Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? Vol. 1
Philip K. Dick, Tony Parker, Bill SienkiewiczTHE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE FILM BLADE RUNNER COMES TO COMICS! Worldwide best-selling sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick’s award-winning DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? has been called “a masterpiece ahead of its time, even today” and served as the basis for the film BLADE RUNNER. BOOM! Studios is honored to present the complete novel transplanted into the comic book medium, mixing all new panel-to-panel continuity with the actual text from the novel in an innovative, ground-breaking 24-issue maxi-series experiment.
San Francisco lies under a cloud of radioactive dust. The World War has killed millions, driving entire species to extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remained coveted any living creature, and for people who couldn’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic fakes: horses, birds, cats, sheep… even humans. Rick Deckard is an officially sanctioned bounty hunter tasked to find six rogue androids — they’re machines, but look, sound, and think like humans — clever, and most of all, dangerous humans. Rick Deckard, Pris, The Voight-Kampff Test, Nexus 6 androids, the Tyrell Corporation: join us for the publishing event of the year! “After I finished reading the screenplay for BLADE RUNNER, I got the novel out and looked through it. The two reinforce each other, so that someone who started with the novel would enjoy the movie and someone who started with the movie would enjoy the novel.” — Philip K. Dick
| status | checked out |
|---|---|
| genre | Sci-Fi |
| publisher | Boom! Studios |
| publish date | December 1, 2009 |
| popularity | checked out 15 time(s) |
Wow. This is pretty much purely awesome. I had my doubts about a graphic novel translation that preserves ALL the original text… I thought the pages might be excessively wordy and that certain text and image combinations might prove incredibly redundant. But I never got that feeling when reading this!
It is maybe a little more dense than some other graphic novels, just because there is a lot to read. But it never seemed excessive to me. The art is beautiful, and makes Dick’s dystopian future very easily imaginable.
The writing, is of course, brilliant. The dialogue is sharp, smart, and thoughtful, the descriptions beautiful, and the setting is further illuminated by the images in this “illustrated edition”. So many social issues are adressed that are perhaps even more relevent today than when Phillip K. Dick first published the book. As much as I enjoyed Blade Runner, there is a lot more depth here. Already, (and this is only the first of many volumes) we have a deep character study of Rick Deckard and his wife and a portrait of their troubled, subversively complex domestic life. All the technology seems eerily relavent to modern social issues: a machine used to control and moderate emotions (psychiatric drugs?), mechanical animals for those who can’t afford real animals, since it’s unethical not to care for an animal (being humane is really more about social image).
Although it might seem that a single book drawn out into 24 issues would be slow moving and dry, the rich dystopian setting and the complexity of the characters creates enough intrigue to keep things interesting.
Right now, we only have the first two volumes at the alt lib. I would encourage anyone looking for a good read in the Sci-Fi realm to check this out. If you like it (which I think you will) put in a vote for Vol. 3 in our request list.