Has anybody readDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (AKA:Bla

[Starbuck]

Has anybody ever read, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
If anybody, what is your opinion on the novel?

I just picked up the book the other day. Never read any of Philip K. Dick's books before. Since Blade Runner was based of the book, I decided to read it.

[HB3]

Not one of his best.

Try

The 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Valis
Radio Free Albemuth
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

or the breakthrough

The Man in the High Castle

[Starbuck]

Thanks for the input HB3,
I've heard nothing but praise for
The Man in the High Castle.
Checked for it, but Barnes & Noble didn't have it.

[HB3]

Those others are all good for various reasons. Palmer Eldritch gets props for being the quintessential Dickian mind****. Valis is a paranoid classic written after what was either a psychotic break or contact with the divine.

If you're interested in him in as a personality, get the latest biography, I am Alive and You are Dead. It's excellent.

[Starbuck]

I'll look into the biography and his other works.
Thanks again HB3

[Lord Moon]

Scanner Darkly is good...

Ubiq ..which was selected by Time magazine as one of 100 greatest American novels..

I still have a ton of his paperbacks in boxes somewhere in my house....

But lots of others that I can't remember the titles to at this point...

[Subbacultcha]

I am glad someone brought the movie "Blade Runner," well, at least indirectly.

My question to anyone is:

Why is that movie considered a classic?

I have watched that movie three times, and I just don't understand why people rave about it, calling it an all time classic sci-fi.

[Jon-Marcus]

Starbuck,
Yes, I read the book, and have the movie on vhs. Loved 'em both. Books are always better, at least to me. Although it's not by Mr. Dick, Bladerunner II: the Edge of Human If a great followup and helps tie the book and movie threads together. I recomend it.

Subba, I sorta agree with you. I wouldn't call Bladerunner a "classic" per say. But a "cult classic", yes. There are two versions; one with voice-over by Harrison Ford ( my preference) and one without which a lot of people found hard to follow. Heck there really isn't much dialoge in the movie.

[HB3]

Why it's a classic....

Some individual elements

Trumbull's special effects
Vangelis' classic score
Obsessive set design implemented by Ridley Scott
Classic performances, particularly Rutger Hauer

Beyond that, it was trendsetting in terms of "post-modernist" filmmaking, combining -- in the original theatrical release -- a film noir-style voice-over with a sci-fi landscape, an inventive commingling of genre tropes. This "lost" release has come to be seen as the preferred version of the film (the laserdisc, containing the original release, is rare and valuable). There was supposed to be a special edition DVD coming out with the theatric and "director's" cuts, but last I heard it was cancelled.

It's one of few science fiction films aspiring to serious, "adult" literary themes, but equally famous as another example of studio interference, which not only inserted the voice-over but re-cut the ending, drastically changing the tone. Scott's ending is much more ambiguous.

Dick was asked to write a novelization of the film, but refused, so they were forced to re-issue the original novel.

[vadersp]

There was supposed to be a special edition DVD coming out with the theatric and "director's" cuts, but last I heard it was cancelled.

Ask and ye shall recieve.
clicky

[HB3]

Saw this. It's gonna be in HD, too, as far as I know.

I'm not big on re-completions of "director's cuts," but at least they're doing the right thing by releasing every version available. Great news.

Eventually we'll have branching DVDs so you can assemble elements from whichever cut you want into your own "viewer's preference" version.

[Starbuck]

Saw this. It's gonna be in HD, too, as far as I know.

I'm not big on re-completions of "director's cuts," but at least they're doing the right thing by releasing every version available. Great news.

Eventually we'll have branching DVDs so you can assemble elements from whichever cut you want into your own "viewer's preference" version.

Thats awesome
Finally, its been too long. And its going to have all of the versions. I can't wait

going to change my avatar for this great news

[spaceprophet]

A number of Dick's stories have been made into movies, most of them only loosely based on Dick's original stories, being used as a starting-point for a Hollywood action-adventure story, while introducing violence uncharacteristic of Dick's stories and replacing the typically nondescript Dick protagonist with an action hero. (Dick himself wrote a screenplay for an intended film adaptation of Ubik in 1974, but the film was never made.)

• The most admired film adaptation is Ridley Scott's classic movie Blade Runner (based on Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). Dick was apprehensive about how his story would be adapted for the film; he refused to do a novelization of the film and he was critical of it and its director, Ridley Scott, during its production. When given an opportunity to see some of the special effects sequences of Los Angeles 2019, Dick was amazed that the environment was "exactly as how I'd imagined it!". Following the screening, Dick and Scott had a frank but cordial discussion of Blade Runner's themes and characters, and although they had differing views, Dick fully backed the film from then on. Dick died from a stroke less than four months before the release of the film.
• Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Minority Report rather faithfully translates a number of Dick's themes within an action-adventure framework, though it changes some major plot points. Similarly, Total Recall (1990), based on the short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale evokes a feeling similar to that of the original story while streamlining the plot. It includes such elements as the confusion of fantasy and reality, the progression towards more fantastic elements through the story, machines talking back to humans, and the protagonist's doubts about his own identity. Impostor, a 2002 movie based on Dick's 1953 story of the same title, utilizes two of Dick's most common themes: mental illness, which diminishes the sufferer's ability to discriminate between reality and hallucination, and a protagonist persecuted by an oppressive government.
• The film Screamers (1995) was based on a Dick short story Second Variety; however, the location was altered from a war-devastated Earth in the story, to a generic science fiction environment of a distant planet in the film. Second Variety has been cited as a possible influence on the scenes in the machine-dominated future of The Terminator (1984) and its sequels.
• John Woo's 2003 film, Paycheck, was a very loose adaptation of Dick's short story of that name, and suffered greatly both at the hands of critics and at the box office.
• The French film Barjo ("Confessions d'un Barjo") is based on Dick's non-sf book Confessions of a Crap Artist.
• The animated film A Scanner Darkly (based on Dick's novel by that name) is scheduled for release in July 2006, and will star Keanu Reeves as Fred/Bob Arctor and Winona Ryder as Donna. Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, actors both noted for drug issues, are also cast in the film. The film was produced using the process of rotoscoping: it was first shot in live-action then the live footage was animated over.
• "Next", a film adaptation of the short story "The Golden Man" is currently being filmed. It will star Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore
• At least one of Dick's works has been adapted for the legitimate stage: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, was presented by the New York-based avante-garde company Mabou Mines in 1988 and has subsequently been produced elsewhere.
• Another stage adaptation is the opera VALIS, composed and with libretto by Tod Machover, which premiered at the Pompidou Center in Paris on December 1, 1987, with a French libretto. It was subsequently revised and readapted into English, and was recorded and released on CD (Bridge Records BCD9007) in 1988.

Wikipedia