Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? by Philip K. Dick

244 pages (Trade Paperback) Science Fiction

Philip K. Dick has been on my radar for a long time. I was heavy into sci fi when I was in college, but I never read anything by him. I have watched Bladerunner a few times and decided to give Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep a try.

Bladerunner is loosely based on the book, but their are a lot of differences. It is more like they took the world and the main character and then wrote a story separate from the movie. Rick Deckard is bounty hunter in the future. He hunts androids. Every time he "retires" an andy he gets 1000 dollars. In the future most animals are extinct and to have a real one is to have social status. If you can't you get an electric animal. Deckard has an electric sheep. He wants to have a real animal. The world is falling apart after an apocalypse that is explained as a war. People uses machines to set their mood. The populous uses another machine as a means of religion referred to as Mercerism. Eight androids have escaped Mars and after a colleague is shot Deckard is given the job of retiring the remaining andys.

Dick's style of writing was awkward for me. At first I thought that the dialogue was intentionally written this way to reflect the thinking of characters, but it continued through the book and eventually I just accepted it for what it was. He rights very simply, but then occasionally has these out of place sentences used to vividly describe something. All that said I was drawn into the story and read the short book in a few days.

3 Emotional/Intellectual - I didn't care much about any of the characters except J.R. Isadore who had a minor part in the book. Intellectually this is interesting. I imagine at the time in the late 60's this was ahead of its time, but in relation to all that has come since it doesn't stand out as much.

2 Style/Readability - I can't claim to be a fan of his writing.

4 Long Term Impact - The fact that I am reading this 50 years after its release attests to its staying power. I don't know how revolutionary it was for its time, but it has obviously had an impact on the sci-fi genre.

10 out of 13. I was glad that I read the book and would say that I enjoyed it. A friend of mine put it this way, "Maybe Dick is to be celebrated more for his ideas than for his writing." That is how I feel about this. I am not sure if I will rush to read anything else of his, but in a couple years I may try something else.

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