I won't be losing any sleep over it

[vaneramos]

Helianthus tuberosus


Philip Dick must have had ADD. All the characters in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? act like they do, too. Conversations go like this.

"Instead of killing those other androids, I'm going to stop right here and kill you," he says.

"Wait, I'll get my laser out of my purse and kill you first," she says. "Oh forget it, I can never find anything in my purse. Please don't kill me."

"Prepare to die."

"Okay, but please do it quickly and painlessly."

"Forget it, I'm not going to kill you. I'll drop you off now. Is your car still where we left it?"

I'm paraphrasing, but not exaggerating.

It reminded me of every Steven Spielberg movie, where I want to scream, "People don't act that way! You're just making them do incomprehensibly stupid things so another catastrophe can happen." I walked out of The Lost World during the cliff-hanger.

I did read to the end to see if something would tie it together, let it all make sense. Instead I wonder, was it a joke? Apparently, not even super-intelligent androids can concentrate on one thing for five seconds.

It's one case where the movie, Blade Runner, is way better.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i read that years ago but don't recall such scatty characters! you make it sound so amusing. :)

the movie was great, yes. scary as heck, and dreary, but unforgettable. rutger hauer, sitting in the rain, dripping as his head droops down...

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

Philip Dick must have had ADD

...or maybe he's just a bad writer posing as an experimental one. (and yes, I did read several of his novels as a teenager, but have felt no desire whatsoever to re-read them as an adult.)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

The book really would have been quite amusing if I hadn't felt he was trying to make an important point.

I need to watch Blade Runner again. Unfortunately I never saw it on a wide screen. Some of those scenes are incredible.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

The premise of the story is fascinating. Unfortunately the characterization sucked.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Ha, that's my reaction, precisely. I felt the same way about the Indiana Jones movies and ET.

Unfortunately I was supposed to be watching The Lost World with my partner at the time. He never forgave me for walking out of the theatre that night.

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

I walked out of The Lost World during the cliff-hanger.

Bravo, my good man! Brav-o!

I run hot and cold with Spielberg. War of the Worlds was downright dreadful. I dragged imnotatfault and his then girlfriend with my boiz to see it, and they've been razzing me about it ever since. Michael and I, at the end when the inexplicably alive son shows up for the reunion, laughed our asses off. (Sorry if I spoiled that for you, but I don't think you care.) I am still fond of Poltergeist, though.

[kwangjse.livejournal.com]

I'm probably confused (nothing unusual there!) but wasn't Speilber's lastest suck ass movie, War of the Worlds, with Tom Cruise? Did he do The Lost World too, and did that suck bad. All I know is when the son showed up at the end of the movie after being obviously blown to smithereens earlier in the movie I almost died of embarassament for everybody involved with that movie.

Blade Runner is one of my all-time favorites. What great characters and images!

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Which version of Blade Runner are you familiar with, the original theatrical release or the director's cut? Or maybe both? I'm trying to figure out which one is better -- I've always heard the director's cut was better, but since I've never seen either one, I wonder if the director's cut is more for diehard fans only (like a lot of such things are).

anti-style and old SF

[hlee.livejournal.com]

Philip Dick must have had ADD.
You might want to have a look at the Dick and his visions section from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K_Dick

I avidly read pulp SF starting in the early 60's and liked many of Dick's short stories but not his novels. At the time Dick's prose was no worse and perhaps a even a bit better than most of his peers who wrote for SF mags. Truely awful stuff. But towards the end of the decade when New Wave/Speculative fiction writers arrived on the scene there were a lot of complaints that the new emphasis on style and more nuanced portrayals of characters threatened ruined the genre. At a guess, the importance of style was the most heatedly discussed topic for 5 or so years only to re-erupt when cyberpunk came along.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

What irritated me the most about ET, at that time, was the way impossible plot twists (i.e. ET being dead for a while, then coming back to life) were used to manipulate the emotions. Which is classic Spielberg, of course.

Schindler's List is a great movie though.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen WOTW, but I probably won't bother. I've never seen Poltergeist either. I thought Schindler's List was a great movie; it was the only Spielberg I liked.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen WOTW, but don't think I'll bother. I disliked most of the Spielberg movies I've seen.

Re: anti-style and old SF

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Welcome, and thanks for your comment. I had read the wikipedia entry on Dick a few weeks ago when I started researching the cyberpunk genre, but it was good to review it now that I've read the novel.

I'm writing a novel inspired by Lewis Carroll. The protagonist is a 12-year-old girl. But it is to take place in cyberspace. The original draft was written two years ago during National Novel Writing Month, but I realized I didn't know enough about the genre, or about computers for that matter, and it needed to go on the back burner for a while. Last month I resumed work on it, but I've hardly done any writing yet, mostly just research. I've read Neuromancer, Snow Crash and Do Androids Dream. My writing tag traces some of my progress so far, but this entry gives most of the background:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/vaneramos/385263.html

I'm fascinated with sci-fi, but most contemporary writing hasn't appealed to me, and you comment has given me some insight. I'll stick to LeGuin when I'm looking for real inspiration, but I'd be glad to find some other sci-fi writers of her calibre. I also liked Bellwether by Connie Willis, but haven't read any of her other books yet.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

My memory is foggy, so I asked djjo.

The two versions are quite different. The original has a voice-over narration, which was removed from the director's cut. A few things were added in, and the "happy ending" was eliminated.

Danny says the director's cut is hard to follow if you haven't seen the voice-over version; you have to pay very close attention to catch everything. The end of the director's cut is more in keeping with the tone of the rest of the movie. You might want to see the original first and, if you really like it, see the director's cut as well.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

I skimmed the wikipedia entry; I don't find a specific reference there to the hypothesis that was very popular for a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s: that Dick was schizophrenic or suffered from a multiple-personality-disorder-spectrum condition.

There's been a lot of debate about that, I think it's mostly debunked, but it's instructive as a way of thinking about the strengths and limitations of his work, and their characteristic themes and tropes.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia entries tend to be thorough in presenting criticisms and points of controversy. It would be interesting to see the article on Dick expanded. I'm sure there's a lot more to be said.

The Peculiar Ones

[hlee.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if Dick participated in New Worlds magazine's highly publicized write-a-story-on-acid competition. But drug use was often cited in evaluations of his work. Along with whatever "reason" may be ascribed to Dick's odd prose, there's a sense that the strangeness was fixable -by a good editor or by the author having a clearer state of mind. Even if the movies hadn't been made I think Dick's SF would be reprinted.

It's too bad that Cordwainer Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith)'s SF remains out of print. He pushed the boundaries of style far more than Dick and in a very idiosyncratic way that can't be duplicated. It's a language compounded of deliberately overwrought romanticisms and
doggerel poems that can't help but seem silly on occasion. With and because of that style Smith produced some of the most compelling SF ever written. The oddness of his style is not fixable and his texts remain out of print.

R A Lafferty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.A._Lafferty) is another example of a highly accomplished SF author's inimitable style being a hinderance to republication.