Book Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

by Philip K. Dick. 1968. 244 p.

This novel about bounty hunter stalking fugitive androids was, as most people know, the basis for Blade Runner, one of the best science fiction movies yet made. Thus it is difficult to approach Dick's creation on its own terms, to read it without picturing the sets and actors from Ridley Scott’s film. While the book is not, perhaps, as brilliant as its more famous progeny, it is nevertheless a work of substance and can stand on its own.

After some future nuclear war, the Earth is covered in radioactive dust, a shadow of its former self. Most survivors have fled to colonies on other planets. Those who are too sick or too stubborn to leave huddle together in crumbling cities that are largely empty. The widespread extinction of natural life has produced a religion called Mercerism that focuses on empathy. Adherents are urged to own and care for an ordinary animal. Due to their rarity, however, such creatures are enormously expensive. This in turn has led to a shady market in artificial animals which convincingly simulate the real thing. What is more, the production of artificial humans, organic androids, has reached unprecedented levels of sophistication. These short-lived beings are used on the colony worlds, largely as slaves, but are forbidden on Earth. Rick Deckard ‘retires’ androids who do escape there, but the latest models are very difficult to detect. When the senior bounty hunter in his region is seriously injured, Deckard is called into action against a group of these dangerous renegades.

As is always the case in Dick’s stories, things are not what they seem. Multiple challenges to self-identity and objective reality arise. Deckard is confronted by questions about the morality of his actions and whether he himself is sane, or even human. Potentially anything in his world is fake, and just what is the difference between fake and real? For that matter what qualities define the genuine human? And what is the point of struggling on in a disintegrating world? These are all profound questions, but Dick spins them into an engaging story, albeit a disorienting one.

He also introduces us to J. R. Isidore, a rather pathetic driver (for a fake veterinarian service) whose mental faculties have deteriorated due to fallout. Isidore must go through his own spiritual crises, first in his job, then when he meets androids, and then when Mercerism is declared a fraud. While Dick stresses the fact that Wilbur Mercer is not a saviour figure, there are points of contact between Mercerism and Christianity. The description of Mercer’s cyclical martyrdom and rebirth evokes Christ’s descent into Hell and the stations of the cross.

The androids seek to destroy what they see as fraudulent human claims to empathy, claims that exclude them from being true persons. As part of this effort they try, successfully, to discredit the process by which adherents psychically identify with Mercer. While this whole plotline could easily have led into a banal lesson on inclusiveness and the evils of intolerant religion, Dick takes it in a more interesting direction. He shows that the androids really do lack empathy, and are in human terms sociopaths. He also turns the indictment of Mercerism around: it is revealed as being phony but true at the same time. Mercer continues have power, even though the compassionless androids cannot understand why. Indeed, Mercer’s ignoble, obscure origins are in fact treated as a sign of deeper authenticity, since, in Dick’s theology, genuine transcendence manifests itself among the trash and the outcasts, amidst the lowly and the weak.

In this part of the story one can perhaps hear echoes of Dick’s real-life response when a friend told him that Christ was a fraud. Dick replied that even if this was the case, it made no difference. He believed in Him anyway. This seems confused and irrational, but in this novel we might be able to glimpse what he meant. It can be seen as a statement of faith, from a highly paranoid artist, that behind all the falsehood and deception that exist in the world there is still, somewhere, a life-giving Truth worth seeking.

4 out of 5

Book review: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

by Philip K. Dick. 1964. 230 p.

“I’m inclined, as you can see, to be somewhat sympathetic to the Early- and Neo-Christian point of view, such as Anne holds. It assists in explaining a great deal.” – (p. 193)

Barney Mayerson is a precog in the Pre-Fash department of Perky Pat Layouts. His job is to foresee which styles of clothing and housewares will become popular. Leo Bulero, his boss, is chairman of the company, which manufactures doll-sized goods. His wealth and power, however, are made possible by the illegal side of his operation: the production and distribution of Can-D. The drug causes users to hallucinate themselves as living in the idealized bodies and worlds represented by the dolls and dollhouses. Most of the miserable drafted colonists living on Mars use the drug habitually to escape their bleak lives. For the masses, life on over-heated, over-crowded planet Earth is not much better. Still, for the wealthy like Bulero, there are satellite playgrounds, Antarctic resorts and clinics that can artificially evolve their customers.

But now something unexpected has happened: a ship from the Proxima system has crash-landed on Pluto. It carries the eccentrically brilliant businessman Palmer Eldritch, returned from his decade-long round trip. He brings with him an alien lichen, which he uses to start manufacturing his own drug: Chew-Z. The product’s motto? “God promises eternal life. We can deliver it.” Bulero and Mayerson must act quickly, to counter this new competition. But is Eldritch really Eldritch? Has something alien returned in his stead? Has something demonic taken possession of him? And just where does Chew-Z take its users? Bulero begins to realize that his private war is not simply about commercial rivalry. At stake is the freedom of humanity.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a disorienting book, and, as is so often the case with Dick, it can be hard to tell what it all means. One senses that the author himself is unsure at times, as the characters formulate and discard explanations of events. This is partly explained by the fact that Palmer Eldritch was based on a disturbing vision Dick himself had, one he did not understand. What is clear is that the book is saturated with religious symbolism and exhibits a fascination with theological concepts (this fascination is hinted at in Dick’s earlier work and grew in later novels.) Two important themes are transubstantiation and the Fall, so we find characters using technical philosophical language contrasting ‘accidents’ with ‘essence,’ and debating original sin, along with quoting Thomas a Kempis.

Dick can be viewed as a speculative theologian, forever trying out different theories to see how they fit his experiences. (Gabriel McKee's book on Dick's religious thought, Pink Beams of Light From the God In the Gutter, is a very helpful resource to those seeking more background information.) And while he can wander off into very strange territory, in the end he usually returns to some sort of recognizably Christian theology, albeit employed in unusual ways. Despite his Gnostic leanings, Dick here also backs away from strict good-versus-evil dualism, seeking to understand how all things, even Palmer Eldritch, could spring from God, or work together for good. This compassion and speculation make Three Stigmata a highly thought-provoking read.

3.5 out of 5

Mini-mini reviews

Black Snake Moan - Heavily concerned with morality and religion, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the graphic sex, violence and cussin'. I think it was trying to say something subversive (subversive to modern culture, that is) about how we need to be freed from ourselves in order to be saved.

"Murder in the Flying Vatican" - An enjoyable novella by Albert E. Cowdrey, found in the August issue of The Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy. It's a murder mystery, set aboard an orbital monastery which is dedicated to a mish-mash of Eastern faiths. Other religions make cameo appearances. Some clever observations. It is set in a future time in which the United States is mostly a blasted desert, and 'The Christian Era' is viewed as ancient history.

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection contains at least three interesting religiously-themed stories: "A Case of Consilience" by Ken MacLeod, "Deus ex homine" by Hannu Rajaniemi, and "Angel of Light" by Joe Haldeman. I've discussed the first story here already. The second concerns people who can attain a sort of godhood when their personal technology runs out of control. Of course these new gods are immensely dangerous to everyone else, and must be stopped. The story seems to be asking the question: "Is divinity simply a matter of power, or is it some moral quality?" The third is about a religious man living in a future enclave of "Chrislam," who finds an old science fiction magazine. I seem to recall Arthur C. Clarke speculating about "Chrislam" as well. It doesn't strike me as very plausible, but who knows. The collection also contains Gene Wolfe's "Comber," and a story by Ian MacDonald entitled "Little Goddess," which I didn't read.

Storm Front, by Jim Butcher: Harry Potter meets The Maltese Falcon. Harry Dresden, private dick, undergoes all the trials and tribulations a film noir hero must, except in this case he's a wizard, too. Very entertaining. I recall reading an article somewhere about how 'film noir'-style detective stories are essentially about a lone existentialist hero making moral choices in an amoral world where authority and society can't be trusted. There's a lot to that interpretation, actually, and it comes through in this book. It makes sense to me that later volumes in the series portray a friendly Christian as a supporting character, as Mir reports, because in this book at least Butcher is very much concerned with morality. I think he'd be somewhat sympathetic to traditional Christian ethics.

Nine Parts of Desire, by Geraldine Brooks: A disturbing and educational look into the worlds of Muslim women. All the more disturbing because Brooks tries hard to be even-handed and show both sides of the story.

Philip K. Dick on JWs

"In one interview, Dick discusses an account of Jehovah's Witnesses in one concentration camp who, as part of the camp bureaucracy, typed up lists of people who were to be killed each day:

This is the essence of the unhuman... These Jehovah's Witnesses knew the situation; they knew that they and other people were going to be gassed. And yet they were typing lists, and emptying wastebaskets, whatever, as long as it didn't break some damn ordinance in the Bible like "Thou shalt not salute the flag." They'd go to their deaths rather than salute the flag, and yet they'd type up and carry lists of people who were to be exterminated!"

Pink Beams of Light From the God in the Gutter, p. 17. The Dick quote is from Philip K. Dick: The Dream Connection, by D. Scott Apel.

Hmm. He has a point, but I think it was a bit more complicated that he thought. For one thing, I don't think JWs (or Bibelforscher) were gassed as a matter of course. I thought that those who were put in the camps were just starved and/or worked to death, unless they agreed to sign a paper rejecting their subversive beliefs and acknowledging the Fuhrer's supremacy.

When my teenaged refugee father stopped to rest in an evacuated concentration camp, he found prisoner JWs serving tea and doing other chores. An officer (I don't know if he was just Wehrmacht, or SS) explained that the JWs were used in this role because they were totally non-violent and thus trusted. All the other inmates had been evacuated* but they got to stay. My father was impressed. I think by that time he had had his fill of war, of both the Nazi and Communist variety.

*Because, you know, the Nazis just had to kill as many people as they could before they went down in defeat.