I'm retarded and don't understand what I just read.

The Mercer shit got dropped from the movie and with old reason, it was a cool idea but didn't really tie in with a lot of the rest of the story.
Tbh I think the film really makes the entire "are Androids human" thing a big deal as it's not really a present theme in the book

Read Ubik or A Scanner Darkly for more mindfuckery

>>9789931
Does the movie simplify the android situation or maintain the ambiguity of it?

>>9790861
>>9789915

The movie treats androids entirely different than the book does, and Dick was not pleased with the few screenings he was shown.

In the book, he used androids as anti-humans, exploring the theme of humanity by juxtaposing it to an artificial counterpart. It's an old hat in SciFi, but Dick goes balls deep on metaphysical and speculative levels.

He stated in an interview (cinefantastique vol 12 no 5/6 - pic related) that he got the idea for some of the book during his research for The Man In The High Castle, going through old Nazi archives.

You'll get a good idea about what it's all about by reading his own words. The interiew is cited here:

http://wherenobloghasgonebefore.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-look-at-some-vintage-magazines-part-1.html

An equally recommendable read is his 1972 lecture "The Android and The Human" available in full here:

http://1999pkdweb.philipkdickfans.com/The%20Android%20and%20the%20Human.htm

>...an android means, as I said, to allow oneself to become a means, or to be pounded down, manipulated, made into a means without one’s consent—the results are the same. But you cannot turn a human into an android if that human is going to break laws every chance he gets. Androidization requires obedience. And, most of all, predictability. It is precisely when a given person’s response to any given situation can be predicted with scientific accuracy that the gates are open for the wholesale production of the android life form.

File: 1982 07-00 Cinefantastique V12N05-06 page 01.jpg (484KB, 1237x1600px) Image search: [Google]

484KB, 1237x1600px

>>9792315
Forgot pic...

>>9789915
>Who the fuck was Mercer? What the hell was that whole thing?

One of the central themes in most of Dicks work is empathy. It is explored extensively in DADOES. Through Deckard's dreams of his electic sheep. Through Trish's mutilation of a live spider. And through Mercerism (mercy, obviously).

The book presents a reality in which the boundaries between natural and artificial are dissolving. As much as the boundaries between good and evil. And Mercerism represents this duality perfectly: a religion relying on machinery to convince humans of their humanity. Brilliant satire if you ask me.

And the typical Dickian reality shifts (is deckard suddenly an android? does he become Mercer? Or does he discover that mercer is just another android?) primarily serve to illustrate this duality between real and fake, man / machine etc, but more importantly so, the blurred boundaries.

>>9789931
>The Mercer shit got dropped from the movie

That's basically what happened to every single Dick story that was turned into a film or television series. Film/TV uses whatever semi-fantastical setting he dreamed up, and then mistake that setting for the point of his work. His books aren't about their settings in anything more than a cursory way, though. They're meandering, semi-philosophical thought digressions and meditations. I enjoy them.

And I also laugh every single time a new movie/TV comes out - they never use anything but the surface elements of his work.

>>9792434
>they never use anything but the surface elements of his work.
That's because movies are pleb entrainment, anon

>>9792459
For the most part that's true, but I would consider Dick's works patrician entertainment either. Like I said, I enjoy them, but they're also pretty firmly middle-brow.

>>9789915
>bounty hunting andy could possibly be an andy himself
>endless possibilities to explore regarding the reaction and decisions of the characters to such an event, andy bounty hunter included
>nvm im just a dick lol
this book seems more like a large collection of ideas and concepts regarding humanism and the concept of life that are repeating dropped and picked up again. I still liked it but I wish it was larger and each of it's ideas were more fleshed out, mercerism especially.

Another thing that really bugs me is the "andys" living for only 2-4 years. Maybe it was trying to say something and I missed it but to me the book just undermined both it's own core message and it's own general plot.

>>9792890
How does the android's age undermine the message of the book?

>>9793486
Well I mean, you have these androids escaping mars looking for a better life killing their own masters, the ones particularly discussed in this book also elaborately planning how to stay hidden on earth. An entire police bureau is dedicated to finding, hunting, and retiring these androids.
But since they live so short, does it really even matter? A lot of the suspense I got from the novel before this was that if deckard failed to retire all the androids before they began to move they could seep into societal norms and become virtually undetectable, which is why they are found quickly. Without bounty hunters, an unknown percentage of people could be "false" androids, and seeing how the book dealt with the electric animals it seemed to be a fitting side-by-side comparison. It seems a bit pointless when even a successful andy escape is still only given 2 years.

>>9793844
Oh and I forgot Buster Friendly, who is according to that chickenhead, one of the most popular faces within the galaxy. And according to the androids, he too is an android. Something to me seemed inconsistent about that, even if it did come from an androids mouth.