I recently finished Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and wanted to explore wanted to explore what I found interesting about the work. Just a warning, this blog might include spoilers.
There’s a feeling this novel imparts, a sense of vertigo (n. a dizzy confused state of mind). PKD is always bouncing rapidly between two poles in Androids. One between two views of human nature: a triumphant, romantic one, embedded with empathy, and one of powerlessness and heartlessness. Another between two views on consciousness and meaning — whether or not our experiences are reality. I don’t know if I’ve ever read anything so reliant on disorientation and enjoyed it this much.
I reached peak confusion on page 105. “Something’s going on here,” I thought, when the main character, Deckard, has his existence called into question.
"Do you know George Gleason and Phil Resch?" the police official asked.
"No," Rick said; neither name meant anything to him.
"They're the bounty hunters for Northern California. Both are attached to our department. Maybe you'll run into them while you're here. Are you an android, Mr. Deckard? The reason I ask is that several times in the past we've had escaped andys turn up posing as out-of-state bounty hunters here in pursuit of a suspect."
Here, we reach a climax of a shocking turn of events. Deckard is apprehended by a parallel police force on an alternate base, who suspect him of being an android himself. For the first time, the reader’s steady understanding of PKD’s complex and jarring world is thrown into question.
Because Deckard isn’t merely a protagonist — he’s a modus. Self-assured and morally decisive (at this point) about his profession (bounty hunter), we the readers can basically accept the strange facets of this mystery world. PKD then calls that all into question. “Not yet,” he essentially tells those who seek some absolutism in Androids.
And then again on page 130 — PKD doesn’t tell us Resch’s test result — rather, he creates an atmosphere of confusion and iconoclasm, strong enough as to definitively suggest it:
Afterward, Rick sat in silence for a time. Then he began gathering his gear together, stuffing it back in
the briefcase.
"I can tell by your face," Phil Resch said; he exhaled in absolute, weightless, almost convulsive relief. "Okay; you can give me my gun back." He reached out, his palm up, waiting.
"Evidently you were right," Rick said. "About Garland's motives. Wanting to split us up; what you said." He felt both psychologically and physically weary.
The novel was essentially an 800m race, a long sprint. There was no other way to read it, far too quick-moving to drop and intriguing to break into chunks. There’s something to be said about a head-first attitude in strange waters or shifting ground. Far too often, I notice myself straining to collect all the possible data, run all the mental simulations on an event or situation I might be subject to. Sometimes that doesn’t even occur — I’m just decision-treeing scenarios that don’t yet exist.
What I’m really doing here is dragging my feet, stalling from the challenging, but value-generating, action of making a decision. Decisions, whether right or wrong, free up personal working capital (brainpower) to move on to other things.
So make decisions, people.