Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

And then there's obviously the page to screen shift.

You know, The Shawshank Redemption, um, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? became Blade Runner.

Do, Do An- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

That's just bizarre.

That's astonishing.

And so if you have some background in literature or just like to read science fiction, of course, you would be familiar with these two books.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip Dick.

and 2001 Space Odyssey by Arthur Clarke, both of which were made into classic science fiction movies as well, Blade Runner and 2001.

So at one point, AI was a science fiction, but it is quickly, it is reality, of course, but the possibility of agentic AI exists.

The shift was that Philip K. Dick began thinking about deeper themes.

He became very interested in in the dynamics of human morality and particularly themes of empathy that he explored by thinking about how did the Nazis come to and hold power in The Man in the High Castle and Philip K. Dick was quoted as saying that he couldn't complete the sequel to that novel because he just couldn't stay in the psyche of the nazis any longer to continue writing the story the theme of empathy and do androids dream of electric sheep what would lead humanity to once again enslave sentient life forms and hunt them Through the streets.

And it was these deeper themes.

That informed all of Philip K. Dick's.

And the people who are successful in the society are the people who habitually break those rules.

Look for the hidden rules of your society.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is Philip K. Dick's most famous novel, made famous by Blade Runner, the movie that was based upon it.

I feel almost entirely certain that less than one in ten people of the people who have seen Blade Runner, or perhaps even one in 100 have read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Which is a shame, because the novel has much more to say than was ultimately encapsulated in the movie Blade Runner.

The gentleman's name is Daniel N. Paul.

He's written a book, We Were Not the Savages.

You pretty much know where that's going.

I want to thank Robert for doing that.

I got it before 9-11, but I will tell you, at first glance, I was buying what happened that day.

And then, of course, after 48 hours or so, I saw it coming to my senses.

But you never really wondered about the truth in science fiction books written a half century ago or the comments that you might have heard throughout your lifetime where, People say things about, oh, it's the unseen hand, you know, and Big Brother and all this stuff.

That didn't happen to you, did it? No, not really.

Okay, let's unpack this and start pulling it apart.

Beginning with the single most terrifying enemy every filmmaker faces when they option a beloved novel.

Which is?

The sheer crushing weight of volume.

It is like ripping the load-bearing walls out of a house to save square footage.

At some point, shouldn't the whole narrative structure just collapse on itself?

Well, it would collapse if a film relied on the exact same structural engineering as a novel, but it doesn't.

What's fascinating here is that we have to isolate the vital distinction between narrative weight and cinematic momentum.