A little bit of literature

“In addition, no one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won. The dust which had contaminated most of the planet's surface had originated in no country and no one, even the wartime enemy, had planned on it. First, strangely, the owls had died.”

(...)

“‘Then what's this for?’ Rick demanded. ‘What are you for?’

‘To show you,’ Wilbur Mercer said, ‘that you aren't alone. I am here with you and always will be. Go and do your task, even though you know it's wrong.’

‘Why?’ Rick said. ‘Why should I do it? I'll quit my job and emigrate.’

The old man said, ‘You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.’

‘That's all you can tell me?’ Rick said.”

Vocabulary build-up

The phrasal verb come about means “to take place; to happen; materialize; come to pass.”

The noun curse means “an appeal or prayer for evil or misfortune to befall someone or something; to bring evil upon; afflict.”

Comments

It has been 45 years since Philip K Dick died and few people would know who this American science-fiction writer is. But if I tell you that he wrote the books that inspired Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” and “Minority Report”, as well as the series “The man in the High Castle”, you'll probably think that you have missed some good reads. Unfairly relegated to what Kurt Vonnegut called “the sci-fi ghetto” for most of his career, Dick’s brilliant vision and cultural impact only became obvious to a wider audience after his death, eventually leading to a critical and popular revisiting of his work that has seen it thrive in print and film for the past two decades. Some people “don’t like science-fiction,” but usually that’s a case of not having read the right science-fiction. Philip K Dick, for instance, uses his sensationalist, out-there ideas as a framework to examine some profound issues: What is it to be human? Who is really in charge? Is mental illness really an illness, or just a different state of consciousness? And, most importantly, what is real? In “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” Dick presents atemporal questions to humankind, especially in a world of rising Artificial Intelligence technologies. The plot is developed in a nuclear-torn world, in which war nearly destroyed all life on the planet. The human psyche was so damaged by it that Mercerism, an empathy-based religion where no harm is done to any living thing and people care for all surviving animals individually as a public display of compassion, is humanity’s driving philosophy. This is so important that those who cannot afford real animals get replicant versions that eat, sleep, and even get “sick”. In this context, the main character is a guy who hunts down rogue androids (replicants) for a living. At some point, he asks himself some existential questions, such as what does it mean to be human when we cannot tell ourselves apart from our creations?