Blade Runner:The Book
By Preston Sinclair
"Does she know?"
Rick Deckard
This is the life or death question Deckard asks The Rosen Association in Phillip K. Dick's sci-fi existential hard boiled detective novel 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep'. It makes great summer beach reading.
Sometimes, androids say and do inappropriate things. This is what makes it so difficult to tell them from humans. Their lack of empathy could lead to comical misunderstandings, or tragic situations just as it does in real life today.
Deckard learns the hard way that humans have empathy for certain other humans, and some animals, but not for everything. It's only his morose sense of humor that carries him through the longest day of his life. The fact that he is able to develop empathy for one android, Rachael, while she is unable to empathize with him only proves that he is human.
Dick seems to have prefigured Skype when he introduced Vidphone. Today, communication is taken for granted due to the "smartphone". There in lies the anomaly. How can two distinct police precincts exist without one knowing about the other, with the old Hall Of Justice on Mission, and the new one on Lombard? The only answer can be that real news has been replaced by the "fake news" spewed out by Buster Friendly in this age of propaganda.
As a result of this vacuum of information Mercerism has been allowed to flourish as a new religion. Yet it turns out to be only another failed philosophy to placate the masses. It's exposed as a fraud, a mere distraction using smoke and mirrors. Finally, Deckard confronts Mercer via the empathy box and all Mercer can say is, "Don't you see? There is no salvation?"
All of this occurs in a universe where animals are bought and sold as if they were automobiles. Prices are haggled over and deals are made. This makes what happens to Deckard's goat all the more disturbing, just imagine someone or something pushing your car off the roof of a building.
'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep' takes the exploration of existentialism to the next level. The androids, including Roy Baty their ring leader, lack a certain understanding of what is right or wrong yet they are driven by their own free will. As a result, mankind has produced the perfect psychopath in the Nexus-6.
Ridley Scott's 1982 film adaptation "Blade Runner' captures the film noire atmosphere of the story and dialogue perfectly. Scott has his finger on the pulse of all things smokey, sexy, and rainy.
This is the life or death question Deckard asks The Rosen Association in Phillip K. Dick's sci-fi existential hard boiled detective novel 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep'. It makes great summer beach reading.
Sometimes, androids say and do inappropriate things. This is what makes it so difficult to tell them from humans. Their lack of empathy could lead to comical misunderstandings, or tragic situations just as it does in real life today.
Dick seems to have prefigured Skype when he introduced Vidphone. Today, communication is taken for granted due to the "smartphone". There in lies the anomaly. How can two distinct police precincts exist without one knowing about the other, with the old Hall Of Justice on Mission, and the new one on Lombard? The only answer can be that real news has been replaced by the "fake news" spewed out by Buster Friendly in this age of propaganda.
As a result of this vacuum of information Mercerism has been allowed to flourish as a new religion. Yet it turns out to be only another failed philosophy to placate the masses. It's exposed as a fraud, a mere distraction using smoke and mirrors. Finally, Deckard confronts Mercer via the empathy box and all Mercer can say is, "Don't you see? There is no salvation?"
All of this occurs in a universe where animals are bought and sold as if they were automobiles. Prices are haggled over and deals are made. This makes what happens to Deckard's goat all the more disturbing, just imagine someone or something pushing your car off the roof of a building.
'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep' takes the exploration of existentialism to the next level. The androids, including Roy Baty their ring leader, lack a certain understanding of what is right or wrong yet they are driven by their own free will. As a result, mankind has produced the perfect psychopath in the Nexus-6.
Ridley Scott's 1982 film adaptation "Blade Runner' captures the film noire atmosphere of the story and dialogue perfectly. Scott has his finger on the pulse of all things smokey, sexy, and rainy.
