil's science fiction and that of damned few other authors. Disturbing in a way - emotional intelligence can succeed in leading a worthwhile, if furtive and harried, life where analytical intelligence turned itself to radioactive ash? No, not really, because he is kind even to the killers. His faith in the androids, who come to him - and he has an idiot-level IQ, not the genius in the film, and works for an artifical animal repair firm - is a source of the reader's, and Deckard's, doubt.

There is one depressing notion that comes out of this; the knowledge of how to go about living came at a tremendous, devastating price- and it continues to exact it, because it is not easy knowledge to put into practise. (In his own real life, of course, Phil never quite managed to complete the transaction.)

The Rosen Association, manufacturers of top-lin
e androids, does an excellent job, or did, of protecting it's creations. The movie is simpler, but the scene where they try to shake his faith in the Voight-Kampff test is similar enough. Rachael's androidness is more dubious; Deckard's opinion flipflops. She is an android. A special one, used by Rosen to trick bounty hunters, force them to grow empathy towards androids, and so destroy their hunting efficiency. She leads him through a complex affair, in the end failing; she admits to being an android - but that could be part of the strategy. In the end, in a gesture of malice that could have been typical android or extremely irate human, she pushes the real, live goat he bought with the bounty money of the roof of his apartment building. Not Roy Baty at all. The irony of buying life with death, also, should not be ignored.

They also have a fake, parallel bounty hunting organisation of their own, to destroy everyone else's rogue androids, and protect their own. Also to destroy the odd official bounty hunter, as nearly happens to Deckard. A brilliant, bold device of storytelling, and one so complex as to be easy to understand why it couldn't be filmed. The bounty hunter working for this organisation contrasts with Deckard - Resch is an honest man, with no idea he was working for a front, but a cold and lethal one, ready to kill anything he feels is android.

Other wierdness; Mercer is a fake. We could know that from first principles, but the androids set out to prove it. The shared experience trudge up the rocky hillside - which Deckard acts out at the very end- into the tomb, and ascent therefrom - was done on a sound stage; they track down the drunken old sot of an actor. They want to destroy empathy. In theory, they do, but in practise nothing changes. People still believe, because it is good to believe, even in a fake sometimes. Can you say 'Clinton'?

In many ways this is one of the most optimistic of Phil&#
39;s books. Deckard, although he achieves very little material benefit out of his labours apart from an electric toad, survives, and grows within himself; there are leftover problems, though. How do you differentiate a replicant from a radically underperforming or simply very grouchy human? Diligence, intelligence, very hard work, and forgiveness for the occasional honest mistake? Probably. Is thare any alternative? It was wrong, but you have to do it anyway, as Mercer said. A book with many wonderful but no simple answers. What's more, it's well into the category of a genuine 'what if', attacking the same problems as the greatest mainstream literature. Intelligent characters who try to second-guess each other, torment one another with the truth (such as they understand it), and are true to their own presented strengths and failings.

The movie may have been cyberpunk; the book is not. Rather if it were adhered to, it would make it unneccessary to be a cyberpunk. It's much more intricate, much more complex, much less facile. Not so much worth reading as mandatory.

Imagination; detail, with follow- through; A
Science; dubious, C-
Characterisation; real people with intricate and appropriate lives, A+
Scene- setting; well carried off, invented 'Kipple'; A-
Overall; incredible storytelling power; A

Summary: