Thursday, October 20, 2016

Dreaming

A friend of mine gave me a copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep recently. I'd been meaning to read it and I finally am. (Shouldn't take too long.) The previous owner marked it up a lot which I'm mostly ignoring.

One thing I can say: the idea of Rick Deckard being a tough PI type is totally a creation of Blade Runner. In the book he's a futuristic sad sack. Still in his miserable marriage too. Also there's whole new religion - Mercerism - that got left out of the movie. Probably a wise decision, as it's not something audiences would likely catch up with.

2 comments:

semiconscious said...

depending on circumstances, i love coming across the occasional marked-up book (tho, oddly, i'm not sure i've ever come across one where the person doing the marking actually kept it up through the whole book). my most recent favorite was the used copy of 'the insidious dr. fu-manchu' i got from abe books. for example, over the first paragraph of chapter 10 ('since nayland smith's return from burma i had rarely taken up a paper without coming upon evidences of that seething which had cast up dr. fu-manchu. whether, hitherto, such items had escaped my attention or had seemed to demand no particular notice, or whether they now became increasingly numerous, i was unable to determine.'), is written the single word 'paranoia' :) ...

had to look up the wiki to refresh my memory of 'electric sheep' (which i really shouldn't have to, considering i reread it within the last 2 years). yeah, there's mercerism, & there's also the mood organs, & the android animals for the people who can't afford real ones (y'know, if you're the nobel committee, & you're gonna go 'freaky', screw dylan - give the damn thing to p.k. dick!). anyway, a distinctly different (tho equally enjoyable) experience from the book, & every bit as touching in its own quirky way. right up there with ubik & palmer eldritch as an all-time favorite...

Ben said...

Small world. The Fu Manchu book you mention is marked with the single word "paranoia." This copy of "Do Androids Dream" was previously owned by someone in a class or on a kick about psychological ailments, so they marked up all the passages that could be interpreted in terms of schizophrenia, paranoia, etc. In truth, in both cases these are things that are pretty obvious, right there on the surface.

One thing that's been noted about the difference between the book and the movie is that the latter is much more sympathetic to the android characters. Largely this is because Dick was writing about dehumanization, not so much non-humans as ethnic minorities. Of course Buster Friendly, a weirdly contemporary-seeming character, didn't make it in. One nice surprise was that Deckard and his wife actually patch things up by the end. There seems to be a rule in dystopian science fiction that if the protagonist is married, his wife has to be part of the oppressive order. Neither Vonnegut or Bradbury were immune to this. Doesn't invalidate the works entirely, but it does get old.