First time I started this, I put it back down again quite quickly – it’s hard to get Blade Runner out of mind. However, this time I took it on a long train journey, forcing myself to get into it. And I did, eventually.

There’s a lot more to the book than the eventual film; worth noting the quote on the front saying “The book that became the film Blade Runner”: not an adaption, just an inspired by.

Like any of Dick’s stories I’ve been exposed to, there’s a very bleak view of the future here. Earth has become all but uninhabitable, with most people leaving for Mars. Increasingly human-acting androids are created as slave labour in the new colony, but some kill their owners, escape to earth and try to pass as human. Enter Rick Deckard, bounty hunter tasked with identifying (by means of psychological testing) and ‘retiring’ escaped ‘andys’.

The story remains fairly brief (the book is less than 300 pages), but the issues are intriguing. How human can an android be and yet still have less rights than a spider? How can you tell the difference?

Definitely worth the read, but I would warn against the permanent struggle I had trying not to inject Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah et al into the characters and events.