Maybe I’m just a classic Sci-Fi fan and am officially an “old”….
But then again…I’ll take the fact that I greatly enjoyed Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and could not stand Consider Phelbas as a sign that I’m not quite ready for “retirement” yet.
Philip K. Dick’s seminal “DADOES” is of course the basis for the movie Bladerunner and one of if not the most well known of his works. Having read other novels by Dick I was not prepared for such a straightforward read. Less psychedelic than something such as Lies, Inc. or retro as The Man in the High Castle DADOES is more of a futuristic Raymond Chandler work than anything else with the beaten down gumshoe, perpetrators in hiding and femme fatale all included. Its a bit hard to read without picturing Harrison Ford as the protagonist and Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty given how closely the movie hewed to the book but seeing the film first and then reading the novel does not ruin the experience and each stands on its own as a masterpiece of its format. Ridley Scott’s film ends up being far more cyberpunk in nature and while still a core of any sci-fi curriculum, DADOES resembles The Man in the High Castle than it does something like Neuromancer or Snow Crash. Regardless, you will still be stunned by how prescient it is and how many underlying themes of AI, the nature of consciousness, role of media, etc. that are present here look out from their post some 50 years ago at today’s world. Putting this up there with 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 is completely appropriate.
Consider Phelbas on the other hand is an overly long, meandering, mess of a “space opera”. I began reading it as, well, Elon Musk kept naming his drone ships used to recover SpaceX rockets out in the ocean after ships present in these novels and I kept hearing about how these series of books by Iain Banks were so great and such a wonderful representation of AI, that I had to read them. I could not have been more disappointed. Outrageously long (seriously, do some authors get paid by the word?), silly in its action, disjointed, muddled, without purpose and seemingly just a series of ridiculous mishaps befalling the main character over and over. Throw in moronic depictions of “aliens” all over the place and you have a cajun soup of spacefaring tropes….I’ll pass regardless of who may think the book is worth it. Musk likely enjoyed it during an acid trip or two where everything seems “cool” without real analysis…
Lastly and unmentioned till now is Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers which is barely a sci-fi novel to begin with and unlike DADOES, its film version is NOTHING like the novel and in fact rather than honoring the novel, the film seeks to repudiate and make fun of the novel (connecting the Starship Troopers film to DADOES, Paul Verhoven the Starship Troopers director also filmed Total Recall, a film version of We’ll Remember it for You Wholesale another Phillip K. Dick short story). The written work contains nothing of the “action” one would expect. Outside of a short battle scene at the very beginning of the novel and a somewhat longer one that concludes the work the vast majority of the book is alternatively a description of training and integration into the Mobile Infantry as well as what are long, descriptive viewpoints given by various authority figures under which the protagonist receives his tutelage. Many a critic has taken issue with this, seeing it as merely being a mouthpiece for the author to express his views on the military, evils of communism, and growing softness of the West in general. Others have taken it further and put the work under scrutiny for racism, misongynism, and all sorts of other perceived evil “isms”. Critics, like Verhoven the direct of the film “version” miss much of the underlying themes or care not to find value in them. Heinlein was a well known Libertarian…not a facist, not a racist (hell, the main character here is of Philippine lineage). Heinlein was also vehemently anti-communist—thus the communistic nature of the “bugs” that are fought here. Value is placed in sacrifice of self for the benefit of society and I can hardly think of a more “leftist” viewpoint…but that is ignored by critics because of the positive light the military is given. Here the military is the savior of society…not just a somewhat necessary evil that many liberal school indoctrinated critics and “artists” see it as. Pairing this work with Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a phenomenal start for anyone interested in looking at the world through eyes which do not distinguish between race, religion, or any other characteristic other than what an individual brings of value to their fellow humans. Great works both.