Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
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Some notes:
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Dick is a bit blunt with his story telling. There’s very little filler content, or chunks of the book you can do without. There’s also not many “frills”. You fill in environments yourself - which unfortunately come from vague memories of watching Blade Runner years ago.
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The world is still filled with bits which both impact the story and colour it. Mercerism, empathy machines, kibble, the pride of living animals, and a destroyed Earth all feel vibrant.
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At one point, in a car, the relationship between two people changes drastically between one page and the next. I honestly thought I was missing pages. This character appears to know more - and has done more for their cause - than they possible could have given the start of the book. Was it all a lie? I guess so. But it felt a little like authorial mistake. It’s a short story, I suppose, gotta cut to the chase.
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The book is written in the third person perspective, but frequently gives the main character’s thoughts as a running commentory. “I” is used a lot in paragraphs. This is intersting because hearing a characters thoughts is often cited as the biggest perk for a first person book. Clearly it’s not a trick first person books can exclusively claim.
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Many times we see the main character flailing on the border of sanity and psycosis. In one particular part of the book this is done very, very well. (For more about this concept, I should re-read Shutter Island. I remember liking that.)
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There are troubling descriptions of women which betray the author’s sexism; they’re objectified and sexualised while simultaneously infantalised. It’s creepy and comes in contexts where we’re not hearing the characters’ thoughts: Philip was a gross man. A solid two or three percent of this book is describing women whilst never giving a description of any of the men.