The book is actually pretty different from the film, in a good way – although both book and film are great. It plays more with the idea that telling the difference between a human and replicant is difficult and/or impossible without specialized tools.
I'll avoid spoilers, but the cop scene is really great – Decker discovers the existence of a secret separate police department operating in San Francisco, which is staffed entirely with replicants.
If you've seen the movie but haven't read the book, I definitely recommend it. It's considerably different.
The weird thing was the obsession with robotic animals that's not in the movie at all. I think it was meant to underline the apocalyptic world where living things have mostly disappeared.
The best thing for me about blade runner is the visual style of the movie. It spawned an entire visual genre of cyberpunk and most cyberpunk franchises still lean very heavy on this. The darkness with neon, the 80s vision of the computer, the heavy branding and Eastern influences, the music etc.
It's still my favourite genre for techno party cosplay.
There's not an obsession with robotic animals in the book, it's an obsession with animals and keeping them as part of the new religion, Mercerism, and its hyper-focus on empathy, and consequently displays of empathy. Caring for an animal is part of that. The robotic animals are not meant to be recognized as robotic, they're surrogates so people can still display their care of an animal and demonstrate empathy even if they can't afford a real one. Real animals being rarer and more expensive, and of course dying much more easily than a machine, as happened to Deckard's prior to the events of the novel.
Although I haven't played the game or read the book, the movie features a robotic snake, and there's dialogue about real snakes being very expensive. It seems reasonable that this would apply to other animals too.
The animals are mentioned briefly in the film, but in the book, they are a major plot point. Decker mostly wants the money because he wants to buy a real animal.
The obsession with animals is also a mark of humanity - lack of compassion for animals is part of the anti-replicant test. It's also a mark of the current neuroses of Humanity: making mechanical imitations of life, including human life.
The book is also all about religion and specifically Christianity. It's one of the most interesting and nuanced explorations of the psychology of Christian faith that I've read. I also understand why the filmmakers thought, "yeah, I'm not touching that."
Given that he made Prometheus, I don't think that Ridley Scott is scared of exploring Christian topics.
Then again, the whole Jesus-was-an-Engineer subplot that was dropped from that film but still alluded to also makes me doubt that Scott's take would have been particularly "nuanced".
You just have to watch Exodus: Gods and Kings and that'll tell you everything you need to know about how skilled Ridley Scott is at exploring religion.
I mean I get why. The fear is that non-Christian audiences wouldn't care, and fundamentalists would find it blasphemous. I would love a movie of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, but we're not gonna get it. Who would make it? Martin Scorsese? Paul Schrader? The Coen Brothers?
Actually, those are all good ideas. But other than Scanner Darkly, Dick's work has mostly attracted people interested in the pulpy science fiction ideas and not so much the existentialism and the critiques of mainstream religion. It's a bummer.
Still hoping someone makes a Linklater's A Scanner Darkly-level of faithful adaptation of DADoES? one day. Definitely curious to see retrofuturistic S.F., the Penfield mood organ, Mercerism.
That was such a faithful adaption of Scanner Darkly, it was like reading the book again. I agree that a similar adaption of Do androids dream of electic sheep would be amazing. I'd also like to see the same care and attention given to some of Dick's other novels and shorts. No one has quite been able to capture We can remember it for you wholesale, and the twist at the end. I enjoyed Minority Report, but it wasn't quite up there with the story.
I read "The Minority Report" when I was too young to appreciate it, probably should do it again. What struck me the most about it was that the setting had odd political intrigue between the police and the military plotting to launch a coup against one another, which felt random to me. But it probably made sense in the social context of when it was written.
I read it as a teenager and remember enjoying it. It popped up on Libby a few weeks ago and I checked it out and absolutely hated it. Found it nigh unreadable. Hackneyed prose and all the bits about the robotic animals just seemed clumsy and dumb. In my opinion, the book has not aged well.
I'll avoid spoilers, but the cop scene is really great – Decker discovers the existence of a secret separate police department operating in San Francisco, which is staffed entirely with replicants.
If you've seen the movie but haven't read the book, I definitely recommend it. It's considerably different.