Tim's Reviews > Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

This is my second experience with Philip K. Dick's writing. I started with "Clans of the Alphane Moon" (I have a tendency to start with lesser known works by authors for some reason) and I enjoyed that one quite a bit. I knew for the second I had to pick Dick's most famous novel, as I already have something of a history with it.

Let's get this out of the way. My favorite film is Blade Runner. I've seen it at least a dozen times and could happily watch it a couple dozen more times. This actually made me more hesitant to read the book rather than less so, as reading the book often changes my outlook on the film. In my experience, I can think of only a few movies that surpassed the books they are based on, and often upon rewatching the film I'll compare it to the book. While adaptations should always be viewed as their own thing, I often feel it is hard to fully separate them.

I need not have had any fear of that here. Not because I felt the movie handled the story better, but rather because they are two completely different stories with some shared ideas and names. On the back of this book, it says that it "inspired" Blade Runner, and that's a good way of putting it. They are not the same story, but inspiration was certainly there. "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" is a much more personal story. There is less action, but more questioning of human nature here. While the film sided with the androids, the book is very clearly with the humans. The film tried to make us question if characters were human, the book wants us to question what it means to be a human.

There's a scene where a character buys a goat. It last multiple pages and feels as if it grinds the plot to a bit of a halt. It also shows us a very human and flawed character dealing with the horrors of his job, and trying to buy happiness and status as a way of coping. Who at some point hasn't tried to buy happiness in some way? That's one of the most wonderful, yet also sadly, human moments I've ever read in a book.

The book already is a science fiction classic, and most likely if you intended to read the book you were going to without reading my words here, but if you are in doubt, go ahead and pick it up. It may not be the greatest science fiction novel and it is not without its flaws (it seems like Dick has some pacing problems from the two books of his I've read, but this one feels much more polished), but it is a wonderful book and well worth a read.