Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Dec 02, 2018 Debbie rated it liked it · review of another edition

I'd give this 3.5 stars, if I could.

I have never seen Blade Runner all the way through, but my husband is a big fan of the older movie and enjoyed this book in college, when I remember him reading it. Since I had to read a cyberpunk book for the 2017 PopSugar Challenge, I figured I might as well finally tackle this one and see what all the hype is about.

The beginning is confusing. The text flips between a few different characters that don't appear to have any connection, but I began to see that I'd give this 3.5 stars, if I could.

I have never seen Blade Runner all the way through, but my husband is a big fan of the older movie and enjoyed this book in college, when I remember him reading it. Since I had to read a cyberpunk book for the 2017 PopSugar Challenge, I figured I might as well finally tackle this one and see what all the hype is about.

The beginning is confusing. The text flips between a few different characters that don't appear to have any connection, but I began to see that they were at least in the same world about four chapters in. Of course, there's a lot of world building, too, with unfamiliar vocabulary that isn't always clearly defined by context, but I caught on.

This book primarily follows Rick Decker, a bounty hunter employed by the San Francisco Police Department, to track down 6 androids that escaped Mars by killing several humans there, to return to Earth and live a free life. He has a wife, a ridiculous desire to own a living animal, and some existential discomfort with his job. Throughout the day and his hunt for these 6 androids, he experiences several events that make his discomfort more pronounced, and a few twists that really messed with my mind.

The other main character in the book is John Isidore, a low-IQ "chickenhead" who lives alone in an abandoned apartment complex in the suburbs and drives a truck for an electric animal vet. He really just wants to be appreciated and needed, but his own sense of self-worth, due to his low-IQ, gets in the way of making friends or speaking up for his own worth. I had an underlying suspicion in the book, through some of the things he says and does, that maybe he is not low-IQ at all, but nothing in the book confirms that.

These two men only encounter each other once, and only for a brief time, and the focus-switching chapters follow each man's progress toward personal change and growth. Both men are missing something - validation in some form? - and then spend the entire book trying to grasp at it.

I enjoyed this book, especially since I read the entire second half in a morning, but I don't know many people I'd recommend it to. It's definitely more quirky than some of the well-respected speculative fiction being published now. ...more

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Oct 27, 2018 Megan rated it liked it

Shelves: classics, sci-fi, popsugar-reading-challenge-2018, library-loans

I selected this classic as my pick for the 2018 PopSugar Ultimate Reading Challenge advanced prompt "a cyberpunk book." Not having read much (anything?) in this genre before, I wasn't sure what to expect but enjoyed reading this one. I found it to be a fast read with quirky humor that kept me engaged throughout. The fact it was set in 2021 made it even more interesting to me. The writing style helped me envision this not-so-distant future world and what it would be like to find and "retire" rogu ...more

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