Book Review: The Android's Dream

This weekend I read one of the early novels by John Scalzi, The Android's Dream, which is both a political satire, and an Adventure/Thriller story, wherein galactic war may be averted, but only if a specific breed of sheep, "The Android's Dream" (and yes, it is Electric Blue in colour).

The story follows a man called Harry Creek, who has the unique job of effectively delivering bad news to various alien cultures.  It's not a great job (and definitely makes me think of the film Up in the Air), but like George Clooney's character in that film, Harry is pretty darn good at what he does.

Then an old friend asks Harry for a favour, it seems that an alien species, The Nidu, are looking for a specific type of genetically modified sheep, and Harry needs to find it first.

The story bounces around through war story, political intrigue, slapstick comedy and even into artificial intelligence, and in my mind, has more in common with Douglas Adams than with Philip K. Dick (from whom the author clearly borrowed the title - which he states in the acknowledgements), and although it is not nearly as accomplished as Old Man's War - I definitely preferred it to Agent to the Stars - and to be honest, I quite liked Agent to the Stars.

Five Great Places to Start with Phillip K. Dick

Yesterday I was over at my BFF Mike’s blog (where he is slowly, but surely reviewing every novel that won a best novel Hugo award) and saw that he was talking about the classic Science Fiction novel The Man in the High Castle.

At the end of his review he stated that in regards to Phillip K. Dick

Your friendly neighbourhood Bookmonkey loaned me many PKD books in my early twenties.

He'd be glad to recommend some to you.

I am indeed a huge fan of Philip K. Dick - this guy's stories have influenced everything from The Matrix to Memento - So I figured today I should list five good places to start if you’d like to check out Phillip K. Dick (pictured left).

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said If you’re only going to read one of Phillip K Dick’s novels, let it be this one. The story is Pretty simple, imagine that tomorrow you woke up in an unfamiliar hotel room. You still have your wallet and cash but your ID is missing and even though everything looks the same, there is no record of you anywhere – not even your friends or family have any recollection of you. The main character of the story, Jason Taverner has exactly this happen, only in his old world he was a celebrity. This was the only Phillip K. Dick novel to be nominated for both a Nebula and a Hugo and it is totally worth it.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Simply put – this is the novel Blade Runner is based on – it has a few different turns from the film and is pretty straight-forward as far as most of his novels go. A personal favourite which looks at whether or not Robots deserve to be considered life forms of there own.

Dr. Bloodmoney

It’s post-apocalytic fun and features one of my upcoming Genre Characters of the week. Totally worth a view. After a nuclear holocaust we follow the lives of a number of people trying to pick up the pieces of the course of a decade; with mutants, marauders and astronauts, this story is incredibly cool.

Ubik I’m a huge fan of any story where the world appears to be going wrong and no rational explanation can be drawn for what is happening. This should not be your first Phillip K. Dick

book, but if you find you are liking his stuff, this one is a must read.

Adjustment Team

This one is actually a short story, but as there is an upcoming Matt Damon movie based on it (see the trailer here), I figured it would be a good place to start as well.

So there you have it, five great places to start exploring the works of Philip K. Dick.