I had to give up on this one. Let me give you a sample:
After parking the department’s speedy beefed-up hovercar on the roof of the San Francisco Hall of Justice on Lombard street, bounty hunter Rick Deckard, briefcase in hand, descended to Harry Bryant’s office.
I mean, snore. Let me tell you he even uses the term ‘beefed-up hovercar’ more than once. The book is all about trying to tell who is human and who is cyborg, and focuses much on tests to tell who is which. I propose one additional test: 100% of humans will be able to identify that the above sentence is written by a man. And indeed the book is full of things men, particularly middle aged men, are interested in: looking tough, ignoring your wife, making tough choices where you may not be a good guy but we understand why, etc.
That said, I did enjoy learning about Philip K Dick, who led a fully bonkers life. He was on amphetamines for years, so he could turn out books at speed. He also had various out-of-body experiences, the most important of which was one time when sunlight hit the gold necklace of a delivery girl and he saw a ‘pink beam’ that gave him wisdom. Things go downhill from there. As Wikipedia enjoyably puts it: “At one point, Dick felt that he had been taken over by the spirit of the prophet Elijah.” And “In 1974, Dick wrote a letter to the FBI, accusing various people . . . of being foreign agents of Warsaw Pact powers. He also wrote that Stanislaw Lem was probably a false name used by a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party . . “
Now this is a book I’d be interested in reading
