Just as fun reading as it is to watch the movie

books:


	• Blade Runner(TM) (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) Philip K. Dick Del Rey, 1987 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 87 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This book makes you think

I really wish I had not seen the movie until after I had read this book. But it was Ridely's amazing vision of Blade Runner that made me want to read "do androids dream of electric sheep?" The film deviated greatly from the book, as many others here have also pointed out. I kept expecting several parts to play out in a certain way and they really differed - not that this is a turnoff. That said, I found the movie to be better than the book, not because the book is not enjoyable -because it is very much so - but because I felt the overall idea and ending has been done more tastefully in the film. You can also see how Ridley incorporated his original vision and interpretation of DADOES?, and by doing so took BR onto new dimensions.

I felt the book was overall very good. It had a deep build of characters (although I could not stop seeing Harrison Ford in my head, as detective Deckard...) and it also had sundry unexpected twists and turns. Part of the beauty of this book is that it makes you think a lot. You cannot help but ruminate about the depressing, dystopian world PKD has created. The concept of trust constantly yet implicitly keeps turning up in both the book and the movie. I highly recommend reading this book. NON-SPOILING SPOILERS AHEAD. Albeit thoroughly enjoying reading DADOES? I had two problems with it, the first, and the lesser of the two, was that I thought the whole Mercerism (religion?) scenes were, well, beyond strange, and although they served a purpose in describing mankind's need to feel empathy and join in with others, they were nevertheless very weird. The second problem I had with this book is the way it ended, specifically and generally. In many ways the book ended where it started. It seemed like there was no real progress accomplished by the end of the book whereas in the film, Ridley went to great lengths to enhance the ethical issues, so at the end of the film, viewers had even developed empathy for androids. The ending of the book however, left no complex aftertaste, but rather, the initial attitudes in the book, that is, those of the unquestionable legal retirement of androids.

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So much more than "Blade Runner"!

This is NOT the movie. It is bigger, deeper, more meaningful and philosophical -- one of Philip K. Dick's best books ever. (It has been explained to me that the primary significance of the movie "Blade Runner" was that it presented a fully imagined future.) I wish I could get this book with the original title, so much more revealing of the core -- "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (I owned it years ago, and wore it out -- wish I had bought extra copies then!)

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Better than the movie, at least

I finally saw the movie Blade Runner - The Final Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition) a couple of weeks ago, and shortly after that I ran across the book in the library and read it. The similarities between them are so slight that I wonder whether it is fair for them to share a title (actually I guess they didn't, originally).

I was struck by two of the major elements in the book that are not even hinted at in the movie: the fact that the earth has been through a cataclysmic war that has wiped out a lot of natural life, and the religion of Mercerism. The movie's lack of these core elements leaves it seeming hollow and pointless.

In the book, people are divided into "regulars" and "specials." "Regular" people are eligible to leave earth to become colonists on Mars or other (never named) planets. "Special" people are either too unintelligent to be considered worth shipping to another planet, or they have been affected by radiation to such a degree that they cannot reproduce healthy children, so they are not desirable colonists either. ("Regular" men wear uncomfortable lead-lined "codpieces" to protect their sperm factories from radiation.)

The role of Mercerism is never fully explained, but you get the impression that it helps most people, regular and special, to hold themselves together by mutual interdependence on what seems like a desolate wreck of a planet. The movie really misses the boat by omitting this pervasive part of the fabric of the story.

This book isn't what I consider one of the great works of science fiction, but like lots of good sci fi, it does get you thinking about some potentially knotty ethical issues. I think clones are a more hot-button issue these days than androids, but I suppose that both looked about equally distant and threatening in the 1960's.

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Just as fun reading as it is to watch the movie

When I saw Blade Runner for the first time I realized that I had just seen something that was original, smart and that related to me in many, many ways.

I found out that it was loosely based on the book, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and decided that if the movie is as good as it is and it's a condensed version of the story in the book, than the book should be just as good, if not better.

I ordered it from Amazon and started reading. I was only a few pages in when I realized just how "loosely" the movie was based on the book. The book was an entirely different experience.

This book is filled with compelling drama, deception, sci-fi, and 1940's crime-noir style storytelling (complete with the classic femme-fatal) and it does not dissapoint.

Sure, you already paid to see the movie, and you might be thinking, "Why would I pay to read the same story?" You aren't. You will be pleased with this book emensely - it's a completely different story.

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My Second Experience With Philip K. Dick

I bought this book because I am planning on buying the completely massive and awesome collection of Blade Runner movies. I saw this at the bookstore for $5 (This exact edition) and so I bought it and read it in two days, finishing it yesterday.

As an introduction to the world of the movie (Which I haven't seen yet) it is simply awesome and astounding. The world of the book is so expertly crafted with what really amoutns to a small amount of description and detail. The characters and story are well thought out, and it fits the form that I have come to expect from Philip K. Dick even though I've only read this and The Man in the High Castle-no real ending, just an odd one.

The book is really just truly brilliant, and even after only one read-through I can honestly say that it is one of my favorite books ever. Also, it is much easier to read than some of his other books. I struggled through The Man in the High Castle for awhile until I got used to it and then I kind of got it and understood it and kept going, but this was one that I could just pick up and read an it's just awesome.

I highly recommend it to anyone interested in science fiction at all, as it is a true classic as well as one of the few Philip K. Dick books still available fairly widely.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill.
Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignmet--find them and then..."retire" them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn't want to be found!

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