Where shall I began... my first encounter with this book was from Fringe episode "Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?" on a shapeshifter who was into his cover so much that he love the family of the man he copied. For something written in 60s, it was quite a painful to read in 2012. This book made me appreciate the event concerning of the encounter of a long extinct 'Miller's Grizzled Langur' in east kalimantan. I don't amuse myself to be an animal lover (as most furry creatures gave me allergies) since I am someone who know how to extract MDA, mitochondria and DNA stuff so naturally I kill a lot of animals in my lifetime.... so I didnt connect whenever the bounty-hunter character, Dekker aka Han Solo,'s reminiscence on his obsessions with live animals and his identity confusion with himself, his weird wife, the weird android-girl, the androids he hunted and whole philosophical questions on androids he raised especially during his monologues or dialogues with some characters on heightened artificial intelligence and androids need to survive and the lines fade between human and AI... creation and stuff.. I could go on and on...Philip K Dick is not a new thing to me. I've read "The Man in the High Castle" when I was a teenager and reread it again for several times but never really finished it. Why? Because his language and his sudden need to make me feel attention-deficient whenever I read his novels. He jumped topics and jumped sub-topics like it was a game for him. I don't like Dekker even if he had the face of Harrison Ford (I try to watch Blade Runner yesterday but haven't finished it yet) and damn it, he is so confusing! A lot of the terms in his book was yawn inducing and low tech. If you read the wikipedia, it have even better storylines and pacing than this book. But dont get me wrong, I don't hate the book. I like that it ask the philosophical questions on human ethics with non-human and animal entities. How the society appreciate living animals (even insects) after the nuclear war. How materialism leeks after all real animals are dead and near-extinct and how a toad is a valuable thing to have and worth millions. Normal toad atleast. Like Clockwork Orange, psychology were used to identify the androids inabilities to feel natural empathy. how empathy were what differentiate us humans with non-human-humanoids. How psychopath can be classified as androids in such sense that a paradox can be made. Honestly, the book is very interesting if we only talk about those...but no... Dekker have to be dashing, noir and desperate to tie some loose ends. He just have to have lust for one black-haired minx-android and ask himself, sex with an android is like sex with a sex doll? and then he want real sheep and goat and like to brood alone... then in the midst of it, he get treated royally, he did get his victims handed over to him on a platter by his boss or coworker or luck. Despite being told to capture several androids with just a psychological test, he didn't even bother finding high and low for the missing Lexuses (yes, car brand.. shut up 21st centurians) and then kiss kiss bang bang.. argh!!!Enough rants.. from the bottom of my heart, I'm glad the book exist. Because of PKD, we have a lot of nicer scifi books and movies and tvshows with better writing and emotional depth than this book with a lot of elements in most scifi productions and robotic engineering still being undecided which made the book relevant in such fields. Its nice. But this is a classical scifi. You can either read it or toss it. As for me, I'm a huge Fringe and SciFi fan. The shapeshifters evolved along the years and I have this book to thanks for the awesomeness JJ Abrams & co brings.
Syahira's Literary Obsession
My regular blog at Requiem for More Books and my Goodreads. Daily random tweets at @syahirasharif.
Where shall I began... my first encounter with this book was from Fringe episode "Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?" on a shapeshifter who was into his cover so much that he love the family of the man he copied. For something written in 60s, it was quite a painful to read in 2012. This book made me appreciate the event concerning of the encounter of a long extinct 'Miller's Grizzled Langur' in east kalimantan. I don't amuse myself to be an animal lover (as most furry creatures gave me allergies) since I am someone who know how to extract MDA, mitochondria and DNA stuff so naturally I kill a lot of animals in my lifetime.... so I didnt connect whenever the bounty-hunter character, Dekker aka Han Solo,'s reminiscence on his obsessions with live animals and his identity confusion with himself, his weird wife, the weird android-girl, the androids he hunted and whole philosophical questions on androids he raised especially during his monologues or dialogues with some characters on heightened artificial intelligence and androids need to survive and the lines fade between human and AI... creation and stuff.. I could go on and on...Philip K Dick is not a new thing to me. I've read "The Man in the High Castle" when I was a teenager and reread it again for several times but never really finished it. Why? Because his language and his sudden need to make me feel attention-deficient whenever I read his novels. He jumped topics and jumped sub-topics like it was a game for him. I don't like Dekker even if he had the face of Harrison Ford (I try to watch Blade Runner yesterday but haven't finished it yet) and damn it, he is so confusing! A lot of the terms in his book was yawn inducing and low tech. If you read the wikipedia, it have even better storylines and pacing than this book. But dont get me wrong, I don't hate the book. I like that it ask the philosophical questions on human ethics with non-human and animal entities. How the society appreciate living animals (even insects) after the nuclear war. How materialism leeks after all real animals are dead and near-extinct and how a toad is a valuable thing to have and worth millions. Normal toad atleast. Like Clockwork Orange, psychology were used to identify the androids inabilities to feel natural empathy. how empathy were what differentiate us humans with non-human-humanoids. How psychopath can be classified as androids in such sense that a paradox can be made. Honestly, the book is very interesting if we only talk about those...but no... Dekker have to be dashing, noir and desperate to tie some loose ends. He just have to have lust for one black-haired minx-android and ask himself, sex with an android is like sex with a sex doll? and then he want real sheep and goat and like to brood alone... then in the midst of it, he get treated royally, he did get his victims handed over to him on a platter by his boss or coworker or luck. Despite being told to capture several androids with just a psychological test, he didn't even bother finding high and low for the missing Lexuses (yes, car brand.. shut up 21st centurians) and then kiss kiss bang bang.. argh!!!Enough rants.. from the bottom of my heart, I'm glad the book exist. Because of PKD, we have a lot of nicer scifi books and movies and tvshows with better writing and emotional depth than this book with a lot of elements in most scifi productions and robotic engineering still being undecided which made the book relevant in such fields. Its nice. But this is a classical scifi. You can either read it or toss it. As for me, I'm a huge Fringe and SciFi fan. The shapeshifters evolved along the years and I have this book to thanks for the awesomeness JJ Abrams & co brings.
Currently reading
1984
Pygmalion
The Aeneid
Ficciones
The Warrior Heir
Masques
The Steadfast Heart
Description & Setting
Zeroville
Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception
