Deckard an android
"An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to another android, That's one of the indications we look for, "
"Then," Miss Luft said, "you must be an android, "
That stopped him he stared at her,
This is all I could think about when reading, I really looked for evidence to back the idea up, though the novel only provided me with speculation and partial facts, For every little suggestion in the text that he is a robot, there is an effective counter argument, Somehow, though, I am not entirely convinced,
“Maybe there was once a human who looked like you, and somewhere along the line you killed him and took his place, And your superiors dont know, ”
I think Phillip K, Dick left it purposefully open to an extent, and thats the entire point of the novel,
What is life How do we define it and what separates us from entities that simulate almost every human experience and emotion Very little.
Phillip K. Dick creates a city full of doubt and conspiracy, Androids could be anywhere and they could be anyone, As technology advances it becomes harder and harder for them to be detected by police, They even think they are human with a will and freedom to choose their own lives, Who has the right to tell them no
Deckard pushes such thoughts to the back of his mind, though they constantly plague him and creep up in the shadows of his dreams.
He is on the cusp of a moral crisis, an identity crisis, a crisis that may change the way he sees the world, Though like most people he is driven by money, Killing murdering androids pays really well and Deckard wants a new animal, His electric sheep died and he dreams of replacing it with an exceedingly rare real life version, something far more important than preoccupations with empathy,
The value of animals and the natural world to the human psyche is firmly established throughout the book, There is an almost depressive quality to the novel, a smoky haze that clouds the cities, The scientific boom of the future world has severed the link between man and his true self, He is detached and has to rely on artificiality to get by, an artificiality of emotions and animals themselves, Animals have become rare and extremely costly, They are highly sought after and as such there is a huge market for fake animals, androids electric sheep, Thus Deckard kills more and more robots in order to attain his goal of getting an animal, of finding himself,
This is a great novel, one that questions existence itself, It certainly made me think, Admittedly though, I think the movie Blade Runner was so much better, Aside from the exquisite cinematography and soundtrack, it was far more effective at delivering the humanity of the androids and the final confrontation was masterful, It capitalised on the themes here and made them stronger, Youre surely not suggesting that I could be an android
Well, lets look at the evidence, You have no empathy whatsoever,
What Where is your evidence for this outrageous statement
Protest all you like, but you can ask anybody, Youre notorious. Youre an empathy free zone,
Wait, I think its clear whats happening here, You are in fact the android, and you have had a false memory implanted into you to make you think you are human.
Not so, you have had a false memory planted in you to make you think that I have had a false memory planted in me.
Oh, this could go on all day, Lets bring this to a swift conclusion, I will test you with the well known GlurkFlachsborker android test,
I have no knowledge of that test, As you well know, the standard android test is the BluntLampedrechananian test,
You have just made that up, To expose your ridiculous lie, I will test your imaginary test with my test test, This is the well known KluntFelchclamp test, Please allow me to test your test immediately,
This KluntFelchclamp nonsense is a mere delaying ruse, As anyone knows the only test to test a test is
I have an ostrich,
I have a squirrel, So ner ner.
My ostrich knows you are an android, It told me.
You can stick your ostrich up your arse,
Technically I could not but technically you could stick your squirrel up your arse, Which you should now do,
Your ostrich is an android,
Yeah well youre an android, your squirrel is an android and your mum and your dad were both big fat androids and your sister was the biggest android in town.
Android.
Androidyoidyoidy.
Andyandyandy! Andyandyandy! Well that was crazy cool!
What differentiates humans from androids, if there is any difference at a certain point of technological progress, is the main question of this botchy novel.
Very personal opinions fans of Dickswork might find offending and nasty,
Prodigy or overrated
There are two options, to see Dick as an ingenious literary prodigy, writing novels so densely packed that they cant be understood without rereading and diving deeper into the complexity of the stories.
Others think that he is completely overrated and I am standing somewhere between the lines, but instead of talking about positive things such as the immense influence Dicksinterest in philosophy in young years and his drug consumption had on writing quite a kind of Lovecraftian SciFi, similar egocentric and weird, but packed with deep thoughts and very difficult to understand innuendos, a kind of writer philosopher in the footsteps of all those bearded thinkers of the past, I want to focus on the aspects I didnt like so much and didnt have to think of when reading other SciFi classics.
I read A scanner darkly“ by Dick years ago and had similar thoughts, so here they are again in full redundancy, I promise lie!, I dont recycle genre specific realizations as if it was nothing, No, but seriously, Im somewhat trying to get a more objective view on a writing style I just cant get warm with, So lets pimp the old thoughts,
An idea what people with different tastes might like about him
One can see everything in this writing, its so vague that one can do any kind of subjective interpretation, its an intellectual riddle to find the hidden meaning and everyone can see something else in it.
Thats a bit like with special music tastes, subjectively heaven or hell, although there are the universally acclaimed megahits close to everybody loves and other genres that make the ears of most listeners bleed.
Asimov, Clarke, Lem, Capek, etc, are multi selling platin global evergreen hits, Heinlein some works, not all and Dick are more like strange Scandinavian death metal or industrial instrumental progressive construction noise, Or take food, everybody loves a pizza or veggie burger, but who eats Haggis or English food in general See
Maybe try out more, longer, and better plots
The writing style is typical, one red line, no real subplots, the ending is quite kind of unsatisfying looking at you, Man in the high castle.
, it often gets confusing and its difficult to differentiate if its ingenuity or the authors' illumination or paranoia, All of that are reasons why Dick is more controversial and not so universally acclaimed as a grandmaster of SciFi and I am more on the side of his critics.
If one looks at the worldbuilding and complexity of all the other behemoths, Dick seems average, with the only hobbyhorse of dealing with consciousness, reality, and the mentioned topics and some novels feel as if he just wrote them for the money he needed without real intrinsic motivation.
Not for the art, just for the cash, not even having enough financial space to at least make them good,
Close to fantastic realism, high brow, and Nobel Prize trash,
I would call him, and I hardly ever do that because it is not nice, overrated, In this regard, he is more like the Nobel prize, pseudointellectual, overhyped, higher literature stuff and less like pure, true, entertaining fiction, To write not understandable and confusing to seem deep and arcane is much easier than to write entertaining, suspenseful, and yes, true, stereotypical following the rules of the genre.
But thats one of the key elements of why we love certain genres and tinkering around with conventions while writingpages a day under the influence of LSD and amphetamines brings him into the corner of Kerouac and consorts and first thought best thought“ madness.
Who needs stinking editing, rewriting, or even planning and plotting before writing Completely overrated,
No big picture or satisfying conclusion that glues everything together
Dicks novels dont feel coherent, there are no satisfying resolutions, just more and more mysteries and open questions, and nothing gets answered, and much feels unfinished.
It's no bad writing, I just wouldnt highly recommend it, because it are no fun reads, and if Dick would have been a bit soberer and invested more time in developing satisfying, believable plots, that could have been great.
What annoys me the most are the great moments and ideas that are followed by unanswered questions, unreliable protagonist behavior, or completely losing the overview of whats happening.
Not to forget the running get of making the reader angry by ridiculous ends and no conclusions,
Look at the real behemoths
A direct comparison with other grandmasters of SciFi and what they have revolutionized shows the flaws even clearer, Heinlein his good works with amazing military science fiction, Asimovsrobots and some of the first space operas, Clarkes unbelievable language and subtility, Pohl with his worldbuilding, Gibson with Cyberpunk, not to name all the newer authors, and especially Stanislaw Lem
and Karel Capek who are close to unknown.
Especially they would have deserved the same and more attention and appreciation as Dick and should be named in a row with Asimov, Clarke, and, somewhat, Heinlein because they wrote revolutionary brilliant at Clarkes level and were really funny in other novels and short stories, its highly recommended literature, totally unique.
All those authors were able to write entertaining, unique, tropeforming, philosophical, and with metaplots that come all together to a satisfying and logical ending, something Dick was incapable of, because he didnt construct a universe, just fragments not fitting together and of extremely varying quality.
A final, failing attempt to be more objective
Of course, it may be a question of personal taste and preference, but I have read so much great SciFi, hundreds of novels, that it feels inappropriate to name him in a line with those works and I felt really unsatisfied after having read any of his novels that are all closer to psychological mindfing, pardon my language, mind penetrating mystery whodunnit whatever crossover hybrid progressive alternative indie crap than to real SciFi and with less real genretypical elements in them.
All the giants were true intellectuals and able to endlessly talk about any tiny detail of their work and its meaning and sense and it would interest me if Dick would have been able to give answers to complex questions about his novels.
If he remembered writing them at all,
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
sitelink org/pmwiki/pmwiki. ph
sitelink org/pmwiki/pmwiki. ph World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated, Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey, When he wasn't retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animalthe ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life.
Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexustargets, for a huge reward, But in Deckard's world things were never that simple, His assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge amp deceitamp the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted,