Wasting time on Facebook one day I found a quiz called “Which literary work are you?” An addict of time wasting quizzes and a literature major I did it immediately, and got the result of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I’d never even heard of it, which apparently puts me in a minority, as it’s the basis for the classic sci-fi film Blade Runner.

Wasting time reading was definitely a better alternative to doing more quizzes, and Androids also became the first book I downloaded rather than reading in print. (Literature major, not technology). As Science Fiction it seemed a suitable choice, anyway.

I have to say, the Facebook Quiz was for once accurate; this book contains many of my favourite themes: crumbling city-scapes, human isolation, people desperately scrabbling to hold onto their last connections with nature, cruelty and exploitation neither excused nor disguised. It is classic science fiction in that it is both cool and disorienting, but it is also sad on a wholly human dimension. And like many distopian-future works, it makes you curious for that world, and at the same time you want to reject it completely, and hope that society is not headed that way. Owls extinct one day, badgers the next. Highly recommended.