Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? discussion

[Jamie (The Perpetual Page-Turner), The Founding Bookworm]

We are trying something new this month as we talked about in the Feedback thread:

We are going to have one thread for each book as now Goodreads has made a spoiler tag that you can use to put before anything that is a spoiler. Use your discretion as to what would be a pretty big spoiler and label it. Please put up to what page the spoiler is for.

To create the tag simply do this:

< spoiler> Blah blah blah spoilery stuff < /spoiler>


*Take out the spaces in both of the spoiler tag.

It will look like this:


(view spoiler)[This is a spoiler. Spoilers should be labeled so you don't ruin books for others. (hide spoiler)]


Discuss away...

[David]

I really, really hated this book. I wanted to like it, I truly did. I just couldn't. The prose was just so....bland. There was no substance. It's short though, I'll give it that, but it could have been so much more. I wish they'd developed Rick Deckard more than they did. I could have gotten to know his wife, his partners, even some of the androids that were killed better. For the idea and anticipating the future, it is novel, but writing style - meh.

Please, disagree with me. Like I said, I want to like it. I just can't.

[Dina]

I didn't exactly love it, nor did I really hate it. It just never became the pageturner, I was hoping for.
However the theme of the book, I thought, was interesting: What makes a human? Is it just the fact, that we think or what?

[Chris]

I think he pretty clearly delineated that the difference between being human and android was in the feelings and empathic ability. I thought it was a pretty good book. Im not that hardcore into sci fi, but this book makes me want to finally see Blade Runner since it was based off the book.

[David]

I'm the other way round. Blade Runner made me want to read the book.

[Chris]

Just watched the movie. Very unimpressed. I'm not big on the 80's cinematography and how much the plot was changed and characters were flipped. The only copy I could find was the Director's Cut. Maybe it would have made a difference if I saw the original but I somehow doubt it.

[Natanya]

The book also made me want to watch the movie, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Is the movie very action-packed? Because I feel like the book was much more psychological and based on character development rather than plot, which isn't what I expected. My favorite parts of this books were the sections with Isidore...I thought it was really interesting seeing how his mind worked, how he reacted to things, and how he was similar to and different from the androids.

[Chris]

Not especially. There is a big action sequence at the end between Rick and the android guy that wasn't at all in the book and there are several fight scenes but its really hard to see a lot of whats going on because the cinematography is so dark. It was a disappointing movie after reading the book.

[Natanya]

Ah, that's unfortunate that it was disappointing in comparison. Maybe I won't bother watching it.

[Emily]

I went in to this book expecting it to be great. It's a classic! Sadly, it was a huge disappointment. I have never felt so let down. This book was poorly written, flat, with no character development at all. Where were all the philosophical implications that everyone talks about and that are so present in the movie? Where is the Dickian suspense and good story-telling? I just don't know. I love Dick's short stories, but this just wasn't worth it.