This was such an enjoyable read. The writing style was the sort that pulls you in right from the beginning and completely immerses you in its world. The worldbuilding was truly incredible, and the plot was full of surprising twists. There were some really cool ideas in the story, like owning real animals being a sign of social status and controlling emotions by dialling a certain code into a device.

Not sure I would ever have read this if it wasn't for the movie adaptation but I enjoyed it. I think it may have been more powerful back in the time it was written but there were enough thought provoking elements to keep it feeling relevant for me. It's pretty different from the movie so don't expect it to be similar.

The one faithful film adaptation of a PKD story I'm aware of was the Linklater version of A Scanner Darkly. All the others take a major conceptual element of the story's basic premise, but then seriously alter the narrative in ways that often make them very different thematically. I really liked the Linklater film, too, because I think the "slavish" recreation of the story does a far better job of presenting the ideas that Dick had in their full nuance and depth than any other film version of his work ever has.) Most other adaptations of his work (there are some I haven't seen) tend to fall far short of that, which is really a shame. I mean, Blade Runner (the 1982 version) is a great movie. I like it a lot, but the novel has layers of philosophical depth that the film just doesn't get anywhere near. “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is one of Dick's many explorations of what was clearly his favorite philosophical topic, namely "what is the difference between reality and an illusion?" The movie is reasonably accurate in its representation of the basic plot points (a police officer hunts for escaped androids from space colonies, who are illegally living on Earth and posing as humans) but doesn't even attempt to probe the weirder, but more thought-provoking elements of the story--e.g. that the human race is actually going extinct, and that the robots' brains are distinguishable from those of humans by the robots' inability to feel empathy toward living things.

If you're into SF, read on.

I tried to write something resembling a coherent review, but I can´t come up with anything else besides the fact that I really enjoyed this book and the questions about humanity it poses. What makes us human? Empathy, compassion and love? And is artificial intelligence able to experience the same emotions as humans?

I really liked the significance that Dick puts on real life animals and how humanity is closely linked with these animals. And I really liked the concept behind the mood organ:

"My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression" Iran said

"What? Why did you schedule that?" It defeated the whole purpose of the mood organ. "I didn´t even know you could set it for that", he said gloomily.

Truth to be told I would choose a self-accusatory depression every once in a while myself. But I think it would be pretty great to choose when to have one of those.

I read this book for my jail visit.