Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Before reading I thought that this question was totally metaphorical, especially after seeing the film adaptation by Ridley Scott. But it wasnt. Electric sheep does exist in this novel along with the rest of "animals" representing the real, breathing animals currently extinct in the face of the planet after a nuclear war. Replicant animals here are considered as objects of status symbol, the same as owning an endangered species and keeping it like a trophy and a household pet.

But the best part here is the author's  depiction of androids in contrast to animals. Humans in this age adore animals but despise the androids. Androids may appear highly intelligent, logical and skillful with varying degrees according to their model/type but they have no empathy nor sense of moral judgment. Philip K Dick while writing this in 1968 probably was thinking more about the android's lack or absence of soul than the absence of what we consider today as emotional intelligence. A scientist can never manufacture courage and spirit in a mechanical beast.

This book can really make the reader think beyond the current prejudice and beliefs about the sense of self and identity. PKD toys with your thoughts, and what made this a classic sci fi novel hinges on the idea that the main protagonist here, the bounty hunter---Rick Deckard, could possibly be an android---the very thing that he's been hunting for all his life. As a reader of thriller fictions, one can never forget the feeling of paranoia when you encounter that interrogation scene in a secret agency. Deckard may have proved that he's a genuine human based on his fluctuating empathy but his alienation with his job and the system itself is not that far from the situation of the replicants. Man and machine both seek survival and freedom. Maybe, this is what the loyal PKD readers refer to as his trademark "mindfu*k." But it's a cool "mindfu*k" none the less.

This novel is also not free from historical biases, but I forgive the author. The idea that Filipinos eat boiled dogmeat with rice is a recurring racist issue but I think it's understandable since the author puts it in the eyes of an obscure android. I just want to clarify that eating a dog meat is not exclusive to one race only. This book being written with good extrapolation, also never runs out of funny ideas and scenes. The emotions in reading this is different to the moody, dark, and melancholic atmosphere of its film version Blade Runner. If  the movie ended with a dramatic scene, the book ended with a funny scene of Deckard realizing that his newly discovered toad is actually a fake one, complete with an electronic control panel.

My final comparison is this: if the movie was dramatic and mythological, the book was cynic and philosophical. The end.


Favorite Quote from the Book:
The old man said, "You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe."




Blade Runner (1982)
Rutger Hauer stole the show from Harrison Ford in this classic scene "tears in rain."


Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: 4 Penfield Mood Organs out of 5

"Repent, Harlequin!" Said The Ticktockman

Story Art © Don Ivan Punchatz 1978

Everett C. Marm lives in a futuristic working-class city of Indiana where nobody can afford to waste a second. Time is the main capitalistic currency here, not money nor property. If you're ten  minutes late, you have to pay for it ten minutes worth of your life. Those are called revocations--small penalties for minute violations. But if your offence cumulate to a considerable amount of wasted time, the System will have to terminate you via the Master Timekeeper, dreadfully known as the Ticktockman. Such is the punishment for somebody who lives a square peg life forced to fit into a circular socket kind of world.

Harlan Ellison's short story "Repent, Harlequin!" Said The Ticktockman originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, 1965 belonged to dystopic stories we lovers of fantasy and science fiction know by heart. Those kind of disturbing stories that teach us the necessity of opposing tyrannies and rules of the conformist. The kind of stories that hit us at our very own core because we love freedom and diversity in their basic form as much as the authors want to try reminding us against real oppressions of the past not far from reality, and may also serve as warning for coming tyranny of the land with or without fantasy and magic of science. I give the author extra credit for his direct reference to George Orwell's 1984 novel, especially when the Harlequin met his transformation in the hands of his captors. There is really no need to relive the horrors of brainwashing word by word, and blood by blood...

Ellison's short opus reminds me of Yevgeny Zamyatin's seminal dystopic work WE that actually predated George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. All quality work that stood as cautionary tales about the past and the future. "Repent, Harlequin! Said The Ticktockman deserved to win both the Nebula (1965) and the Hugo (1966) for short fiction.


most memorable scene:
"Scare someone else. I'd rather be dead than live in a dumb world with a bogeyman like you."
"It's my job."
"You're full of it. You're a tyrant. You have no right to order people around and kill them if they show up late."
"You can't adjust. You can't fit in."
"Unstrap me, and I'll fit my fist into your mouth."
 

Genre: Short Fiction, Sci Fi, Dystopia
Rating: 4 jelly beans out of 5

Apocalypse Now

THANKS FOR THE TIP, BRO!

Harold Camping's prediction about the end of the World based on the First Testament's Book of Genesis is once again, off. His previous calculation (or rather, miscalculation) assumed that Judgment Day should have happened last 1994. Of course, humanity survived 1994 and today, does anybody care if somebody declares to know when the end will happen? With or without predictions, humanity must fight for their right to live and maintain that courage to face the inevitable.

The question by the majority now (that I really hate to hear) is when will it happen and who will be the next fool to declare it. Answering that is open to everybody and subject for anyone's interpretation.

On the other hand, my foolish opinion about the End of Days is this: Apocalypse will not happen in a single day but it has already started. Now, we are actually in the process of slowly killing ourselves by breathing poisoned air, eating synthetic foods, dealing with nuclear and natural disasters, and the recurrent man-made wars. We don't need to pinpoint exactly the ending, we only need the courage to face it. Because Man is the only species capable of this kind of courage, not plants, not animals.       

Zamyatin's footprint in History

When Joseph Stalin took the control of the Soviet Russia and established a Totalitarian rule, there was a group of literary rebels that fought against the absolutism and conformity of the system. They called themselves The Serapion Brethren and one of them was Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin.

"With whom are we, the Serapion Brethren? We are with the hermit Serapion. We reject Utilitarianism. We do not write for the sake of propaganda. Art is as real as life itself, and, it has no goal or meaning, it exists because it must exist... Our only demand is that the writer's voice must never be false."

Dostoevsky and Gogol are two prominent figures that influenced Zamyatin in his childhood years and after reading this fast-paced (in the second half of the book) dystopic novel WE, it's evident that he loves to play with moral issues. His method is highly satirical and sometimes dark, as the similarities are very obvious with this novel published in 1921 and other inheritors of the style like Orwell's 1984 and Le Guin's The Dispossessed. Yes, if you're still not familiar with this book, WE preceded Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and influenced Orwell's 1984. The major difference is that the "science" aspect is more believable here compared to Orwell's, and even to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

The protagonist is the main architect of a ship that aims to reach other planets, to conquer the "outer space." Everything in the system is ruled by the Law of Reason, therefore-- religion, mysticism, and even traditional beliefs were eradicated and isolated "outside" the seemingly impenetrable glass wall. Each person has no name, only designation like in the army. The protagonist is D-503 and his partner is O-90. This is to ensure unity for the cause of the great Benefactor and the One State, and forget about individuality and free thinking. 

Problem arises when  D-530 meets the beautiful I-330. What will happen if you begin to question the validity of Reason? What will happen if you suddenly contracted a disease, the kind of disease of the "inner space" that the ancients called soul?

In the end, the protagonist lost. But D-503 lost the battle and not the War. There is hope for the future in this novel, not like the case in Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984.

This novel accurately predicted the horrors of Stalinism and this is the reason why the book was banned and the author-banished and liquidated from the Soviet Russia. His only reason is to fight for what he believe is right. That is Yevgeny Zamyatin's final footprint in history for today's generation.

some memorable passages:

The knife is the strongest, the most immortal, the most brilliant of man's creations. The knife has been a guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; along the knife's edge is the road of paradoxes--the only road worthy of a fearless mind.
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"Then how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one; revolutions are infinite. The final one is for children: children are frightened by infinity, and its important that children sleep peacefully at night..."
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"Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers are invariably children. Exactly, just like children, we must always ask, 'And what next?'"
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Additional footnote, I think Zamyatin predicted the usage of a pocket, scientific calculator here. Some science fiction readers will answer that it was Asimov from his Foundation book. But WE preceded the Foundation Trilogy for about 30 years! 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 souls

Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia 

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury's short novel showed the true face of the enemy, the enemy of book reading. It's more deadlier and sublime than censorship. It's watching tv.

This novel is comparable to George Orwell's social commentary against the real, post-World War II global structure in his popular novel 1984 minus the politics. But instead of Big Brother's imposing image positioned on every wall of the house reminding everyone that "Big Brother is Watching you," entertainment screens plastered on the wall are reminding every member of the household to "Keep on Watching 24/7."

Indeed, this sublime mind-conditioning of the masses has turned them into visual entertainment monsters and abandon the natural process of learning by taking your own time (or owning your time) and read a book. Every information perceived by the eye at the speed of light is taken as it is and will never be questioned nor given with second thought. All the viewer can do is to react to the show, even if he has no clear idea what the show is all about. The people are turned into empty viewers and entertainment zombies. A simple stroll in the park, or just a walk while pondering the clouds are considered heresies. Any chat referencing ideas from a book is illegal. If you're caught by the Mechanical Hound hiding a single book, even just loose pages, you're toast.  

Some disliked Bradbury's inclusion of the Mechanical Hound. The mechanical canine is not believable, they would say. For me, I believe and agree that the Hound is not that scientific. But it is highly symbolic. And this is the reason why the author used mechanical dogs as hunters in the night - because a hound symbolizes a biter, sometimes a rabid biter, just like the moral hounds in the history and the present that can almost spit fire with their convictions in condemning the accused, the immorals.   

The minus points for the book is the sudden loss of Clarisse. She made the book stand out, but her role is just an appetizer with no main dish. I was expecting her to return in the later part but alas, the story became almost linear as it ended at the outer region / boundary of the fictional city somewhere in America where Guy Montag joined the outcasts of bookkeepers.


most memorable passage:

We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing,  you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run.And someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up...

Rating: 3.5 dandelions out of 5 (70%)

Genre: Science Fiction