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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9838585" data-attributes="member: 86653">Finished Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I took it slow. A chapter or two a day while reading other stuff.The idea of the story came from Dick reading about psychopaths and empathy. It really shows.Despite having read it multiple times already, the empathy theme really stuck out this time around. The way you can spot an android is they completely lack empathy. Empathy is the one trait that separates the human from the non-human.I love that there’s effectively a religion focused on the empathic bond between people and their shared experience (Mercerism) and that caring for animals is central to that religion.The ability of humans to empathize with others and other kinds of creatures (animals and androids) is both a blessing and a curse.Maybe there’s something in the air. Empathy seems like it’s really important.One thing that bugs me about the adaptation, Blade Runner, is that the movie did one of the characters dirty. In the movie we have Zhora, the stripper with the snake act. But in the book we have Luba, an opera singer with an angelic voice. Tgis is further compounded by the fact that in the movie some androids are designed as pleasure models, wheras in the book it’s illegal for humans to sleep with androids.Another thing I wished they’d carried over was that Rachel and Pris were the same model in the book, so physically identical.It’s a great book. A classic. Well worth the read. If you like sci-fi and haven’t read this one, what are you even doing.</blockquote>

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