2010-11-10

What I've been reading recently..

Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?




Good if you saw the movie (Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott). If haven't, read the book and then watch the movie! Set in a dystopian post-war Earth, animals extinct and the few crippled humans who cannot afford to 'emigrate' to Mars still dream about life. Amused mostly by a new religion, struggling to get one of the still surviving rare animals as to show their social status. Powerhorses in the new colonies are androids - so human-like 'things' surpassing humans both in intellectual and anatomical capability with implanted artificial memories that only sophisticated emotional tests can show their true identity. A pack of them manages to escape and arrive to Mother Earth. Deckard is a bounty-hunter, so called Blade Runner in future's dark California. His task is to positively identify and 'retire' them. The question is, what separates men from machines..


Humans in this world live a desperate life. They thoughts revolve around a questionable religion, TV talk-shows with androids posing there for them, deciding which artificial mood to set on themselves for today and owning a real animal. The spark I miss most from them is the desire to explore, build new worlds, to change, to revolt; as if they've been already transformed to a kind of 'sheep-like' state because their role was fulfilled by creating the Nexus-6, the most human-like android. They've voluntarily given up their status to androids as being the living, moving, improving, all-changing power of the universe.


I'm just wondering how far our civilization is from this state and what/who would be those angels of death disguised as our saviors..


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http://rapidshare.com/files/429860345/Philip_K_Dick-Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep.7z


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