We Can Build You

"...refight the Civil War with robots; yes..."But multi-millionarie Barrows, of BARROWS ENTERPRISES, has a different outcome in mind. WE CAN BUILD YOU revolves around employees of MASA ASSOCIATES seeking financial backing from Barrows for their simulacra manufacturing. Once a faultless replica of Abraham Lincoln is produced, all bets are off as to what the 'machine' will ultimately be used for in terms of profit. All the while, a man is falling in love with a girl showing early symptoms of schizophrenia, leaving him to question his own sanity, given the incremental surge in robots, and a heart tied to someone losing touch with reality...The real joy of such a story is the scrutiny of language; terms like 'man' and 'animal' are dissected. PKD continued his daring embarkment of 'what does it mean to be a human?' Although a reshaped lens observes the machines of WE CAN BUILD YOU than the one of Deckard from DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? While the prose is very straightforward and unpolished, it's always PDK's ideas that excite the imagination.Philip K Dick novels are always economical storytelling; never afraid to scratch away at the superficial status quo, while always asking the boldest and deepest of questions, and confronting the strangest and darkest of personalities.Can double-dealing be found behind the rich and motivated?Can love be found inside the mentally unbalanced?Might there be emotions beyond the wires and tubes of a machine?Tell us Phil...

I picked this book up on sale after having read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It's an interesting story, one im not fully sure I understood. As a good Sci fi writer, I'm interested in other stories by Philip Dick, to see how they flow as well.

Father in law was very happy with his gift was shocked that we were able to find the book

The first half of this novel is quite good. The Civil War conceit actually works, contrary to my expectations. Then, the promising plot sort of melts away, as the narrator and the author become obsessed with the object of their love, an 18-year old schizophrenic. There are Dick novels that make you want to re-write them, and this is one of them.

What a left turn. Knowing PKD's other examples of simulacrum I was expecting the what is real story line. But that's not how it turned out. Very personal and human. Sticks with you like Scanner Darkly.

I love PKD and this is one of my favorites.

This is the only PKD book I haven't enjoyed. The android element is basically just background, and the characters weren't very interesting. Pair this with a plodding pace and you get a one star review.

good

This novel should really have been called ‘we can destroy you’. The novel is really about one man’s obsessive love for someone who has no feelings whatsoever for him. It shows only to clearly how easy it is to create an illusion of how we perceive someone, when in reality, they are nothing like this idealised self. Instead of warning him against this pursuit of the impossible dream, everyone around him just encourages this obsession. This leads to insanity and betrayal by the object of his obsession. I found this book incredibly depressing. Like one of the other reviewers, i think PKD was trying to tell the world how he had been hurt in the past, and how he felt his friends had only encouraged this madness. Like all PKD novels, i am glad i read it. It is a warning of the dangers of falling in love with the wrong person.

As is sometimes the case with sci-fi books and especially Philip K Dick books the back-cover blurb bears no real resemblance to the core of the story contained within this book. True there is a simulcrum of Abraham Lincoln involved but there's no trip to the moon and no plan as described on the back to populate it's colonies with famous fake people. There is a plan by the tycoon Barrows to use androids to make the moon colonies look normal for would-be settlers but this is an aside in a terrestrial based novel mainly about different forms of mental illness.These mental illnesses are experienced by the main character Louis who works in the electronic organ and piano business that has turned its hand to creating androids, the daughter of one of the company owners Pris (who has spent time in a state run mental hospital) and Abraham Lincoln himself who appears to be severely depressed most of the time.In my opinion this is Dick at his best - reflecting on everyday human conditions in a far fetched environment. In this book there is very little of what always seems to me to be drug related surrealism (although I read somewhere that Dick insisted that he didn't do hard drugs, it's hard to envisage how some of his books such as `The Game Players of Titan' or `The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch' could have been written without chemical help) and it makes a pleasant change. This story for all its flights of fancy seems grounded in realism and the reflections on what it is to be human and to be afflicted by self-delusion, paranoia, OCD, and depression. There is no cure-all wonder drug and instead the state relies on long-term social exclusion, counselling and group therapy as a cure. Mental health is endemic in Dick's vision of the future. The flying cars, androids and lunar colonies are a given.

Brilliant!