Philip K. Dick (1956)

2025 reads, 2/25:

“The existence of a majority logically implies a corresponding minority.”

It’s a pretty obvious statement, but a crucial one, as PKD demonstrates in his novella The Minority Report, first written in 1956. In a world where people are persecuted for their crimes before they are even committed, how does the commander of such a system react when he sees his own name come up?

One of this month’s collections on The Criterion Channel is Surveillance Cinema, which includes dystopian sci-fi classics like The Truman Show, Gattaca, and Minority Report, the last of which is obviously based on this story. I’ve never seen the movie, and because I usually like to read a book first, I figured I’d give this one a tackle.

“‘You’ve probably grasped the basic legalistic drawback to precrime methodology. We’re taking in individuals who have broken no law.’”

The concept of “precrime” is a novel idea for its time, but I really underestimated how much these themes of free will and predestination show up in other media. Reading this reminded me of the show Person of Interest, a television drama where a group of vigilantes stop crimes before they happen based on an artificially intelligent machine. However, this machine predicts that a person will be either a victim or a perpetrator of a crime (but cannot decipher which).

The Minority Report starts with a great but chilling concept, and PKD follows through with a great story. It’s written well, and short enough such that you can dive into some cyberpunk-esque and dystopian sci-fi without committing to a full-length novel.

“Perhaps he was trapped in a closed, meaningless time-circle with no motive and no beginning. In fact, he was almost ready to concede that he was the victim of a weary, neurotic fantasy, spawned by growing insecurity. Without a fight, he was willing to give himself up.”

#readingyear2025 #scifi #dystopia

by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky (1972)

2024 reads, 23/22:

“Over the pile of ancient trash, over the colorful rags and broken glass, drifts a tremor, a vibration, just like the hot air above a tin roof at noon; it floats over the mound and continues, cuts across our path right beside a marker, lingers over the road, waits for half a second—or am I just imagining that? —and slithers into the field, over the bushes, over the rotten fences, toward the old car graveyard.”

I acknowledge that recency bias may be talking here, but – did I just read one of my favorite science fiction books so far?

Science fiction is and has always been about humans in the face of progress, whether forward or backward. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? muses on what it means to be a human. Neuromancer toys with the concept of losing our humanity, and our world, to technology. The Three-Body Problem and its trilogy has humanity rallying together (and splitting apart) in the face of adversity. Even the Hitchhiker’s Guide series has humanity face the ultimate absurdity: itself.

Roadside Picnic continues this pattern of humanity facing itself, and does so extremely well. Short summary: in the wake of an alien visit, multiple “zones” are left around the surface of the earth. These zones are subject to unexplainable physics, rare artifacts, and dangers beyond our comprehension. Furthermore, these zones are illegal to enter. A subclass of criminals called “stalkers” sneak into these zones to retrieve precious objects that can be sold on the black market (and yes, this is the book that inspired Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker).

The premise seems simple, but remember, science fiction is about us. The novel starts ten years or so after “the Visit,” and humanity is no step closer to knowing anything about it – it’s just humans and the Zone. Instead of an alien invasion story, the Strugatskys weave together a novella with philosophical deliberations, fairy tales, and horrific alien technology.

“I lock myself in the stall, take out the flask, unscrew it, and attach myself to it like a leech. I’m sitting on the bench, my heart is empty, my head is empty, my soul is empty, gulping down the hard stuff like water. Alive. I got out. The Zone let me out. The damned hag. My lifeblood. Traitorous bitch. Alive. The novices can’t understand this. No one but a stalker can understand.”

The main character, stalker Red Schuhart, is in my opinion one of the greatest characters ever written. Outside of the Zone, with absolutely no care in the world, he is aloof and hot-headed, careless and an alcoholic. But his skills and concentration in the Zone are unmatched: you feel his focus narrow, his conniving nature, and know that he will stop at nothing to get through this mysterious area. As I write this, I can see how this book may have inspired Annihilation by VanderMeer.

What better way to show how insignificant we are than to have an entire story revolve around the aftermath of a short-lived alien visit. The ending is one of the most bittersweet, and I’ve been thinking about it since I’ve read it. This is a sci-fi classic, and it’s short enough such that I recommend it to anyone even remotely interested.

“Aren’t humans absurd? I suppose we like praise for its own sake. The way children like ice cream. It’s an inferiority complex, that’s what it is. Praise assuages our insecurities. And ridiculously so. How could I rise in my own opinion?”

#readingyear2024 #scifi #dystopia #book2screen #favorites

by Philip K. Dick (1968)

2024 reads, 16/22:

It’s hard not to picture Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, the main character of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by PDK, and the inspiration for Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie Blade Runner. But this isn’t a bad thing, especially since Blade Runner is my favorite movie. It’s also surprising I’ve only now gotten around to reading the source material.

“Future and past blurred; what he had already experienced and what he would eventually experience blended so that nothing remained but the moment.”

Lots of differences between the movie and the book, and the biggest of which that stood out to me was the large focus on religion in the book. The core religion in DADOES, Mercerism, ultimately aims to increase human empathy; this sounds great, but it has its flaws. For example, its followers must use a device called an “empathy box,” which connects multiple people simultaneously into a virtual collective suffering. I loved this double-edged sword take on religion – by basing it on human empathy, we are led to believe in its inherent “good.”

Animal imagery is also much more prevalent in the book. This futuristic society seems to not just categorize, but rank, different beings: replicants, animals (both real and ‘electric’), specials (or chickenheads), and humans. It’s not as simple as humans vs. replicants; there are layers, or tiers, to this society. Maybe it’s because of the background reading I did on religion before reading Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, but this societal structure reminded me of the great chain of being, a hierarchical structure of all life decreed by God (the perfect scapegoat). This all circles back to the dark underside of religion, adding another dimension to Mercerism.

“Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida.”

Based on how much I’ve mentioned the movie left out, you might think that this is a case of “the book is better than the movie” – and maybe, for most people, it is. But I just think they are two different pieces of art, trying to resonate with us in different ways. Reading this book got me thinking about adaptations in general, and what causes them to fail or succeed.

While they both accurately portray this concept of humanity and empathy, PKD does so by allowing us insight into the characters’ thoughts and feelings. The inner monologues of Deckard and John Isidore are all laid out. On the other hand, Ridley Scott chooses to use atmosphere and soundtrack. We read the characters’ faces, we feel Vangelis’ score pulsing throughout, pulling us in and widening our view on dystopia. We get a general sense of the time and mood, which is, in my opinion, also extremely effective.

After finally reading this book, I fully believe that Blade Runner and DADOES both get five stars, in their own way. If you like the book, give the movie a chance. If you like the movie, give the book a chance. I’m sure you’ll enjoy at least one of them.

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”

PS: The unnamed owl in the movie, is officially named “Scrappy” in the book…

#readingyear2024 #scifi #dystopia #book2screen #pkd #book2screen

by Phillip K. Dick (1977)

2024 reads, 15/22

Not really sure where to start with this one – Philip K. Dick (PDK for short), arguably one of the best science fiction writers of all time, has been on my to-read list for years. In fact, it’s surprising that I haven’t read anything by him yet, especially since Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the inspiration for my favorite movie, Blade Runner. But I digress – we’ll get to that review soon enough.

A Scanner Darkly is a dystopian sci-fi novel set in 1994 California, in an alternate timeline where America has lost the war on drugs. Dealers, users, and federal agents are all intertwined in one another’s lives, and the existence of “scramble suits,” a body suit that conceals one’s identity, only complicates matters. Bob Arctor is an undercover narcotics agent investigating users such as Jim Barris, Ernie Luckman, and Charles Freck, whose house is bugged with “scanners” for Arctor’s alter-ego to surveil.

“Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself.”

I’m slightly reminded of other counterculture novels, e.g., One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; any of the works of Kesey, Leary, and HST between the beats and the hippies. Barris even recites Leary’s catchphrase as a sign-off: “Turn on, tune out, and good-by.” But where those novels focus on the actual use or psychedelics of drugs, A Scanner Darkly focuses more on the consequences of repeated drug use.

The concept of the “scramble suit” is also intriguing; as readers, we know who Arctor and his alter ego are, but I was left wondering about the identities and motives of the other characters. How do they fit into this mess? What exactly is Arctor looking for? The idea of double lives is pervasive throughout this novel, both in a temporal and spatial sense, and adds to the haziness.

“There she was, stable and as if forever; then—nothing. Vanished like fire or air, an element of the earth back into the earth. To mix with the everyone-else people that never ceased to be. Poured out among them. The evaporated girl, he thought. Of transformation. That comes and goes as she will. And no one, nothing, can hold on to her.”

This book was amazing and heartbreaking at the same time, and made me immediately pick up my next PKD book. For anyone looking to get into PKD, or just wanting to read a science fiction classic, this is a great one to go with.

P.S. The movie did a great job capturing not just the confusing nature of the novel, but also remained pretty faithful to the book. Worth the watch!

#readingyear2024 #scifi #dystopia #wtf #pkd #book2screen

by William Gibson (1984)

2022 reads, 15/20:

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Everyone quotes that opening line, and for good reason – it’s extremely well-written, it evokes this constant mood of despair, and it sets the tone perfectly for the whole rest of the novel. Henry Case, a data thief, gets called upon to do a job for an unknown boss, undergoing surgery to get his ability to upload into cyberspace back after a previous employer crippled him.

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts . . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. . .”

Many criticize Gibson’s writing style, though I quite enjoyed it, and don’t think it’s as jarring as others make it out to be. Gibson works in short bursts, quickly switching from one scene to another (which makes sense sometimes, as this is how Case experiences things). But it’s not action-packed all of the time, as there are many atmospheric passages that describe both the real and virtual world that Case finds himself in.

That mood of despair I mentioned is an integral part of the cyberpunk genre. I find that many love to explore the ‘cyber,’ but the ‘punk’ usually gets left behind. Not in this novel – images of the grimy underworld and streets, contrasted with the uncomfortable endlessness of ‘the matrix,’ perfectly capture this dichotomy in cyberpunk.

“Cold steel odor. Ice caressed his spine. Lost, so small amid that dark, hands grown cold, body image fading down corridors of television sky. Voices. Then black fire found the branching tributaries of the nerves, pain beyond anything to which the name pain is given.”

If The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was the sci-fi book I wanted, then Neuromancer was the sci-fi book I needed, as it was probably one of my favorites this year. This seminal novel paved the way for other cyberpunk works – highly recommended.

#readingyear2022 #dystopia #favorites #physicallyowned #scifi

by Kurt Vonnegut (1952)

2022 reads, 6/20:

“What distinguishes man from the rest of animals is his ability to do artificial things,” said Paul. “To his greater glory, I say. And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.”

Player Piano chronicles the life of Paul Proteus, an upper-class engineer in a version of America after the third world war. While citizens were out fighting the war, engineers created automated machines and artificial intelligence to do all the daily jobs left behind, displacing the workers when they returned. The workers didn’t have many options when they returned, and many of them wanted to get their lives back, best symbolized when the character Ed Finnerty is seen manually playing a player piano, a piano which can automatically play itself.

I think this book gets a bad rap, but I get why. Being Vonnegut’s first published novel, it is often written off as ‘lengthy’ or ‘bloated,’ and the sarcasm/satire not as polished as his later novels. But it would be unfair to judge this book just because it wasn't full-on 'Vonnegut'; it was really great, especially the ending. It did seem to drag on in a few parts, especially during the Meadows segment, but for every part that seemed out of place, there was a passage later on that brought it all together. Some other notable highlights include Finnerty’s brashness, the barber’s monologue about war, and anything to do with the Ghost Shirt society, especially in the latter half of the book.

#readingyear2022 #dystopia #physicallyowned