Damn Cool

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick 

This book was the basis for the 1982 film Blade Runner, but the movie left out some of the main plot elements of the book.

The earth has  been badly damaged  by  World War Terminus a Nuclear War. The radiation poisoning from the war has wiped out practically all animal life and most humans have migrated into space. Androids are built to assist man in space, but are not allowed on earth. These robots mimic human in every way but one, they lack empathy.   The main character is Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter of androids that return to earth.

The book probes the nature of what separates humans from these life like androids. When technology becomes self aware, does it then have a soul or is it the empathy, that makes us alive?  This book asked these questions long before Data began his quest to become human on Star Trek.

Really enjoyed this book, even if it left me a little demoralize.

Gateway is a  science fiction novel written by Frederik Pohl in 1977.

Robinette Stetley Broadhead a future prospector examines his  past for his computer generated shrink.  For Broadhead prospecting means boarding alien ships nobody understands and riding then to preset locations looking for alien technologies. Most prospectors don’t return from these dangerous missions but Broadhead does successful, rich and scared.

Guess I found the book engaging because I finished it so quickly. Pohl did a great job of making me want to know just what happened to Broadhead. Pohl slowly uncovers the Gateway and it’s impact on the world, then it’s impact on Broadhead himself.  Thought the climax fizzled, guess his foreplay made me expect more from the ending.

I read the book because it was on a list of the best science fiction ever written. While I enjoyed the book, it’s not one of the best books I’ve ever read, or one I’d tell someone else to read.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway that was published in 1940.

This is the story of an American (Robert Jordan) fighting against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War.  Jordan has been ordered to blow up a bridge behind enemy line, just prior to an attack. He recruits  a republican guerrilla unit to aid him in completing his mission.  With the guerrillas is a girl named Maria and romance soon follows.

I’ve read several books on the Spanish Civil War, including one made up of letters sent home by Americans fighting in this civil war for the Republic. They were idealist young people fighting for the common people of Spain and they hoped, by example the world. The occupy wall street movement got me thinking about these young people of a different time and moved me to read this book.

I Found For Whom the Bell Tolls to be more a love story with hundreds of pages before you get to any action. The book does give you a window into Jordan’s thinking about his father and grandfather,  never his principles or opinions. Jordan is willing to lay down his life without question, but why and for what?

I wanted to be drawn into Jordan’s emotions, but it never happened and I was left with a couple chapters of action at the end of the book.