Chapters 16 through 22

ok, so a very quick recap of the last part of the book. i'd like to have done them one by one, but i read them all together, so i cant really ask a lot of questions, as most of them were answered later in the book. still, there are some lingering things i would like to ponder...

so...rick meets with rachel at the hotel. she tells him about the androids. they have human-android sex, and then she wants rick to kill her. he can't. pris mutilates a spider, which makes Iz cry. buster friendly says mercer is a fake, which makes Iz cry more. rick and Iz meet. Rick and Iz seperate soon after. rick talks to mercer, and he tells him where pris is. he kills pris. rick pretends to be Iz, and roy falls for it. he kills irm. he kills roy. he talks to Iz again. Iz wants to move to the city. Rick offers for him to move into his building. Iz declines, out of fear. rachel kills the goat, and iran and rick are sad. rick leaves and goes to the california-seattle border, thinks he's mercer, and finds a toad. he brings the toad home, but it's fake. rick says he's mercer, and then takes a nap. iran buys fake stuff for the amphibion thing, and drinks some coffe. THE END.

so, first of all, i'd like to think about some unused things that were brought up earlier, but never came true. forst of all, the penfield hack that roy made that causes humans to be stressed out. why was that brought up, but not used? the same goes for the clam shaped android freezing for 6 seconds thing that rachael gave rick. either its just there to prove a point or something, or its just poor writing, which i dont want to accuse the dick-man of, but it might be it.

second, the anti-climactic ending. i thought it would end with him coming home, and going to sleep, ending symetrically, back where it started. then, i thought it would end like being john malkovich. with rick having to go up and down a hill forever and ever just like mercer, because he became mercer. then, he finds a toad, so i thought it would end with him using the toad to somehow bring mercerism back, or sell it to pay for a real sheep, or something. then, it ends with iran making coffe as rick takes a nap, and i was like "...huh?" i have no idea why dick chose to end it this way.

then to the title. do androids dream of electric sheep? my answer? yes and no. androids, in many ways are just like people. there are some who are empathetic, and some that are apathetic. so, some humans don't even dream of real sheep. basically, the point, as far as i can understand is that androids have their own sub-class, but can also join the same class as humans, just as humans can join the sub-class of androids. so, what im trying to get at is, do androids dream of real sheep?

last, but certainly not least, when, why, and how did rick fuse with mercer? and did he even really fuse with him? im not really sure. if anyone does know, or has an idea about it, please, tell me, but im completely clueless.

DADES Chapter 15

i dont really have any questions about this chapter that i can recall as of now. it was eventful, but pretty simple. i do, however, really like the line that mercer said to rick.

"you will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. it is the basic condition of life, to be required violate your own identity"

something about that is really interesting to me. it makes me think of the ever persistent gray area between good and evil.

so really quick...
isador has a quick thing, where roy wants to kill him. pris and irm say no, so they dont. rick tries to buy bunnies, but then is convinced that goats are better. he buys one for more money than he has. he brings it home, and shows iran. she is mad, and then she is happy. they fuse with mercer. he says some cool stuff to rick, and then he has to go to work. he calls rachel, and she falls for the ol' "come meet me at some sleazy motel, and we'll do...something"

i cant believe she fell for that one.

im skimming through the chapter for stuff to talk about, but although it was a very eventful chapter, there isnt much that hasn't already been said by Dick already in the chapter. it was pretty simple. i still liked it. its setting us up for buster friendly's announcement. i hope we find out what it is soon.

my 3 guesses

1) he's an android
2) war has broke out on mars, and it will result the same as WWT
3) earth will be destroyed, or bombed, or something, in order to cleanse the universe. all the humans left on earth are too far gone to be saved, and will be sacrificed to save the colonies. (like in batman begins. the think Liam Neeson tried to do...)

DADES Chapter 13 + 14

Ok, so this chapter introduced two new characters. we get to know the other two remaining androids from the ship, naped Irmgard and Roy. they come in to meet pris, while isador comes over to make dinner. pris comments that he should save it for someone worth it, or something like that. my guess is that she's just saying that the food is no good for an android. she starts crying, which shows that either she has human aspects, or she was programmed to cry in moments of fear. still, fear is sort of an emotion, so it doesnt make sense.

there is a funny conversation between pris and isador about sci fi novels and magazines, and how "theyre not always right." that seems funny to me, because it seemed that dick predicted his books inacuracy before it came to be. the double irony of it all is that some aspects of the novel seem to be happening in real life. roy and irm come in, and meet isador. they explain that they know about luba, polokov, and garland, along with two other androids killed by rick and dave before the novel began. the thing that puzzles me is that rachel is an android, but she isnt in this group. so is crams, it seems. to be even more confusing, pris first said she was rachel, way back when we first met her. all very confusing.

i thought that the penfield stress thing was cool. i cant wait until they use it. and just a little prediction, i think that one of the androids is going to betray the other two. my evidence? it seems that the line "if he was an android, he'd turn us in at about ten in the morning" is foreshadowing events to come. since the rest of them are androids, someone might be woken up by rick or phil tomorrow morning. however, the android turning them in might get retired themselves. either way, i think that would be a cool way for rick and isador to finally meet. maybe, one of the androids will turn themselves and their friends in, but then turn on their penfield switcheroo thingy, and capture rick and phil. thats my prediction for now.

DADES Chapter 12

in this chapter, we learn that phil resch is not an android, but once again, the fact that we question it is enough to say that they are too similar to easily discern. after phil learns that he is not an android, he noticeably calms down, and acts more confident.

luba luft tries to mess with phil, accusing him of being an android and such. i wonder how many escape androids know that they are androids, and how many think theyre human. and on that note, i would also like to know how many there really were. if the police office was really "crawling" with androids, then there must be many of them.

and now to the paintings. the first one, "the scream." screaming is a human emotion, but the figure is alone and scared, like an android. the vast, soundless bridge is a representation of human emotion, or at least the emotion of the painter. he feels scared, and alone. alone because he is scared, or scared because he is alone, we don't know. it can compare to rick, because he feels alone. talking to his wife is like talking to a brick wall, and isador literally does talk to one. i cant really discern what the other painting represents. all i can figure is that the girl in the painting is awkward, and trying to fit in, just like luba luft.

the other interesting fact that continues to appear is rick's attraction to androids. not much more can be said that hasn't been said about previous chapters, but i still predict that he is going to leave iran for rachel.

DADES Chapters 10 and 11

i just finished reading, and, wow. a lot happened. crams brought rick to the new police dept., and he met officer garland, and bounty hunter, phil resch. garland turns out to be an android, and on rick's list. phil is also an android, but doesnt know it. phil kills garland, and rick covers up so phil doesnt find out he is also an android. phil then sneaks out rick, and they get in the hovercar to kill luft. phil suspects that he is an android, and rick tries to calm him down. they discuss phils pet squirrel, and then the chapter ends.

the smallest of issues i would like to ponder is why this was two chapters. they seem to flow naturally together. chapter 10 ends kinda abruptly, and 11 picks up mid conversation just where 10 left off. im sure it means nothing, but its interesting to ask why.

it seems that there is another precinct devoted entirely to androids. virtually all of my predictions from last chapter were shut down, and although a lot happened, it was all pretty simple, but still not what you would expect. i do not think that rick is an android, but i do think that PKD made the suggestion that he is one is important. it suggests that there isnt much different between andys and humans. in chapter 11, phil notes that he loves his pet squirrel. LOVES. now, if he truly does love buffy the squirrel, then maybe his model of andys can feel love. or, his model was programmed naturally to adapt to its surroundings, and if everyone else loves animals, he should too.

and if androids are just like humans, then that means that rick is just a mere killer. i find it kinda funny, and ironic that mercerism says to kill the killers. if you kill someone who is unjust, arent you a killer yourself? sure, that person was bad, and they had it coming to them, but you are still a killer. this raises the issue of the death penalty. is killing of bad people just?

while searching around for the picture at the bottom of the page, i found an interesting looking PKD blog. its called "Total (Phillip K.) Dick-Head," and yeah, its a pun. it looks pretty interesting, and has a lot of PKD news and stuff, if youre interested. the name alone caught my eye.

Click Here! to link to the blog

DADES Chapter 9

first of all, i want to apologize to anyone who is forced to read all these ramblings. second of all, i would like to apologize for doing it late. i started too late, and ended up writing waaay too much about it, ending up finishing almost an hour late.

Ok. just finished reading, and wow. this was by far the best chapter of the book so far. things ar really heating up.

So, at the beginning, rick goes to the opera to watch Luba Luft perform, and later give her the empathy test. he then goes to her dressing room, and gives her the test. it seems that she has an idea of what the VK test is, and is tricking Rick. my evidence for this was that she answered every question with an odd response, all dodging the question. this way, the test wouldnt be able to acurately gauge her reaction. the best comparison i could make is to say that it is a kin to answering every question on a polygraph test with "maybe."

after a few questions that she seems to skew into seeming sexist or obscene, she comes up with an excuse to stop taking the test. she calls the cops on him, saying that he is a pervert, asking her obscene questions. the officer, named crams, then takes him away to the hall of justice. rick swears that it was on one street, and he goes there for work every day. Crams, on the other hand, says that it is on another street. rick, who has now been captured by the androids, hypothesizes that they are all working together in some sort of way. he admits that he may die soon, and decides just not to resist, and, from what i got, he's tust going to sit back, and watch things play out, until he has to take action.

several times in the chapter, both Luft and Crams suggest that Rick is an android. early in the novel i was thinking that that was going to be the big "sixth sense" type reveal at the end of the novel. that Rick is really an android sent out to either A) kill all the other androids, and once he did, he would be terminated by his supervisors, or B) he was one of the wide population of androids, who was sent to kill off the remainder of the human population, who are resisting the robot takeover.

both seem kinda outlandish, but i think at this point still early in the novel, they are both still possible, but unlikely. i like that they pointed out that Rick could be an android, who killed the former Rick, and is now running around in his name. that is also a possibility. something that popped into my head as i was writing, and i thought "what if Rick didn't actually win the duel with pokolov?" what if, the rick we've been following in chapters 1 through 8 was a human, but at the moment that he dueled with pokolov, he died. pokolov won. some time later, days, weeks , or even months later, the rosens made a new rick, and programmed his memory so that he killed pokolov, and set the android out to go after Luft. if this is true, which i have no real expectation that it will be, then, maybe Crams will take him to the androids headquarters of sorts, and there waiting for him, is the leader of the renegade andys, max pokolov. he then explains to them that the real rick is dead, and he is really just a replication of the true rick. once again, i doubt that this will ever happen, but i think it would be cool if it did.

as to where rick is being taken, i have no idea. he might just be taken to his death, but i like the idea that he is being escorted to the android HQ, where they will try and find out how much he and his men know about them, and use it to their advantage.

another idea that i like, but i cannot take credit for, is the one that BeBe proposed, that rick is being set up by bryant, and the higer ups in the police dept. this could mean that they are actually androids, trying to protect their fellow andys, and trying to get rid of rick, making it look like an accident, or it could mean that the andys bribed the police to let them dispose of rick. maybe, it was a sort of favor for them, in the first place. maybe rick knew too much about the androids, or the government's corruption, or something. at some point, he found out something that seemed small, but was a very important detail that he couldnt be let to know. they had to kill him to keep him from telling anyone else. maybe it was the fact that rachael rosen was an android. i dont really know. now that i think about it, pokolov could have been sent BY THE POLICE TO KILL RICK in the first place, but when that didnt work, Crams was the alternate choice to dispose of him. now that i think about it, thats the theory that i want to go with. RICK KNOWS SOMETHING THE POLICE, THE ROSENS, OR THE GOVERNMENT DOESNT WANT HIM TO KNOW, AND THEY SENT POLOKOV TO DISPOSE OF HIM. WHEN THAT DIDNT WORK, THEY GOT CRAMS TO FINISH THE JOB THAT POKOLOV FAILED AT. HE IS TAKING HIM TO BE KILLED NOW.

ok, i need to stop coming up with all these crazy theories, before my blog post becomes longer than the actual chapter.

Dades Chapter 8

Chapter 8 was fairly short, but it was very eventful. Rick returned from Seattle, and was given the assignment of hunting down Max Polokov. A Soviet police officer is sent to observe and assist rick on his hunt for Polokov. Rick goes on without him, and arrives at polokov's apartment. there is nothing there, other than kipple. we then learn, a minor detail, that kipple is a word that seems to be invented by, or at least used by, butser friendly, rather than just john isador. he leaves the apartment, and meets with the so called soviet police officer, but before they meet, he gets a call from rachel. rachel suggest that she come along with him on his android hunt, but he declines. they converse about a new laser the man has, until Rick finds out through odd dialog, that this man is actually Polokov, the android that he was hunting. Rick retires him, and calls his wife with the good news. Iran is in her self accusatory depression, and is not at all interested in what rick has to say. rick considers leaving her, as he should have 2 years ago, and considers Rachel, which confuses me. he says goodbye, and then moves on to hunting the next android.

first of all, the line "Youre not polokov, you're Kadalyi" is by far the most confusing line of the chapter. it could mean many things.

the most cut and dry explanation is that dick was trying to convey that Rick was very nervous, and he mixed up his words. this could be a frivolous detail, or it could mean something. it could be comparing Rick Deckard to the seemingly polar opposite John Isador, by showing a character trait that they have in common, or it could be making note of rick's human aspect of nervousness. androids are programmed to never be nervous. they are the perfect human, so they dont get nervous. every word from their mouth is designed to flow elegantly out their replicated mouth. humans, on the other hand, are not perfect, and they mix up words like rick does. its a very small and seemingly meaningless line that very well could mean very much. another thing that it could be showing is ricks cunning. he is trying to test Max, by confusing him. he's trying to trip him up, or something. im really not sure.

the other detail i picked up as interesting was the fact that rick considered rachel, an android, romantically. this suggests that a human can have a romantic relationship with an android. it also makes me think of how old rick is, because rachel is only 18, i belive. and, since she's an android, does it even matter? its very strange. she has a personality, and she seems to have thoughts of her own. she's just a robot. very strange.

Being John Malkovich

Being John Malkovich is one of those middle of the road movies where i can't really say its a great movie, but i can recommend people to watch it. its not good, or bad, but its another pretty good unconventional SF movie. ive only seen it once, but ive recently read that it was heavily influenced by the Phillip K. Dick Book "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch"

Being John Malkovich is a movie about an artsy-fartsy puppeteer who is looking for work. he lands a job at a filing company located on the 7 and a half floor of a building. there, he finds a portal into actor John Malkovich's brain. he then begins selling tickets into his brain for $200 a pop. its a good laugh, and an interesting concept, but towards the end, it gets too dramatic, sad, and dark for me to say i really liked it. Like Donnie Darko, its a movie that doesnt know its genre, But unlike Donnie Darko, its not really a good thing. still, its an ok movie that i dont really regret watching.

oh, and ignore the first few seconds of the youtube video. its just some weird thing that was on the thing...

DADES Chapter 7

This was another John-Centric Chapter. he goes to work, and picks up a diseased cat to bring to the vet. it dies on the way there. he goes to work, and his boss suddenly starts to act condescendingly towards him. he calls him a chickenhead, which he never did before, and made him perform tasks he was incapable of. he made him call the owner of the cat, and give his wife the bad news. Isador is bad with talking to strangers, but he does surprisingly well. the wife decides to order a replica of the cat so the husband wont get upset. Isador gets nervous, and hands the phone over to his fellow coworker. he finishes up the call, and then tells John to call the company and order an ersatz replica. he tells him not to give them the body, and to be firm with them.

The chapter was pretty boring, with the exception of two things i think need to be looked into. the first one was Buster Friendly's god-like status. he seemingly never sleeps, and he has two different programs going on live, at the same time. although J.R.'s "honorable" boss suggests that he has a godlike status similar to Wilbur Mercer, I believe that Buster, along with his "friendly friends" are all androids. im not quite sure if they are some of the 6, but i am almost certain that they are androids. it makes sense for a robot to challenge mercerism, and the empathy box. they want them out of the picture, because they create a possibility to expose them of the apathetic androids that they are. they have no empathy, so the empathy box has no effect on them. plus, buster appears to be rich, and in that case, why would he stay on earth with such a high risk of becoming a special? it seems that other than financially, the only other reason anyone stays on earth willingly is to keep some kind of Attatchment to Mercerism, which Friendly does not believe in anyways.

The other interesting point of the chapter that I picked up was when Isador was the only one effected by the death of the animal. this could mean 1 of two things.

1) the majority of society on earth is an android. in the movie "The Matrix" there were real people in the matrix, but there were also programs, made to keep their society moving along the way those in control wanted it to. I think that it might be similar to that. there are humans in earth, but there are a lot of androids send out by the government working with the Rosen Association, in order to keep the humans in line.

or...

2) Specials have this "heightened sense of empathy" of sorts. maybe, when they degenrate to specials, they loose their some of mental capabilities and/or senses, in exchange for being more empathetic. maybe im reading too much into one little line, but i think there is some importance to it.

as i was typing, i remembered one minor detail that might also be important, and that was the fact that the dust hinders EVERYONE'S abilities in some way or another. Isador's boss is becoming blind due to the dust.

all very confusing, but only time will tell if any of it can have sense mad of it.

Donnie Darko

I chose to put a trailer for a somewhat SF-esque movie from 2001, called Donnie Darko.

Donnie Darko is probably my favorite Sci-Fi movies of all time, and one of my favorite movies of all time. Its not a conventional Sci-Fi movie, in that it does not take place in the future, and it doesn’t really have any futuristic technology, but the ideas in it are very strong, and are similar to that of many SF movies. It takes Place in the late 1980’s, and it is about a crazy teenage boy named Donnie Darko. He wakes up in the middle of the night, and is oddly drawn to a man in a bunny suit (yes, I know it sounds weird, but just stay with me) who tells him the world is going to end soon. Donnie then must find out why, and how he can stop it. The film explores destiny, Time Travel, psychology, the spectrum of human emotion, freedom of speech Vs. family values, and a ton of other things. I encourage everyone to watch this movie, if you like the Science Fiction/Psychological Thriller/Dark comedy genre.