In January, we will be reading Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.
Please post your comments and questions in this thread.
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In January, we will be reading Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.
Please post your comments and questions in this thread.
I'm most of the way done. I've only seen the movie so I never understood the title until now.
My library doesn't keep a copy. :-/
I will see how long it would take to get it from amazon.
Hey, I just realized this was my nomination!!!:banana:My nominations never win!!! allllll riiiiiggghhhhtt
Congratulations! I'm happy for you. It's unfortunate that everyone here always go for the artsy stuff. I'm guilty of that myself. If you ever really really want me to vote for one of your selections, send me a PM. Shh, don't tell anyone that politicing occurs on these polls. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by papayahed
I actually found the book at the library. I will start after I finish with The Turn of the Screw. Too much good football on TV yesterday to break to read. :D
^ Haha. I have to agree on this one. All my favorite writers are the ones that came along in the 60's. Great book btw. I'll have to read it for January just to join in on the fun (if that's alright).
Please do.:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Butosai
I'm happy to find that my library has this. I'm going to try to participate if I can fit in reading time:)
Aww man I love this book. I've got to dig up one of my old uni essays I did quite well in, on sci fi, and this was a key text I used. Loved it. There were so many beautiful quotes in it which escape me now. Annoyed. I thought it was splendid writing - written splendidly? splendidly written? - can you tell i've not slept two days in a row? Anyway, it was brief but got the message across. Without spoiling too much the spider leg bit - that was....urgh, i felt it, i remember putting the book aside after that bit and to me that is splendid writing, to be able to make you FEEL from mere mortal words.
Splendiferously written? This one looks like fun. I’ve gotta go find a copy.
I'll probably join next week. I'm part way through Independent People by Halldor Laxness at the moment, but should be finished next week. Hopefully my copy of Androids will have arrived by then.
I'll try start at some stage next week. Looking forward to it.
I started it, and think I am on the third chapter. Some of the proper noun usage is a tad jarring in the opening, but that is a minor quibble. It seems to be far more nuanced than Blade Runner, however, whether one is ant-cyborg or not, and has set me thinking.
Picked up my copy today. I think I'll get some warm blankets out and snug up in the recliner!
I've read it long ago but I'd just shuffle through the pages and I hope I'd contribute something of value to the discussion :)
Just picked my copy up, went out in the middle of the "White Death" (if you believe the local weather) just to get it:D Hopefully I'll start on it tonight. I may finish reading "Cujo" first, but I'll confess I'm kind of looking for a reason to put it down.
Hey, I just picked up my copy. Silly me, I was looking in the fiction section. As an afterthought I wandered over to the sci-fi section. Voila! (or as we say in Georgia, viola!)
I started this book on an airplane-ride yesterday, but I only read a few pages. In the seat behind me, there were two chatty-cathys who talked non-stop from takeoff to landing. Their conversation centered around a friend of theirs who, as far as I could tell, had a poor sense for fashion. They laughed and laughed. One of them sort of shrieked when she laughed and could hit a natural high-C with frightening regularity.
Anyway, I wound up reaching over my seat-back and in one swift movement I slapped both of them across the eyes with my copy of Electric Sheep. In the melee that ensued, my book was lost. If you ask me, I think one of the flight attendants got it.
Okay, okay, that last part isn’t exactly true. It could be that it was a normal flight, and maybe I was just too distracted to concentrate, and it’s more than likely that I just left my book in the seat-pocket in front of me.
Curses!
:lol: :lol: Oh Sancho. You had me there. Until I got to the "last part wasn't true" my mouth dropped in shock that anyone would do that! :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Sancho
I have not gotten back to it yet because I have had my nose in other things, but in as far along as I am, Dick has managed to catch me off guard, to a degree, and even though this is obviously alternate-world entertainment, he is raising serious philosophical issues about what it is to be human, or even a living thing, for that matter.
I remember a decent consumer article in Slate about robo pets for those who didn't see the beauty in being a pet parent, and the best of these things, the baby dino, which ran about 300 +, intrigued me, and of course would not defecate out of the litter box on a bad day, but even if I had to give up my cats, I would feel silly about trying to show affection for a walking computer, but if it gets better, and really simulates affectionate animal behavior?
It makes my head hurt :) All animals have innate templates, to a degree. Any housecat will bury food, dig in the litter, carry its prey in its jaws, and yet these are living responses, somehow personalized, because all of my cats have loved me differently.
Thanks Virgil. By the way, I loved your book; that Aeneas - what a card. Also, I’ve been meaning to ask you, is there any truth to the rumor that it wasn’t really you with Dante down there in the inferno?
I picked another copy of this book today, this time at the library. I read a few chapters before checking it out and I’m looking forward to diving into it this evening. It would be really cool if a fellow lit-netter found the book I left in the seat-pocket of a Delta jet, but I'd be happy if another reader found it. I do like to set books free in airports and train stations and such, but usually I read them first.
Are you on here?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sancho
Hiya Papaya, and thanks for the link. Somebody else on here told me about book-crossing a while back and I’ve been trying to remember what it was all about. Anyway I’m not a member but I should be. Mine has been an unofficial read-and-release program.
and started reading it today. No, that's not true, but I did reserve a copy at the library via my lap top and picked it up yesterday. I've read the first three chapters or so, and I have to say I'm enjoying it immensly.
About the title, how many believe the title is from the adage that counting sheep, usually sheep jumping in single file over a fence, acts as a somniferous aid. When a child, watching the cartoon at the movies, the counting of sheep jumping a fence by bugs bunny or porky pig or some other character trying to get to sleep was omniscient. But then, since the protaginist, Rick, has an electric sheep for a pet, so we know they exist, does the title have another meaning? The author, Dick, being born in 1928, would have been familiar with the counting of sheep in trying to get to sleep from the many cartoons he probably saw. But then why isn't the book named Do Androids Count Electric Sheep?
You have to be alert to catch the allusions in the novel. When Rick is calling the pet shop to inquire about the ostrich they have in their window, he gives his name to the pet shop salesman as Frank Merriwell. If you don't understand this allusion, be sure to look it up on Wikipedia. Frank Merriwell of Yale was aired on Saturday morning in the forties. Dick would have been exposed to Merriwell through the radio, newspaper cartoons, and the Frank Merriwell Big Little Books. How many of you know what a Big Little Book was? There's a picture of one on Wikipedia. Be alert as you read.
I'm still waiting for my copy to be delivered.
I forgot about the site myself until your "set it free" line. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Sancho
How-d-do dfloyd?
If the book turns out to be an allegory about what it is to be human, the title may be (as you said) a modified version of counting sheep. Whereas any android could count sheep, only a human has the ability to dream.
I liked this description of Isidore early on in the book:
By the way, I’m pretty sure I have friends who couldn’t pass the minimum mental faculties test or the empathy test.Quote:
He had been special now for over a year, and not merely in regard to the distorted genes which he carried. Worse still, he had failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test, which made him in popular parlance a chickenhead. Upon him the contempt of three planets descended.
I bought it used a few days ago and started it tonight, stopping after Chapter 4. The issues with empathy test are much more explicitly explored in the book, than in the movie--and I don't recall the religion being part of the movie at all, but it's been a while since I've seen it. I'm also wondering if there'll be more mentions of the "void."
I'm not certain that I could pass the empathy test that they're administering:DQuote:
Originally Posted by Sancho
I guess I'm maybe 1/3 to 1/2 way through the book now. I'll admit that I'm loving it. It brings to light some interesting questions. I'll post more when I finish, hopefully this week if I can find the time to read.
had a false pet. It was a stuffed terrier which looked realistic. She called it Nonesuch, but I don't think it ever came to her when she called it. The moral of this story? Don't date any girls who are weirder than you are.
I started last night in bed, but I must have been so tired that I can't recall a single thing from the five pages I read. ;)
Just picked up my copy from the library. I couldn't wait to start reading so grabbed a quick coffee in the library cafe....4 pages and I'm already hooked. I have previously read The Man in the High Castle which was tough going but satisfying. I'm hoping for an equally challenging read with Androids. Blade Runner was part of the school curriculum when I was younger and I remember feeling an uneasy sympathy with the replicants. As always I'm sure the book will deliver an even more intense experience.
:DQuote:
Originally Posted by Sancho
They need to do the test!
Yep, same, part of the curriculum and the movie wanted you to feel sympathy with the androids - and how could not??? I mean come on, the ending, hanging of a roof, all wet, dying slowly, dove - they really went all out!Quote:
Originally Posted by kitkat203
However, I think in the book you sympathise less? Or at least I did, I felt 'bad' for them I guess but not as much as I did in the movie, wonder what Dick was trying to achieve there, turn it back on us? But in the book aren't the androids....rather 'flat'? In the movie they have life.
How do you know you started it then? COuld have dreamt it alll.....Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
:lol: I'm not brain dead. I remember picking up the book and going through the motions of reading. I remember stopping at page five and saying to myself, at least I read five pages. Now what was in those five pages, I couldn't tell you. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by optimisticnad
Page 126:
That one cracked me up. I’m planning on using “disemelevatored” in a sentence at work tomorrow.Quote:
The elevator arrived; several police-like nondescript men and women disemelevatored, clacked off across the lobby on their several errands. They paid no attention to Rick or Phil Resch.
Ack... I just finished Blankets and started My Antonia so hoping to start on this this weekend...
Sancho> I wouldn't even know how to pronounce that!
my next door neighbor in my apartment building stopped over. He said he wanted to give me the Boneli test to see if I was an android. If I was one, he said, he didn't want to live next to me. I told him we had equal housing laws now. We talked some more, then he gave me the Boneli test; we talked some more. He said he was glad I passed the test; he was relieved about not having an android as a neighbor. We talked some more, then he turned to go. He wasn't aware that I had given him the empathy test, and he was the android. As he went out my door, I fired at his head with my laser tube. His head split in two as he slumped to the floor of the hallway. I closed the door and went to bed. When I went out my door in the morning, apartment dwellers were steping over the corpse of the retired android. I went over to his apartment. The door was unlocked so I went in. I wanted to get his pet: an alligator. Lucky for me it was a false pet.
Ha! Keep hanging onto those handles, dfloyd.
Ta-da. Finished.
That book had more twists and turns than a Springer Spaniel’s gastrointestinal tract. And, speaking of which, I’ve got one of those in my house right now (a real one) who needs to go outside of my house right now and take care of his gastrointestinal tract.
That, quite possibly, falls into the too-much-information category. Sorry.
:lol::lol::lol: For more than one reason.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sancho
I'm nearly finished, and I was hard pressed to put it down last night. I finally stopped at midnight knowing that I had work today, and I'll need all my brain power for that. I've enjoyed all of the twists and turns, and I am constantly surprised by the characters that I'm feeling sympathy for. Oh well, I don't want to post any spoilers yet, so I suppose it is back to work:)
I know, right? It's one of my new favorite words.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sancho