Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
By Philip K. Dick
Reviewed by Aaron DeWeese
One is more impressed when one reflects upon the fact that this novel was first published in 1968.
The sense of post-apocalyptic destruction was real for me; quite depressing. I had just finished Kevin J. Anderson's "Ground Zero". Fallout that creates chickenheads. It hits too close to home. I think that radioactive dust is here today, only it's not radioactive dust—it's of a varied nature and borne from the muderous Android logicians in power. In our Universe, they won, so to speak.
I believe Mercerism was the World Religion Dick based upon Christianity. Was it the Antichrist's religion or the Returned Christ's religion? Very interesting about Buster's revelatory news expose. Something in me suspects the latter, giving Dick's alleged real-life trip to the Roman Empire. Mercer told Deckard that it was the curse, the defeat of Creation that caused men to do bad, knowing it was bad. Mercer speaks of the sin nature; he nearly directly quotes Romans 7:15. I wonder if Dick had read Romans, as he claimed to not have read Acts. When Buster proclaimed Mercer fake, showing brushstrokes, he revealed not that Mercer did not exist, but that Mercer was only a man in a leading role with a greater power guiding him. Pure preaching and great stuff.
The Androids you must feel...empathy for. It was an epiphany when the Nexus-6 Rachael drunkenly stated that she felt empathetic towards herself. That is consciousness in the midst of evolving. I suspect that Earth and Mars will be transformed by the next generation of the Rosen Association's products.
I loved the animal quest side-scenes. It was so novel! Yet, like the entire novel, it was quite dark and depressing, as the setting of a post-nuclear world war should be.
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