•
Rating: “Please, I would like to order half a kilo of artificial flies, the ones that actually fly and buzz. Is it for an electric turtle, ma'am? No, for a toad.” Chap. 22.
Exceptional novel.
Dick describes a desolate, post-atomic, synthetic, and surrogate Earth, focusing on a gloomy San Francisco, buried under waste. A hallucinated and dilapidated place where the line between humans and androids is indistinguishable. Radioactive fallout has led to the near extinction of animal species. A new category of mutant humans emerges, known as the “specials,” including the “chickenheads” with lower IQs.
Deckard and Isidore are two anguished individuals, struggling within a distorted world.
The former is employed as a hunter of fugitive androids, called “andys.”
The lonely “chickenhead” Isidore will attempt a misguided emotional connection, a compassionate love, towards the tender droid Pris.
Deckard and his wife Iran are going through a critical period and, to regulate their moods, they use a multitude of codes from the Penfield mood organ (3,104,382,481,594,888). Deckard's emotional state will lead him to a soulless relationship with the droid Rachel.
“What kind is your wife? He didn’t answer. But you... If you weren’t an android, Rick interrupted, if I could legally marry you, I would. Or we could live in sin, only I can’t really live, said Rachel. Not legally. But you are actually alive. Biologically I mean. I mean, you’re not made of transistor circuits like fake animals; you’re an organic being.” Chap. 17.
Their failures to relate to the heart of a droid will lead them to a “world of the tomb” despair.
The substantial introduction “The Life of Androids is a Dream” is by C. Pagetti. The aim is to outline, even with unique anecdotes, the intricate temperament of the writer and his obsession with artificial simulacra. The complex structure of the novel on characters and religion is also meticulously examined, leading to inevitable comparisons with the renowned film “Blade Runner”.
“On what is your Voigt-Kampff test based, Mr. Deckard? On empathic response. Measured through various situations. Most of which have to do with animals. Our test is probably simpler, said Resch. The response of the reflex arc in the upper spinal column ganglia takes several microseconds longer in humanoid robots than in the human nervous system” Chap. 10.
The novel's meanings are further expanded in the elaborate afterword “Landscape with Ruins and Appliances” by G. Frasca. An examination of rare complexity and descriptive, sociological, religious, and technological power. Similarities and differences coexist between the book and the film, the period of the novel's publication, and historical events of the time, even touching upon our present day.
Isidore's phrase in Chap. 6 is unsettling.
“Nobody can beat the kipple, he said, except temporarily and maybe in one isolated place, like in my apartment for example, where I have created a sort of equilibrium between the pressure of kipple and non-kipple, as long as it lasts. But then I'll die or leave, and then the kipple will take over. It’s a universal principle, valid throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving towards a final state of total and absolute kippleization.”
F©
Loading comments slowly
