Before anything else, I want to point out that I came by this book (as most people, I believe, did) from the movie, which is one of my all-time favorites. Unlike other adaptations, "Blade Runner" and this book share a similar basic plotline and most characters, but change completely the themes in such way that I believe they can be seen as separate, equally excelent entities and I just can't resist comparing them.
The book tells the story of a post-apocalyptic (of course!) planet earth. Most human beings have run away to platenary colonies and on this planet the only remains are those those left behind for one reason or another. Only androids, the pillar of manual labor and the economy in the colonies, seek to enter Earth, looking for freedom. "Bounty-hunters" hired by the police have as their job to hunt and destroy them and Rick Deckard is one of them. A lot of plot elements were taken out of the story for the movie, in general the book is a much more enriched experience. Human beings all keep syntheticed animals (natural-born ones being long extinct) for social acceptance and as a show of "empathy", a big part of the population is made up of "chickenheads", men and women left retarded by the radiation, and there is a lot of talk about "Mercerism" a religion based on empathy and the shared consciousness of all living beings, based around an "empathy box" that temporarily merges all human minds connected.
The main difference between book and movie, is the way androids are presented. In the movie, "replicants" are 100% human in mind and body, but due to limitations in cell division cannot live more than 4 years. Their objective is on that is then easily identifiable: they want to live more. They are thus FAR more heroic in the movie. In the book, androids also cant live more than 4 years, but they don't care. The difference there is that while androids are totally human in body, their minds lack the natural empathic human response to external pain. They are driven by reason and, despite being able to showcase emotions, a love of pleasure and appreaciation to those around them, they lack the "natural", reflexive, uncontrolled aspect of it. The focus of the book, then, is not whether of not our life spans define us --as it kinda is in the movie --but rather what constitutes this empathy in individuals --particulary the irrational, uncontrollable part of it. We see androids that get close to it: they get jealous, they form bonds, they appreciate art. We also see sociopathic humans that get far from it and are capable of killing thinking creatures without remorse: the bounty hunters. Animals and mercerism become a crucial part of the themes (which is, probably, why they dont exist on the movie) the ability of selflessly helping another living being despite there being nothing to gain from it is, per Dick's point of view, a crucial part of human empathy.
There are a LOT of ideas in this book. The only real complaint I can make is that sometimes Dick stops description while on fast-paced dialogues and action scenes and since there are, also, a LOT of them, this can make things very confusing. Besides that, Dick is in general a step above from most other sci-fi writers in terms of plot, themes, characterization and description. Even when he falls short in the prose department, the scenes themselves that he is describing and the sheer amount of meaning they carry make them beautiful, especially the ending.
The movie has Roy Batty, probably one the best antagonists in all cinema and his simply breathtaking dying monologue (which was actually ab-libbed by the actor, so no points for Dick there). Roy also exists in the book and is also important, but he's nowhere near as memorable. The "Is Deckard a replicant?" is pushed much farther and the relationship between Rachel and Rick is more romantic and central to the plot. Plus, Rick isnt married at the beginning. Again, this is because the movie deals with themes of mortality and while they are great moments, they probably couldnt fit as well in the book. In the book Rick is much more human and he undergoes a lot of character development through his relationships with Rachel and Iran. Isidore functions as a deutaragonist, as an epitome of human empathy-negation of android rationality. The results of human empathy and its lack of logic (Rick not killing Rachel, Rick insisting on having an electric sheep once his real one dies so that people wont judge him wrong) and the use of logic over it (that freakin' scene where the androids torture the spider BY GOD) end with a work that is a celebration of the irrationality of being human, while accepting a lot of its defects. It portrays a decayed future that is doomed not to quick extionction but to slow decadence, but where humanity still remains in the struggles and moral questions of its inhabitants. Why were all those electric animals there? I have several theories. Maybe the Rosen Corp. did it, maybe they escaped. Or maybe, it seems to me Dick wants us to think, someone just needed to feel life was coming back, even if it was just a lie. That's another breathtaking thing the book analyzes: the sincerity of feelings even when reality may be fiction.
What else can I say? This was a flawed book sometimes, mainly because stuff happened so fast, but it is still amazing that so many ideas could be laid so barely on such a human way...and in so little pages! This was a great read and I definitively want to check out more things made by K. Dick.
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