Book Review
May. 24th, 2024 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariWe Can Build You
by Philip K. Dick
This very strange early novel of PKD's concerns Louis Rosen, one of the owners and managers of a piano and organ business. When one of the company's engineers develops two fully sentient androids, a replica of Lincoln's war secretary Edwin Stanton and one of Lincoln himself, the company, Louis, his business partner Maury, and Maury's mentally ill daughter Pris, all get thrown into turmoil. The turmoil only intensifies when unscrupulous real estate magnate Sam Barrows takes an interest in their invention. But before this turmoil can be resolved, Louis' own internal turmoil over both his growing feelings for Pris and the crisis of ethics and reality brought on by the androis intensifies into a psychological breakdown.
We Can Build You is very prescient in many ways. It includes a sleazy, dishonest real estate businessman, tech company leaders too caught up in the coolness of their innovations to think about the ethics and consequences, a nationwide mental health crisis, and a fairly authoritarian government. I do wish the two halves of the story had been a bit better connected. The connections between perception of reality and sanity could have been better explored as well. Still, it was a very interesting book.
by Philip K. Dick
This very strange early novel of PKD's concerns Louis Rosen, one of the owners and managers of a piano and organ business. When one of the company's engineers develops two fully sentient androids, a replica of Lincoln's war secretary Edwin Stanton and one of Lincoln himself, the company, Louis, his business partner Maury, and Maury's mentally ill daughter Pris, all get thrown into turmoil. The turmoil only intensifies when unscrupulous real estate magnate Sam Barrows takes an interest in their invention. But before this turmoil can be resolved, Louis' own internal turmoil over both his growing feelings for Pris and the crisis of ethics and reality brought on by the androis intensifies into a psychological breakdown.
We Can Build You is very prescient in many ways. It includes a sleazy, dishonest real estate businessman, tech company leaders too caught up in the coolness of their innovations to think about the ethics and consequences, a nationwide mental health crisis, and a fairly authoritarian government. I do wish the two halves of the story had been a bit better connected. The connections between perception of reality and sanity could have been better explored as well. Still, it was a very interesting book.
