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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My guy has post nut clarity, goes on a killing spree, thinks he's God, then goes to bed.
I will never underestimate the ability of male authors to include jailbait in their books for no reason.
I will never underestimate the ability of male authors to include jailbait in their books for no reason.
I had been meaning to read this one for a while, being the animal studies addict that I’ve become over the last year. Nonetheless, it was mere chance that made me actually grab it and read it. I was visiting a friend and once I was in need of a book to read she immediately threw her copy at me. I didn’t have the time to finish it while I was there, but I did get started and enjoyed the beginning a great deal. So I just downloaded it and got to reading what was left of it. Chance strikes yet again and I started watching an anime series which clearly draws inspiration from this book, going as far as having the main villain recommending it to a fellow villain. The name of the series is Psycho-Pass and if you’re into that kind of stuff you should give it a go.
Sadly, I have to agree with the reviewers who state that the book does not keep its strength all the way to the end. I clearly loved it – just check my four stars – but the truth is that I can’t say that the first pages were matched in greatness by the last. But maybe Dick meant that to happen, after all there is a great deal of non-caring, conformity and alienation in this future world. Therefore, it just makes sense to feel that way once you’re done with the book. Maybe readers of this turn into... androids in a sense. Yes, there are androids in this book, as you may have guessed from the title. And yes, there will be electric sheep too. This story could be your run-of-the-mill bounty hunter story, but the identity of the prey leads to a never ending source of delicious, squirmy questioning. So let’s go for it, I say.
I often talk about two forms of objectifying in my reviews: the consuming objectification and the worshipping objectification. You can find this divide very explicit in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: the former type is naturally applied to androids, the latter to animals, who have achieved a holy, valuable status by their mass extinction. Even if at the surface it seems animals are finally being protected and being understood as fellow beings, the truth is, they aren’t. They’ve only become luxury commodities that you keep near you and take pride in looking after only for others to see. Since real animals become so expensive, it becomes commonplace for people to purchase electric animals just to keep up appearances (and if taking care of a non-sentient non-alive kind of being ain’t the worst kind of worthlessness, I don’t know what is).
On the other hand, you have androids. Deceitfully human in appearance (the aspect that mainly and problematically establishes the hierarchy between us and animals in our present world), they are different from humans only in age, life-expectancy and the ability to feel empathy. It becomes clear throughout the narrative that pitying self-confessed empathy deprived beings will lead to very little fulfilment. Ironically, the Voigt-Kampf test, which determines who is an android based on empathic responses, is constituted by answers that we can only assume some humans would necessarily fail. Therefore, the divide between human and machine becomes extremely difficult to account for. These issues might take us to an inquiry of the existent mind theories: if dualism is true (which, let’s just say it, lesser and lesser people believe in) humanity is indeed special and there is a reason for the divide between human and machine, perhaps even between human and animal. But this is probably only wishful thinking derived from our species-generalized special snowflake syndrome. But if we assume physicalism is true, there can be no divide between human and machine and human and animal as all are only a meaningful assembly of atoms, and not even a sense of empathy will be able to separate us, thus discrediting any sense of ownership or superiority of one versus the other.
But this is just me going and going, in Dick’s world there is a divide. Whether it is biological (which seems to be what the narrative hints at) or societal (which our reader conscience might suspect) is left unresolved, has there is no way of knowing as of now just how much of being a person is your everyday nature-gambling or some sort of super special nature-jackpot. Anyhow, I do believe we have some space of manoeuvre inside the opportunities that were given to us as a species, and we should use it for a rational acknowledgement of kinship (in relation to animals, in particular) rather than denying something which we have always been aware as real: every member of Animalia’s inalienable sense of agency and, with that, the potential to suffer.
If you decide to read the book after reading my review, I invite you to do it with a simple question in mind: who is it that suffers and who doesn’t here? Maybe you’ll find, as I did, that that isn’t a very straight-forward question.
Sadly, I have to agree with the reviewers who state that the book does not keep its strength all the way to the end. I clearly loved it – just check my four stars – but the truth is that I can’t say that the first pages were matched in greatness by the last. But maybe Dick meant that to happen, after all there is a great deal of non-caring, conformity and alienation in this future world. Therefore, it just makes sense to feel that way once you’re done with the book. Maybe readers of this turn into... androids in a sense. Yes, there are androids in this book, as you may have guessed from the title. And yes, there will be electric sheep too. This story could be your run-of-the-mill bounty hunter story, but the identity of the prey leads to a never ending source of delicious, squirmy questioning. So let’s go for it, I say.
I often talk about two forms of objectifying in my reviews: the consuming objectification and the worshipping objectification. You can find this divide very explicit in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: the former type is naturally applied to androids, the latter to animals, who have achieved a holy, valuable status by their mass extinction. Even if at the surface it seems animals are finally being protected and being understood as fellow beings, the truth is, they aren’t. They’ve only become luxury commodities that you keep near you and take pride in looking after only for others to see. Since real animals become so expensive, it becomes commonplace for people to purchase electric animals just to keep up appearances (and if taking care of a non-sentient non-alive kind of being ain’t the worst kind of worthlessness, I don’t know what is).
On the other hand, you have androids. Deceitfully human in appearance (the aspect that mainly and problematically establishes the hierarchy between us and animals in our present world), they are different from humans only in age, life-expectancy and the ability to feel empathy. It becomes clear throughout the narrative that pitying self-confessed empathy deprived beings will lead to very little fulfilment. Ironically, the Voigt-Kampf test, which determines who is an android based on empathic responses, is constituted by answers that we can only assume some humans would necessarily fail. Therefore, the divide between human and machine becomes extremely difficult to account for. These issues might take us to an inquiry of the existent mind theories: if dualism is true (which, let’s just say it, lesser and lesser people believe in) humanity is indeed special and there is a reason for the divide between human and machine, perhaps even between human and animal. But this is probably only wishful thinking derived from our species-generalized special snowflake syndrome. But if we assume physicalism is true, there can be no divide between human and machine and human and animal as all are only a meaningful assembly of atoms, and not even a sense of empathy will be able to separate us, thus discrediting any sense of ownership or superiority of one versus the other.
But this is just me going and going, in Dick’s world there is a divide. Whether it is biological (which seems to be what the narrative hints at) or societal (which our reader conscience might suspect) is left unresolved, has there is no way of knowing as of now just how much of being a person is your everyday nature-gambling or some sort of super special nature-jackpot. Anyhow, I do believe we have some space of manoeuvre inside the opportunities that were given to us as a species, and we should use it for a rational acknowledgement of kinship (in relation to animals, in particular) rather than denying something which we have always been aware as real: every member of Animalia’s inalienable sense of agency and, with that, the potential to suffer.
If you decide to read the book after reading my review, I invite you to do it with a simple question in mind: who is it that suffers and who doesn’t here? Maybe you’ll find, as I did, that that isn’t a very straight-forward question.
I didn't find this book easy to follow. A lot of key context was missing. The future imagination was strange in that some things were very advanced like flying cars and others were not changed much at all. Electric animals were an interesting concept.
I preferred the movie to the book which I hardly ever do. I read this for the HRCYED 2.0 Challenge for the film based on a book (Blade Runner) and also animal (Sheep)
I preferred the movie to the book which I hardly ever do. I read this for the HRCYED 2.0 Challenge for the film based on a book (Blade Runner) and also animal (Sheep)
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Very intriguing premise and sci-fi concepts, the plot started feeling juvenile and all over the place to me after a while.
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
After I've sat with this book for a day, I love it! It's so original and harrowing. It has a lot to say about the human condition, technology, and hegemony. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because it's mildly sexist and deeply racist. I definitely want to read again soon.
Excelente obra. Me gusta mucho cuando una obra sci-fi tiene una historia lo suficientemente interesante para tenerte enganchado y a la vez va salpicando cuestiones morales o filosóficas sobre los humanos.
El ritmo está raro, se estanca con cierto personaje (que ni siquiera es el protagonista), y luego retoma su ritmo una vez que se entiende el porqué de ese personaje.
Otro punto a favor es la construcción de este mundo. Qué maravilla (a nivel de world building, claro, porque este mundo cyberpunk suena culero lol).
El ritmo está raro, se estanca con cierto personaje (que ni siquiera es el protagonista), y luego retoma su ritmo una vez que se entiende el porqué de ese personaje.
Otro punto a favor es la construcción de este mundo. Qué maravilla (a nivel de world building, claro, porque este mundo cyberpunk suena culero lol).
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Legitimate Lobotomy. Convinced old authors are only called greats and classics because no one before had the ability to read.
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated