theinfamousj reviewed on 12/15/2011 + 29 more book reviews

From http://theinfamousj.livejournal.com/438647.html

I love, love, love, love dystopian fiction. This book title keeps being suggested time and time again, especially due to its similarity to The Lathe of Heaven.

Before I review the book, I just wanted to ask what, in Mercer's name, is up with the anti-Oregon hatred? The books I've been reading lately seem to be full of it. The Lathe of Heaven keeps having Oregon be the only place that is bombed and destroyed and then in this book Oregon is listed as a vast wasteland where only those who are suicidal should go.

That said, this book is about a post-apocalyptic world filled with radiactive dust that alters mental states and reproductive capacity. Most people have emigrated to Mars or other worlds where they are given android slaves to do their bidding. These androids look and act remarkably human, all of which is market driven according to the Rosen Corporation who produces them.

It is implied that androids who hurt {hurt? kill?} humans and then return to Earth are to be terminated and apparently this happens with such regularity that most police forces have a position called a bounty hunter just for doing this sort of work. Enter the protagonist - Rick Deckard - who is one such bounty hunter.

This is the story of Deckard's internal and external struggle to terminate increasingly more human-seeming androids. It is the story of his struggle with the basic human desire to anthropomorphize anything that vaguely resembles us, as well as extend empathic feelings toward that which we have anthropomorphized. It is the struggle for human contact in a vacuous world {John Isidore's story}. It is a struggle to find reasons to live and be joyous in a post-apocalyptic world. It is a struggle to keep going day-to-day while living with almost crippling depression. It is a story of the struggle to make it through a marriage that has survived on momentum alone.

It is not a story about sex, though there is a short sex scene with Rachael Rosen who is more than she seems. Also, it is not a story about dialogue as all the dialogue seems clipped or to be in a form of code or short hand which the reader is never given the tools to decode. And to that end, I have docked 2 stars from this book for it is a story mostly told in this clipped dialogue.

A better book that explores these themes would be I, Robot.

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