¿Sueñan los androides con ovejas eléctricas? (Blade Runner)

Escrito por Philip K. Dick

Narrado por Miguel Ángel Jenner

La novela más leída de Philip K. Dick, inspiración de Blade Runner. 
En el año 2021 la guerra mundial ha exterminado a millones de personas. Los supervivientes codician cualquier criatura viva, y aquellos que no pueden permitirse pagar por ellas se ven obligados a adquirir réplicas increíblemente realistas. Las empresas fabrican incluso seres humanos. Rick Deckard es un cazarrecompensas cuyo trabajo es encontrar androides rebeldes y retirarlos, pero la tarea no será tan sencilla cuando tenga que enfrentarse a los nuevos modelos Nexus-6, prácticamente indistinguibles de los seres humanos. 
Audiolibro narrado por Miguel Ángel Jenner.

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: Planeta Audio
• Traductor: Miguel Antón
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 28 may 2021
• ISBN: 9788445010242

Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) es autor de 36 novelas de ciencia ficción y 121 relatos breves en los que exploró la esencia de lo que hace al hombre humano, así como los peligros del poder centralizado. Hacia el final de su vida enfocó su trabajo hacia cuestiones metafísicas profundamente personales relacionadas con la naturaleza de Dios. Muchas de sus novelas y cuentos cortos han sido llevados al cine y la televisión, entre los que destacan Blade Runner (basada en ¿Sueñan los androides con ovejas eléctricas?), Desafío total, Minority Report y El hombre en el castillo. A lo largo de su carrera, que abarcó tres décadas, recibió el reconocimiento de la crítica y numerosos premios. En 2005 fue incluido en el Salón de la Fama de la Ciencia Ficción.

Comentarios para ¿Sueñan los androides con ovejas eléctricas? (Blade Runner)

[benjaminthelibrarian · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I'll be honest, I was expecting Blade Runner. Actually, I was hoping for Blade Runner. I love the noir feeling to the movie, so I wasn't expecting the bumbling characters or the sitcom-like dialogue. I like Dick's story, but next time I'll be better prepared to read it.

[tajohnson_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

What can I say that people should already know. Philip K. Dick is a great speculative science fiction author and why I struggle in finding modern day authors that can write as well.

The movie version of the book is even awesome, if you don't know, its "Blade Runner" with Harrison Ford.

[karlstar_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

The classic scifi tale of humans versus androids, on a post-nuclear war, nearly dead Earth. Everyone who can, has emigrated to Mars or the stars, leaving a few people behind on an Earth with almost no remaining animals. From time to time androids escape and Rick Deckard, police bounty hunter must hunt them down. While it is his job, he starts to question why and the book deals with human vs. android interactions and some other issues. Really thought inducing. Short, but excellent.

[craigschonborn · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Interesting and captivating. I would not say it's great, and I would have liked it to be more in-depth, but that's often the case when you are enjoying something. I enjoyed it a lot. I was hoping for more, since I am a fan of the movie, which was incredible

[keebrook · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Philip K. is always intriguing. I have read this before but never did a review and with the new movie coming out, I got the itch to re-read it.

At a glance, the story seems straightforward. A cop/bounty hunter is conscripted to hunt down and “retire” some rogue androids that escaped to Earth from Mars colony. This is an Earth saturated with radioactive dust from a worldwide nuclear event called World War Terminus. This has driven most of humanity to emigrate to other planets. Those that stay are either immune to the effects of the radiation or become “chickenheads” or “antheads,” referring to their diminished intellectual capacity. The poverty is severe and the dearth of wild animals makes life extremely sacred. Even the thought of consuming meat or making leather disgusts and outrages people and is against the law. Owning an animal has become such a social status must that it most people opt for electric animals so that they can keep up with the Joneses even if it’s an ersatz revering of life.

then we have the androids. They are biologically designed humanoids that fulfill the role of slave and do lots of the “dirty work,” especially on other planets where conditions can be harsh. But the new Nexus-6 models might be too intelligent for their own good, especially since their minds are not tempered by empathy or compassion. There is a very disturbing scene where one of the androids slowly and casually mutilates a spider to test a hypothesis.

Philip K. bounces us from scenes like that to scenes where we feel very empathetic and maybe even sorry for the androids. He really digs at the question of the value of life and where that value ends and begins. One of the andys states succinctly that real insects are afforded more respect and rights that they are. He turns the tables nicely when one of the androids kills a living thing seemingly out of revenge. Isn’t revenge empathic in an inside-out way? Or was it some kind of natural selection process the android was performing?

He also leads us down a pathway bounded by questionable reality. Androids can be programmed with false memories and Deckard experiences a prolonged encounter that makes everyone question whether or not they are an android. Only empathy and nerve reaction tests can distinguish between human and android -but even that is put into question in the first few chapters of the book. Humans can also jack into a shared virtual reality so not virtual that when they are struck with rocks, they bruise and bleed. They hold the handles of an “empathy box” and struggle up a hill with someone called Mercer who is stoned to death by the time he reaches the top. Humans all over the planets “fuse” when they experience this which leads to a peaceful and violence-free society based on Mercerism. At one point, Mercer sheds the virtual life and becomes a bit more than that, even with Deckard thinking his fusion has continued outside the box. Philip K. has someone he is speaking with even remark that he looks like Mercer lending to the confusion. In the end, the icon for Life and Peace, Mercer, is discovered to have been handing out electric animals and possibly a faked experience with some homeless person paid to play a bit part to help control humanity.

Mind-bending as always but also morals-bending. Reading this really does pose some unique questions to our notions of humanity, compassion, and quality of life.

[artemisa-191823 · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

I kind of liked it. I was an easy reading, it wasn't one of those don't want to to put down books, but it was easy and enjoyable.

But I started to feel very stupid towards the end of the book. The characters started to have all this dilemmas that I wasn't expecting in that setting, and I couldn't understand most of them.

Spoilers start here... real spoilers

And then there were this little hints that Rachel and Pris are the same android, but the Rachel explains that they are the same model, but still there isn't a scene with the two of them. And them Deckard kills Pris, but since he never gets to kill Rachel, the doubt remains.

And all those Mercer hallucinations... It seemed like a LSD trip gone bad. The empathy box I get, it's an alternate universe. They didn't have the Internet they had that. But when they get to see the Mercer without the empathy box... I don't get it. And that brief mention of telepathic powers shouldn't be there or should have been fully explained.

The spoilers end here

And I don't really like books when so many things remain uncertain. I find it hard to leave that world. I keep thinking about what the characters are doing when I'm not reading the book (and I don't have more book to read).

[neil_luvs_books · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Excellent exploration of what it means to be human. I appreciated how PKD was able to portray the androids subtly different with their inability to be empathetic. Also really impressed that Dick was able to elicit an empathetic response in me as a reader toward a spider.

[kurt.rocourt · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

That was a fun read. I want to watch Blade Runner again to compare the book to the movie. The whole theme of empathy will change how I watch the movie. I think the book was good but there was the question of why androids are so bad. And if they are so bad why keep making them. Yes, I know they serve a purpose in outer space but to keep making them seem more and more human, why? From Nexus 6 to Nexus 7 and beyond why keep going down a road people want to avoid? Other than that I enjoyed it.

[cheryl_in_cc_nv · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Exploring the theme of whose lives count leads to some things I'd question in a lesser writer. For example, why does the public demand androids that are indistinguishable from humans? 'Companions' and 'servants' don't have to be so perfect... Dick must have had something in mind besides a necessary hook on which to hang the story. Thoughts?

Chickenheads, antheads, beetles, all are sacred. Androids, even though organic, are to be retired if they fight for freedom. Because people are afraid of them? Then, again, why make them so uncannily human and intelligent and strong?

Considering non-human life: animals breed. The dealers must be in cahoots with one another to artificially limit the supply to control the market prices. Why does no entrepreneur sell their rabbits' offspring?

Considering chickenheads: Is Isidore really 'special?' I'm sure he's not... I'm sure he's actually more intelligent than some normals, probably more than Rick's wife Iran.

And considering Iran, why did Dick choose that name?
And considering Isidore, that name reappears in Dick's "Confessions of a Crap Artist." Did Dick know an Isidore irl?

Back to the main theme. Rick gets annoyed at Iran, at her not being properly interested in animals or anything else that he values. "No support, he informed himself. Most androids have more vitality and desire to live than my wife. She has nothing to give me."

So, two questions there. Should the androids be allowed to live (not just to exist)? And what does Rick give Iran, that he has the right to expect she give him something?

And why did Dick use such a heavy-handed metaphor when Phil Resch talked about how his squirrel, Buffy, seemed to love its exercise wheel, and how he (Resch) used to love watching the squirrel exercise? "'I guess squirrels aren't too bright,' Rick said." I guess Dick wanted to make sure we got the point.

I admit; I was feeling all sympathetic to the androids. Especially whey I learned that they only have about four years to live. But when the last three took the legs off Isidore's spider, I kinda lost it. Honestly, at that point I don't think anyone has the right to life, except maybe ants and rabbits, besides of course plants.

I sure did appreciate the bit about high culture, the opera and the Munch exhibit. I'll be googling to explore those references.

Vocabulary word from "yabbering away like a folletto." Apparently folletti are sort of Italian or Roman pixies.

Why were the donkey and the toad the most precious to Mercer? Dick is obviously well-educated, and/or well-read, so it seems there must be allusions there....

Btw, I'm reading this for a group... it's probably my third time. I definitely got even more out of it this time, and probably would again if I were to discuss it with yet another group.

[sweetiegherkin · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

After a world war has left destruction and a toxic dust on the planet, most of Earth's citizens have left for colonies in outer space where they have increasingly more sophisticated robots do their bidding. But whenever any of those robots forget their place and try to walk among the humans left on Earth, bounty hunters like Rick Deckard are there to find them out and "retire" them (aka, kill them).

This seminal work on science fiction was interesting, to say the least. The first two chapters were a little slow, but after that I got invested in it pretty quickly. There are several twists and turns that are unexpected and make the reader question what is going on, which I think helps to mimic what the characters are feeling as well. It certainly keeps things engaging with the reader wanting to continue on to see what happens next.

Sometimes I find older sci-fi titles to be a little underwhelming because the topics explored have been re-explored so many times since, and often by more adept authors. I didn't really find that to be the case here. I did chuckle several times at how Philip K. Dick could envision this world where there are colonies throughout the galaxy, hover cars, robots that are nearly indistinguishable from humans, and so forth and so on, but he still saw women primarily only as homemakers or secretaries. He could correctly foresee a world where there's a video component to phone calls, but still thought we'd need a central switchboard apparently. So, there are certainly signs of datedness.

But overall, I found the topics and themes being explored to continue being entirely timely and applicable today, even as we've passed the future date these events were set in (i.e., while written in 1968, this book takes place in 2021). The ethics around artificial intelligence are obviously key, but the subplots around cult-like religiosity and brain-numbing obsessions with celebrity/24-hour entertainment are also intriguing and thought-provoking. The author doesn't really provide any answers but leaves readers to keep mulling over these ideas long after they've closed the book.

[stargazerfish0 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

Lovely dismal atmosphere, charmingly imperfect characters, but just not enough. It didn’t raise enough doubt for me. It didn’t stir my spirit enough. I guess it’s just because I don’t find it important to ask “What makes us human?” Why should we care about who/what is human/not? What makes humans so elite? It’s because we think we rule the world, when really we only have the ILLUSION of control. (/rant) But I guess the book leading me to this observation is just as important.

[zjakkelien · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I am disappointed. I had higher expectations of this book, and it had some good aspects, but from an older SF book, I had hoped for less vagueness. It seemed almost philosophical to me, which would not have been a bad thing, if it was going somewhere, but this whole Mercerism business was dissatisfying to me. I felt that the actual philosophical question of what makes us human was underdeveloped, and that the other philosophical parts were unclear.

[jonathan_m-100054 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I'm not a big sci-fi fan, and one of the things I like so much about Philip K. Dick's work is that he seemed deliberately to flout the conventions of the genre. The sci-fi elements in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are, for the most part, desultory; Dick was using them as a means to an end. Does anyone reading this novel really care about the technical specifications of the characters' laser tubes and hovercars? No, and neither did PKD. It's not that kind of science fiction. Advanced technology is touched upon because the novel happens to take place in "the future" (2021), but ultimately it's incidental to the story. Folks who saw Blade Runner first are bound to be disappointed because the slick, visually sumptuous aesthetic of the film is not at all the aesthetic of Dick's book. This is an evocation not of neon glitz and exotic architecture towering almost impossibly to the sky, but of a world running down: a postwar Earth slowly but surely choking on fallout dust, where isolated individuals trudge through the grey corridors of deserted apartment complexes and struggle to survive.

It's a bleak vision, but not entirely a prophetic one. So far we've avoided a nuclear war, and while emerging AI technology may be regarded as roughly analogous to the android problem in Dick's novel, it's not a manifestation of the dystopian future which the author evidently feared: in other words, AI is not becoming more human as we become less so. (Humanity threatens to flicker out altogether; technology is not restoring the balance.) Still, PKD accurately predicted the isolation and loneliness of our time, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? manages to be thought-provoking, disturbing and entertaining all at once. I think it's Dick's best book.

[mykl8s · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Almost as good as the film made from it.

[andjhostet-527429 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

A fascinating book that was easy to read, but had a lot of depth to it. It hits a great balance of pulpy plot driving it forward, and philosophical themes to keep you thinking about it after you're done reading.

Some of the philosophical quandries I particularly enjoyed in this book:

Is it human to be empathetic? Without empathy are we not human? Can you only have empathy with something can share empathy back (robot, animal, etc).

Is religion an obvious fiction in order to deal with the absurdities of life? If it works, does it matter whether it is fiction or not?

Is a genuine thing inherently valued more if they provide the same function?

-----------

This book brings up a lot of great things to think about. While it was a little sloppy at times, the characters could be shallow, and trying a little too hard to be "sci-fi James Bond", it's a great book, and an easy read.

Time for another rewatch of Blade Runner.

[leslie398 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

4.5*

Great book but there were a few places where Scott Brick's narration sent my mind wandering persistently despite several rewinds.

[tommcgreevy · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

A thoroughly good exploration of human nature, ostensibly about how androids may differ from humans, focusing on the role empathy plays in that. And that is of interest as well, let there be no doubt.

[proustitute_1 · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

I really wanted to enjoy this book, having heard such wonderful things about it. My recent foray into trying to read more science fiction came at a good time—or so I thought. It was with the desire to be entertained that I began Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Sadly, I think my next experience with science fiction will definitely have to be with a feminist author given my problems with Dick.

Along the way, I was maddened by how misogynistic the novel is: the many ways in which woman, human or android, are objectified by the male characters is appalling. I can almost imagine Philip K. Dick writing with his dick, as if creating luscious, nubile female androids—almost always discussed in adolescent terms, making the Lolita fantasy that much more disturbing—was his way of working out some kind of interspace sexual fantasy and this book is the by-product. Tricky dick.

While reading, there was one place where Rick Deckard, the bounty hunter, talks with his depressive wife, reminds himself that he can still divorce her, and then he immediately begins to fantasize about how female androids attract him. This is when I almost nearly stopped reading.

Or when Deckard tests himself using the fancy android-testing machine in order to see if his disdain for androids has begun to turn into empathy; it would appear that, at least in the case of female androids, it has:

Rich said, "A female android."

"Now they're both up to 4.0 and 6.0 respectively."

And little does Phil Resch, another bounty hunter, realize what he's putting into motion when he tells Deckard:

"Don't kill her—or be present when she's killed—and then feel physically attracted. Do it the other way."

Rick stared at him. "Go to bed with her first"

"... and then kill her," Phil Resch said succinctly.

I found an interesting essay while trying to make it through the tail-end of Do Androids... which discusses misogyny in the film version, Blade Runner: Simon H. Scott's "Is Blade Runner a Misogynist Text?" I have yet to see the film, and I doubt I will any time soon after finishing the novel, but it is indeed possible that the film uses more film noir conventions and figures like Rachael Rosen are more femme fatale figures in the film, as is the author's argument against a full-fledged misogynistic reading of the text. However, the novel is not noir in any way, so I wonder if this argument has been made elsewhere with the book—and perhaps other work by Dick—as evidence. It would be something I would like to read, at any rate.

I will say that Dick knows how to pace a novel, and it was largely that which kept me reading despite many moments of nausea.

Note to picky readers: the word "ersatz" gets used so many times I lost count.

[castlelass · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Science fiction dystopian novel set in post-apocalyptic San Francisco in 2021. The earth has been ravaged by World War Terminus and many survivors have emigrated to colonies on other planets. The earth is still (barely) functioning, though filled with radioactive dust and “kipple” (detritus which seems to be growing on its own). Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter tasked with destroying androids that have escaped to earth from colonies and pose a danger due to their lack of regard for life. They cannot easily be distinguished from humans, so Rick must test them for empathy, the quality identified as separating humans from androids. If they fail, he destroys them. A subplot follows John Isadore, one of the “chickenheads,” humans whose mental abilities have been diminished by radioactive fallout, and his attempt to survive an isolated life. “Chickenheads” and their more devastated counterparts, “antheads,” are treated as the dregs of society and are not permitted to emigrate.

Rick’s personal life involves interacting with his wife, taking care of his electric sheep (which he pretends is real), setting his emotional state on a mood-altering device, communing electronically with a religious figure, and watching Buster Friendly on the only remaining television channel. Rick longs to own a real animal but there are few animals left. They have died due to the war and its fallout. They are viewed as status symbols and, like cars, are assigned the equivalent of a “blue book” value.

Many questions are embedded in this work. What is it that makes us essentially human? Is it empathy? If so, why are we treating the “chickenheads” as less than human? What should be done with humans that have no empathy? What happens when the companies making the androids succeed in endowing them with more emotions than some humans? Where does that leave the bounty hunters, who must put aside any empathy they feel in order to destroy the androids? What is real and what is false? How does technology or religion play into all this?

I found this a thought-provoking examination of humanity, empathy, and technology. The theme involving animals is one of the most deeply developed. To me, there is something touching about the idea of humans paying dearly for the privilege of caring for an animal in a devastated world. Don’t expect a novelized version of the movie Blade Runner, and don’t expect a neatly tied up ending. Recommended to fans of science fiction classics, dystopian themed novels, or explorations of the human condition.

[cbl_tn · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

In this post-apocalyptic novel, many humans have left Earth for Mars and other colonies to escape Earth’s inevitable decay. Androids assist with off-Earth colonization, but they aren’t supposed to be on Earth. Rick Deckard is a San Francisco-based bounty hunter who tracks down and destroys rogue androids. The new Nexus-6 android are challenging the bounty hunters’ techniques for identifying androids.

The one quality that distinguishes humans from androids is empathy, yet it seems to be a quality that humans are in danger of losing. Every home has an empathy box, where individuals can fuse with other humans through the person of Wilbur Mercer. Mercerism seems to be a rough allegory of Christianity, with Mercer as a Christlike figure in an endless loop of suffering, ascending a desert hill, then descending to the netherworld where he brings the dead back to life, then repeating his suffering ascent and descent ad infinitum.

There’s a lot to unpack in this novel. I have not watched the film Blade Runner, but from what I’ve read and heard about it, I think the message of the film is fundamentally different from the book’s essence. It’s too bad the author died just before the film was released. I’d love to know what he would have thought about the film and how far it might have strayed from his vision.

[eas7788 · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

Wow, did not like this. How can a prescient sci fi writer be so unimaginative about women and gender, and about race (and any other differences)? There are interesting elements like the idea of authenticity, the role of animals, what makes a human a human. But the plot drags and the characters are flat. An interesting premise is not enough. I read it to see how it connects to the movie, and I see how they got from one to the other. When so much of a book is discarded, it's a bad sign for the book. Don't feel like I want to read any more Dick.

[charon07 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

One of the rare instances where I preferred the movie over the book. Interesting points were made about empathy, but not as philosophically satisfying as Blade Runner.

[azuaron · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Coming to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? from Blade Runner is an interesting experience, given the drastic changes in tone (the glitzy corporate overpopulation of Blade Runner vs. the post-apocalyptic depression of Do Androids Dream?). Shaking the dust of Blade Runner from your sandals is necessary before continuing.

The primary tension in Electric Sheep comes down to empathy vs. cold intellect (human vs. android), and whether an android could develop empathy, which is never properly resolved. In one moment, an android is clipping the legs off a spider just to see if it can walk with four, but in the next is distraught over losing a friend.

Real-world engineer hat: it wouldn't be that difficult to make androids "feel" empathy, any more so than it would be to make them "feel" anything else, including self-preservation. This is, of course, assuming you could get them to read the emotions (or simulate reading the emotions based on scripts of circumstances), which is also not a difficult feat, considering what they've already done. All you have to do is (to paraphrase I, Robot) induce neural feedback upon encountering the suffering of others. But, then again, the core of this novel is not the care, feeding, and bounty hunting of androids, but something more resembling the hypocrisy of man, religion, and the tension of empathy vs. intelligence within ourselves.

Electric Sheep is a deep book wearing the mask of a shallow book, but, in the end, it is only half a mask (the Mercerism plum line cannot be hidden). For those expected a by-the-numbers noire, it's there in spades (Sam Spades, one might say), but everything about the animals and Mercerism might feel strange and out of place. For those expected a scifi, Kafkaesque story involving robots, we've got your alienated protagonist undergoing a mystical transformation right here.

Further thoughts:

- "Sex with robots is more common than most people think."
- It's weird reading future scifi stories written before cell phones and the internet.
- Owning an electric toad would be pretty awesome. In fact, I think I'd prefer it to a real toad.

[glenrh · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Okay, this was just too laden with symbolism and deep meaning for me to fully get immersed in the story. I kept trying intellectualize as I read the story and that slowed it down for me. Don't get me wrong it is well done, but I usually read for escape, not to have an analytical work out.

[reader1009-863136 · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

adult science fiction. I couldn't really get into this one, but for what it's worth, this is the book that inspired "Blade Runner"

[browner56 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? depicts one day in the life of Rick Deckard, a San Francisco cop with a tough assignment ahead of him. It is January 2021, some 50 years in the future from when the book was written, and a catastrophic global nuclear war has left much of Earth uninhabitable. Most humans have emigrated to other planets, along with their android personal servants, and by now only a few living beings remain behind. (So few, in fact, that owning a live animal has become a highly coveted status symbol for an Earth-bound human, with the possession of an animatronic surrogate being a frequent alternative.) However, eight of the most advanced model of android have killed their human masters on Mars and escaped back to Earth. Two of these renegade androids have already been “retired” (i.e., killed), so Deckard’s task is to identify and retire the other six—before they retire him, of course. In that effort, he enlists the aid of Rachel Rosen, a member of the family-owned company that made the androids and who is herself of mysterious background.

That simple plot summary might make this book seem like a straightforward mash-up of a standard science fiction tale with some hard-boiled detective fiction, but this is a novel that runs so much deeper than that. Using spare, direct language, author Philip Dick has actually crafted an engaging story that also offers a deeply philosophical examination of what it means to be human. What is it, for instance, that truly separates human beings from complex artificial life forms? (The ability to empathize with others appears to be at the heart of the author’s answer). Further, what does drawing that line between real and fake imply about the ethics of, say, being able to legally kill one type of organism versus another or allowing humans and androids to engage in physical relationships? Framed around Mercerism, a fictional theology based on the plight of the long-suffering martyr William Mercer, this on-going debate threads its way throughout the story and it is what really elevates the book to a status beyond a mere thriller.

With the luxury of considerable hindsight, we know that Dick did not create his future world with perfect vision; for example, flying car technology is still not here and we do not use coin-operated pay phones anymore. Nevertheless, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has been a highly regarded and influential book for many years and across myriad genres. Notably, the book served as the basis for the Blade Runner film franchise and spawned a number of literary sequels to continue telling Deckard’s story. More recently, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun relates an affecting tale of human-android (or “artificial friend”) interaction from the AF’s perspective and with a similar focus on where bio-robotics stop and being fully human begins. (Interestingly, Ishiguro’s novel was published within just a few weeks of the day on which the events in Dick’s story took place.) Overall, this was an enjoyable and stimulating book to read and one that has generally stood up well to the test of time. It is easy to see why it is considered to be a classic of its genre.

[feralcatbob · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

If you hesitate to read the book because you've seen the movie Blade Runner don't worry because, apart from some of the characters there is very little resemblance between the movie and the book. Normally if I've read the book I won't bother with the movie (been disgusted or disappointed too many times). This is a case where the opposite occurred; I saw the movie Blade Runner years ago. I was not disappointed in the book. While the book and movie have the same overall plot the book is a much more focused on what constitutes life.

[drfuriosa · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

A fascinating glimpse at the shifting perceptions of reality in a world that simultaneously exists and does not.

[avanders_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

But so sad...

[jerame2999 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

I inhaled this book. The ideas were interesting and the characters were intriguing to a point. It got a little slow at the end. Overall a great book to spend some time with.