Book Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Overall: 4/4 Stars

I bought this book because I plan on buying the amazingly awesome and spectacularly cool 5-Disc set of the movie Blade Runner, which was based on the Philip K. Dick book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I bought the book for $5 at the store and read it in two days, loving and savoring every single moment.

First off, the setting and characters are pure Philip K. Dick. It takes place in a sort of bombed out future where human barely exist on Earth, and most have migrated to colony planets. The main character is Rick Deckard, who hunts down androids who have illegally returned to Earth, and then he kills them or 'retires' them. He also uses the money that he gets from retiring them to buy a real animal, which is both regarded as a social status thing and a way to cope with what he does.

What I mean by the characters being pure Philip K. Dick is that they are, in essence, losers who really don't aspire to anything except purely human desires, including social status symbols (such as a real sheep) and all sorts of things like that while also being extremely smart and analytical. They sort of talk scientifically and philosophically just in everyday speech, which (And I don't know about you) is something that usually doesn't happen to me. This sort of speech sounds completely natural even though the setting for it is strange, and it's just that kind of oddness and indirect humor that I love about the book.

The story definitely has a theme, which is (I think) all about emotions and the way that humans form attachments to things. It is also an interesting novel in that it features what I believe to be a Philip K. Dick trademark in at least two of his books that I have read (This and, The Man in the High Castle), and by that I mean an ending that really isn't an ending.

Anyways, I highly recommend the book to science fiction readers, and I just cannot say enough about how awesome and interesting it really is. Oh, and by the way, when you're done reading the book, go watch all of the many cuts of Blade Runner. I've never seen it, but I will soon!