Blade Runner - Philip K. Dick - Audio Book CD
Brand New (still shrink wrapped): Unabridged 8 CDs 9.5 Hours
The year is 2021. Somewhere out there, among the hordes of humans, lurk several rogue androids. Rick Deckard's assignment; find them and then ... "retire" them. Trouble is, the androids all look and act exactly like humans, and they don't want to be found.
Originally published in 1968, this foreboding adventure is a masterpiece ahead of its time. In our own near future, a world war has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending humankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creatures, and this desire spawns the technology to build, incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep ... and humans. Fearful of the haw these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth: But androids don't want to be identified; they just blend in. And it's bounty hunter Rick Deckard's job to track down any fugitives—and destroy them.
About the Author Philip K Dick:
December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American writer, mostly known for his works of science fiction. In addition to his dozens of published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, many of which appeared in science fiction magazines. At least eight of his stories have been adapted for film.
Foreshadowing the cyberpunk sub-genre, Philip K. Dick brought the anomic world of California to many of his works, exploring sociological and political themes in novels which were often dominated by monopolistic corporations and authoritarian governments. In his later works, Dick addressed the nature of drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, religious experience and theology, drawing upon his own life experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.
His novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternative history and science fiction, earning a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is completely unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real." Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty.
Dick's stories have been adapted into popular films such as Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Impostor and others. In 2007 Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series (#173).
Themes
Dick's stories typically focus on the fragile nature of what is "real" and the construction of personal identity. His stories often become surreal fantasies as the main characters slowly discover that their everyday world is actually an illusion constructed by powerful external entities (such as in Ubik ), vast political conspiracies, or simply from the vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator.
"All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality," writes science fiction author Charles Platt. "Everything is a matter of perception. The ground is liable to shift under your feet. A protagonist may find himself living out another person's dream, or he may enter a drug-induced state that actually makes better sense than the real world, or he may cross into a different universe completely."
"I used to dig in the garden, and there is nothing fantastic or ultradimensional about crab grass... unless you are an sf (science fiction) writer, in which case you are viewing crab grass with suspicion. What are its real motives? And who sent it in the first place?" Philip K Dick, We can remember it for you wholesale, Notes, 1987, Orion.
Alternate universes and simulacra were common plot devices, with fictional worlds inhabited by common, working people, rather than galactic elites. "There are no heroes in Dick's books," Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, "but there are heroics. One is reminded of Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people." Dick made no secret that much of his ideas and work were heavily influenced by the writings of C.G. Jung, the Swiss founder of the theory of the human psyche he called "Analytical Psychology" (to distinguish it from Freud's theory of psychoanalysis). Jung was a self-taught expert on the unconscious and mythological foundations of conscious experience and was open to the Reality underlying mystical experiences. The Jungian constructs and models that most concerned Dick seem to be the archetypes of the collective unconscious, group projection/ hallucination, synchronicities, and personality theory. Many of Dick's protagonists overtly analyze reality and their perceptions in Jungian terms (see Lies Inc.), while other times, the themes are so obviously in reference to Jung their usage needs no explanation. Dick's self-named "Exegesis" also contained many notes on Jung in relation to theology and mysticism.
Recognition
In 1963, Dick won the Hugo Award for The Man in the High Castle. Although he was hailed as a genius in the science fiction world, the mainstream literary world was unappreciative, and he could publish books only through low-paying science fiction publishers such as Ace. Even in his later years, he continued to have financial troubles.
In the introduction to the 1980 short story collection "The Golden Man," Dick wrote: "Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in this world. I don't agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn't raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to them in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine-looking man, very impressive and very military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I'm a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love."
The last novel published during Dick's life was The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
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