Blade Runner

The book turned out to be way better than I have expected. As an avid reader, and one inclined towards science fiction in its different subdivisions, I approached Dick's novel as a postmodern work, and therefore with an open mind duly prepared for anything bizarre, unexpected, or hard to swallow. Dick's prose, however, proved to be accessible, direct, and even plain. Although he had coined a number of words like "kipple" the normalization of their use was so smooth, thus allowing the reader to guess their meaning at first sight. Instead of seeking the confusing paths of most postmodern works, Dick chose a realistic portrayal of his characters, and a levelheaded presentation of the dystopian universe they inhabit. At the same time, he had managed to infiltrate both the social and philosophical dimensions by means of a plot based on constant critical questioning of the fundamental values which constitute humanity, empathy, and social strata.The novel is strangely moving given the fact that it portrays the artificial lives of androids in parallel with the conflicted existence of Rick Deckard, its central character and a bounty hunter unleashed by the police to end the threat of humanoid infiltration on earth. Although the Nexus 6 variation, after which Deckard goes in order to secure his bounty, are technically machines, they are also depicted in a manner that blurs this fact and induces the reader to question it, to consider that maybe, just maybe, they are not just machines. Suffice to say that Roy Batty had let out a tremendous groan of anguish when his wife was retired. If the androids could not experience empathy, as stated by the human characters who hunted them in the novel, what is the explanation of that?Furthermore, the human characters in the book are the ones who lead the most artificial lives. Between mood organs and empathy boxes, it appears that humanity's capacity to experience humane feelings and sensations had shrunk and dwindled to the need of using technology and sophisticated hardware. Even the most intimate of relationships, that is to say the loving bond between husband and wife, was carried on via the intermediary of pets be it genuine or electric. This persisted to the very end with Iran's exaggerated concern for an electric toad as an unnatural means to care for her husband. The latter's obsession with pets from beginning to end, reflecting as well the fixation of humanity itself, conveys the idea that somewhere down the line of World War Terminal, it is Man who who had lost his humanity.The surprising piece of news regarding Mercer and Buster friendly, the revelation that the former is a fraud while the latter is an Android suggests that the truth of Deckard's world is way larger than the 24 hours of his life which constitutes the plot. The blind execution of orders required of all bounty hunters, the inhumanity of human beings, the tinge of humanity in androids, the lies and misinformation circulated in regard to them, the excessive humanity of some humanoids like Rachel and Luba Luft with their artistic inclinations and reactionary impulses, the existence of corporations run by Androids all suggest an ongoing secret war between human beings and androids.In short, the book is amazing. It is simply overflowing in brilliant ideas, and open to quite a number of interpretations and different veins of analysis. It presents the fluctuating trait of time in an extremely interesting manner. The single day it portrays in the life of its central character with no significant use of either flashbacks or flashforwards insists on the fact that the concept of time is relative. After all when you put down the novel, you experience, just like Rick Deckard, the sensation that it has covered ages instead of events that took place in just a few hours.