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Comment by linsomniac | Hacker News Reader

A few weeks ago I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and as a long time fan of Blade Runner it provided a lot of good back story on the movie. Highly recommended.

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Recently read this as well. I found the movie kind of uneven in parts but felt it was mostly a better story than the book, which I didn't expect to be the case.

I guess I didn't totally get the Mercerism and animal angle, it seemed to exist mostly to highlight a difference in empathy between characters. I think the film is better without it.

The android test Mexican standoff was amusing though.

The differences in empathy was kinda the whole point of the book. Which is to say, the androids didn't have any. In the context of the story, they could act and look like humans, but were essentially psychopathic killing machines. PKD felt that being fully human required empathy.

I guess I kind of felt it was a wacky way to establish that, and I felt it wasn't necessary. The absence of it in the androids would be sufficient to highlight it. The aspect of Mercerism being unveiled as a fraud being the androids grand plan and it not mattering (because Mercer being a real deity was never the actual point anyway) was great at highlighting how the entire idea was just a bridge to far for the androids.

I probably just have some bias here since I like the film's nuanced interpretation of the androids and having one of them show mercy at the last moment is a better twist to me.

The book goes the other way--in the end, Deckard quits his job because he is starting to feel empathy for the androids.

I had a similar impression. For me those two hit the hardest and I think it can drag a bit in those moments. I expected a more in depth view as is often the case with source material, not an entirely different societal mindset from most characters. It's as if they forked out a huge part of the story for the movies and honestly I'm glad they did so.

I was a bit skeptic of Philip K Dick once I finished it but I'm glad I took up Ubik a couple of years after - it turned out to be one of my favorite reads.

Ubik is my favorite as well.

Another good PKD read is A Maze of Death... it has very dated tech in it (satellite in orbit playing pre-recorded tape)... but the ideas are very similar to Ubik (in a way). A world deteriorating, an almost spiritual war between forces of order and disorder.

> bit skeptic of PKD... but I'm glad I took up Ubik a couple of years after

'Ubik' the novel, not the substance, I take it. in the novel [spoiler], Ubik is a store-bought aerosol product which can be used to temporarily reverse deterioration... or is it...?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik

I agree that the movie is kind of uneven but over all a better telling of the story. But there are parts of the movie that I'm like "what's going on here" that the story clears up.

I don't think these are spoilers, but stop reading if you are sensitive: Ones that stuck out for me were "why is this weird guy living in a building that is falling apart?" The story reveals that Earth is basically poisoned and that everyone who can leave has left, and the people staying behind are suffering serious cognitive decline due to it.

J.F. Sebastian? He's suffering from a genetic condition that causes him to age prematurely (ironic, since he's a geneticist who designs replicants and simpler creatures). He failed the medical screening required for off-world living, and thus is confined to life on Earth.

I'm afraid I disagree with your claim that J.F. is "suffering serious cognitive decline" due to his life on Earth. To the contrary, his confinement on Earth is not the cause of his psysical decline, his physical condition (genetics) is the cause of his confinement.

more details: https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/J.F._Sebastian

I think linsomniac is crossing wires between the film and PKD's original novel: in PKD's novel John Isidore, a radioactively damaged and sub-par IQ human, aids the fugitive androids. And in PKD's novel, the remaining residents on Earth wore lead codpieces to protect themselves from mutation.

The film differs in that J.F. Sebastian is a creative genius, not sub-par IQ, and yes his genetic condition is the proximate cause of his confinement on Earth: but the film clearly asks: what caused the condition? The film doesn't say but pretty much implies the same as PKD's novel [that one of Sebastian's parents or ancestors was radioactively damaged].

In general the film implies but does not lay out any of the (unnecessary and seriously tiresome) exposition from matchstick characters that PKD's novel did, and that makes it stronger. (Arguably except for Gaff, and especially the unicorn scene in the Director's Cut). Ditto, omitting Mercerism in place of a general existential malaise.

I might have misinterpreted something, but wasn't there an exposition piece from Isidore about how he could heal animals and humans before his abilities were burned out by exposure? It sounded like fantastical ravings of a diminished mind but maybe it was meant to highlight in his fantasy world his desire was to heal.

Definitely read as it is a classic, just prepare yourself for a lot of talking about sheep (I think it was a sheep, it's been awhile).

Sure you’re not thinking of the John Scalzi book with the similar (referential) title?

As implied by the name of the story, it was indeed a lot of talk about an electric sheep. Maybe Scalzi has a book that also talks a lot about a sheep, but it definitely fits for this story as well.

> it was indeed a lot of talk about an electric sheep

And I believe one of the things Deckard talked to his wife about was saving up enough to buy a real sheep, which is what leads him to the Tyrell corporation.

Yeah, this is what I was remembering. It was really more of talk about "keeping up with the jones", but the sheep was the core object of this conversation.

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