Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
category: science fiction, author:Philip K. Dick
original copyright 1968,
read in September 2011 (and before, in Feb 05)
Agamedes' opinion: 5 out of 10
Sadly dated.Or, perhaps, it's just me...
In 1968 -- when Androids was written -- perhaps I would have agreed with Dick, that the world was going downhill fast. That nuclear war, lifelike androids and interplanetary migration were just around the corner. That by 1992 emotional control and telepathic empathy would be implemented and automated. By 1992!
Perhaps it is just me. Perhaps I have changed.
As I started to read Androids I thought, What a gloomy world. What an extreme case of all that is bad overcoming all that is... well... better. I seem to have a less negative view of the future of humanity.
Not a positive view. Just, less negative.
Androids looks at possibilities -- and posits the worst. I look at the world and predict... mediocrity. We have enough sense to reject the worst. We lack the conviction to make the effort to implement the best.
Beyond the scope of these maunderings... beyond Dick's negative view of life to come... Androids is about the definition of what it is to be "human". That's my opinion. As the book (or its introduction) claims, Dick writes about what is real and what is not.
To me, though, when the policeman's job is to kill artificial humanoids -- and it is almost impossible to distinguish between the real and the artificial humanoids -- it is about our definition of humanity. One human is born, another is manufactured. There is no discernible difference. Is one any more or less "human" than the other?
If Androids had been written ten years later, perhaps Dick would have given all of his androids a pastel skin. The policeman's challenge would have been, to remove the black, white or yellow makeup -- and destroy the pastel android revealed underneath. The book would then have been about racial differences and acceptance.
Still, there is the post-nuclear war environment, the abandoned Earth, the misery of the remaining population. There is more to this book than born-human hatred of the manufactured-human.
To tell the truth, the book is depressing.
I read it first a few years ago. I started to read it again... and decided it was not worth it. Dick's science predictions are already nineteen years late. His misery is timeless.
I think I'll wait for the musical Disney version of the movie of the book.
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