Philip K. Dick's sci-fi novel Do androids dream with electric sheep? was published
in 1968 and quickly became a cult book, with many supporters and
not a few detractors, among them myself. Fourteen years after its publication,
its adaptation to the cinema with the title Blade
Runner multiplied the number of its supporters.
In another
post in this blog I mentioned that, in my opinion, the film is much better
than the novel. When I read the latter, I did not like it. The time has come to
explain why. This is the plot:
In a future world, in
the year 2019, the advance of technology makes it possible to build androids (replicants in the film), beings of appearance identical
to a human being, endowed with intelligence, but who have not been born in the
usual way; they have been built. This future society tries to keep replicants
segregated, so that they won’t mix with traditional humans. To achieve this, a
new profession is invented: the killer of replicants who try to pass themselves
off as humans. As soon as they detect a replicant doing this, the destroyer
pursues and kills the replicant in cold blood, without a trial.
The above summary can be applied almost equally
to the novel and to the film. So far, the argument is interesting, original and
attractive. Why then did I say that I did not like the novel, but did like the
movie?
