Yuffie's Book Reviews

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - by Philip K. Dick

So. This book. Shits on science. And that makes me angry.

The dude was administering an empathy test to potential androids to determine if they're android or human (because androids are crazy advanced and you can't tell the difference). It's a standardized test, yet he deviates from standardization procedures!!! The first person he did the test to - he TOLD her exactly what he's measuring and how the test works! NO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING??

And he reads the questions in different orders to different people, doesn't fully read the questions, only reads some of the questions and suddenly decides their score (which he can't have because he didn't administer all the questions!!!) means they're an android, and he gave the test in English to someone who doesn't know English that well, so he rephrased the questions in different words. *headdesk*

HE COMPLETELY INVALIDATED THE TEST. EVERY TIME HE GIVES IT. HIS RESULTS ARE USELESS, BUT THE RESULTS HE GETS ARE THE BASIS FOR THIS ENTIRE DAMN STORY. ARGGGG!!!!!!

*bangs head against the wall*

Dear writers, if you're going to use scientific principles in your novel... USE THEM PROPERLY, GOSH DARNIT!!!!

This Annie rant was brought to you by the Anti-shitting-on-science Commission.

So I was ranting about this to some people and it was pointed out to me that Dick may not be the most supportive of the psychological sciences, and he made this shitty test on purpose to show how the field of psychology was a fraud. Or something like that. If that's the case, then my point is moot, I suppose.

Anyway, the rest of the book had quite a few issues with pacing. Dick has some really imaginative ideas, but his execution is poor. He'll blow through huge plot events in a sentence or two, leaving me disoriented when the entire situation suddenly changed and I didn't realize it. He didn't spend time on the important scenes, so it felt like the MC just stopped each android way too easily, without facing any real danger or stakes.

Also, there was this scene that made me cringe so hard:

"Rachael's proportions, he noticed once again, were odd; with her heavy mass of dark hair her head seemed large, and because of her diminutive breasts her body assumed a lank, almost childlike stance. But her great eyes, with their elaborate lashes, could only be those of a grown woman; there the resemblance to adolescence ended.

[...]

No excess flesh, a flat belly, small behind and smaller bosom--Rachael had been modeled on the Celtic type of build, anachronistic and attractive. Below the brief shorts her legs, slender, had a neutral, nonsexual quality, not much rounded off in nubile curves. The totall impression was good, however. Although definitely that of a girl, not a woman. Except for the restless, shrewd eyes.

[...]

He walked over to the bed.

Squirming about, Rachael managed to roll over at last onto her stomach, face buried in the white lower sheet. "This is a clean, noble, virgin type of bed," she stated. "Only clean, noble girls who--"

[...]

He finished undressing her. Exposed her pale, cold loins."

...He's basically being aroused by a body that to him looks like a child.... Uhhhhhhhhh....... Yeah, no. This sucks.

This book (along with 1984) taught me how much I HATE the words lithe and supple when applied to a female body by an older man. I'm not one to ever hate on language, but these two words needs to just die. Throw them into a Sarlack pit. I don't want to see them ever again.

This was the book the movie Blade Runner was based on, and this is a rare example where the movie was better than the book.

3/5 stars