The Android's Dream

This crazy book opens with Dirk Moeller planning on sabotaging the trade negotiations by causing the Nidu ambassador Faj-win Getag the son of his sworn enemy go on a rampage. He would accomplish this by using a device implanted into his butt that helps to send out messages within his farts. The Nidu have very sensitive noses and certain scents can have certain meanings. But only those of the higher castes can smell these meanings. Dirk sends out insults and the Nidu ambassador goes wild. He lets him know that it was him that sent the messages and the ambassador gears up to yell its battle cry when he suddenly has a stroke and dies. Dirk begins laughing and dies of a heart attack.

State Department gets involved because they are clued in show more by Dirk's assistant that something was up and they got the device from the medical examiner and intend to keep this to themselves. However, the Nidu believe that their ambassador was assassinated and are willing to overlook it if United Nations of Earth can provide the sheep needed in a ceremony a week away to crown the new Fehen of Nidu since the old Fehen has died and the next in line is to succeed him. The problem is that the sheep is a special breed genetically modified specifically for the Nidu by one man and all of the Nidu and this man's sheep have all come down with a bacterial infection and have died. No one else has been allowed to breed this sheep. But there should be some out there somewhere. It's up to State Department to find just one of these breed of sheep named Android's Dream [For those who don't know the name came from the book written by Phillip K. Dick called Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep? which is what the movie Blade Runner is based upon.].

The Secretary of State's assistant, Javna, knows just the person for the job of finding the lost sheep: his dead brother's best friend, Henry Creek. Creek already works for the State Department breaking the bad news to those who work in the Embassies. He's also a bit of a computer whiz. He borrows a large IBM computer from NOAA calling in a favor from a friend and from his computer at home he brings to life a sentient artificial intelligent agent that operates on his computer. It has taken on the form of his dead friend Brian at the age of around eighteen. Brian executes searches for the DNA of the sheep and finds that someone is going around killing the sheep that do exist on earth.

That someone is the Defense Department who, working with Jean Schroeder who fixed Dirk up with the fart machine, want to stick it to the Nidu but aren't really thinking much beyond that. There's a reason military intelligence is an oxymoron. But there is one sheep still available and her name is Robin Baker. Robin was adopted and is the offspring of a bizarre experiment between a sheep human hybrid and a human father. She is 20% sheep but the sheep DNA is junk DNA and has no effects on her appearance.

To make things even crazier there's the Church of the Eternal Lamb, a religion that began life as a cult started by a failed science fiction writer turned conman who was trying to get money out of the richest woman on earth. However, she knew what he was up to and played along, but doled the money out sparingly. The writer wrote prophesies from his drunk drug-addled mind and soon died in frustration with the old woman. The old rich woman lived to be 104 and left her assets to the church. The church has spent the past twenty years making sure that the prophecies come true by engineering things that they do. Their goal is to save the lamb.

If all this sounds a bit crazy, well it is. It's also hilarious and an incredibly fun book to read. Robin is a great character who takes everything coming at her rather well, considering, but then Creek is a master at telling people bad news. Creek is ex-military and ex-cop so he does a pretty good job of protecting Robin. He's also an intriguing character who's been through a lot in life and just wants a quiet life. Something he's not getting right now. I really loved this book. Scalzi is a favorite author of mine and I count this one as one of his best. I can't recommend this book enough.

Quotes

Nice is nice. But being a bitch gets results.

-John Scalzi (The Android’s Dream p 293) show less

I like John Scalzi’s novels. I find them so much fun in a crazy science fiction way. You can tell in them that Mr. Scalzi does not take himself too seriously and loves what he does. His joy at creating such absurd yet highly entertaining and intense stories seeps through each sentence. In The Android’s Dream, this amusement creeps into the bizarre world that is his futuristic Earth with its alien diplomats and political machinations that span the universe. The genius of Mr. Scalzi’s work is that he takes these bizarre plots and uses them to create genuine warnings about society. In the case of The Android’s Dream, his warnings are against blind patriotism and ever-present greed in self-serving civil service. It’s a danger that show more is as relevant today as in 2006, made palatable with his diverse characters as they race to obtain this one sheep before it spells disaster for the universe. show less

An intergalactic crisis is started when a human diplomat kills his alien counterpart during a sensitive negotiation. Earth is on the brink of war with a vastly alien species and only one thing can save the planet.... a sheep. That's right, a sheep.

The Android's Dream is a scifi political thriller by John Scalzi. If you've read anything else by Scalzi you should have a general idea of what to expect tone-wise for the story. There's a big cast of quirky characters, witty dialogue, plenty of action, several creative alien species and Scalzi's trademark snarky humor all while poking fun at modern society. This includes nods PKD (which you probably noticed in the title), Scientology, the fact that AI isn't really intelligent and the US show more government, among other things. It's obvious that Scalzi is having a lot of fun when he writes.

Even with all it's good parts, this wasn't one of my favorites. That opening chapter was one big eye roll and some of the plot points made me cringe. Still, there is plenty to enjoy and I found the ending quite touching.

I listened to the audio book narrated by Wil Wheaton. Wheaton does a fantastic job of delivering Scalzi's material, nailing the snarky humor and witty dialogue. He's a lot of fun to listen to. show less

I love John Scalzi. Let me just say that right now. From his (in)famous blog to his convention crack-ups to, yup, his novels, the man manages to make me laugh every single time. What’s more, his is not a sloppy humor – [The Android’s Dream] is tightly plotted, well-developed in terms of circumstance and character, and could stand up against any number of respected classics of science fiction – it also has a first chapter that is so funny, I almost peed myself by the last page.

Scalzi's first chapter is a masterpiece of political toilet humor, if such a thing can exist. The rest of the novel follows up with moments of both brilliance and hilarity, and sometimes the two at once, but that first chapter is what sets the reader’s show more mood for the entire novel. If you cannot appreciate sarcasm or have never found a fart funny, you may not appreciate that first chapter enough to let its tone buoy you all the way to the end of the book, but you might be rescued by the other clever conceit of the novel – that the fate of the world rests on the wooly back of a sheep.

Except that the sheep in question doesn’t turn out to have a wooly back at all, but I’ll stop there so as not to spoil one of the finer moments in the story. Any writer who can take a ridiculous twist and twist it back around on itself the way Scalzi does here is my kind of fella. Essentially, this book is smart fun – Scalzi must have had a great time writing it and anyone with even the least appreciation of science fiction will have a great time reading it.

Postscript: I read Philip Dick’s [Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep?] shortly before reading this one – the title of Scalzi’s novel is an obvious homage and there are several other connections in the book – including one direct allusion that made me laugh out loud – but you don’t have to have read PD’s book to like this one – just know that it exists. show less

The Android's Dream (title based off Philip K. Dick's novel Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep) can be described as a satire of interstellar diplomacy. It stars Harry Creek, a low-level State Department deliverer of bad news to alien ambassadors to Earth who's also a war hero and a computer genius. When Earth faces destruction over a diplomatic faux pas (or a minor farting offence) with the Nidu alien race, Harry must find and deliver the Android's Dream, an electric-blue breed of sheep, to the Nidu for their coronation ceremony in order to avoid an all out war. Harry stumbles upon Robin Baker, a pet shop owner with sheep DNA in her genes that in fact align with the Android's Dream, and quickly finds himself dodging Defense Department show more assassins and Nidu space marines. In an effort to protect Robin, they flee Earth and find their own way to attend the Nidu crowning. Also on the quest for the sheep are disciples of the Church of the Evolved Lamb—founded by an early 21st-century SF writer of "modest talents" (no doubt a satirical stab at L. Ron Hubbard). This book was filled with plenty of alien gore that fans of Alien and Independence Day will enjoy as well as a great banter and plenty of humor. This is an intelligent romp that might be underrated and overlooked. Highly recommended if you can handle fart jokes. show less

Reading this novel was like watching a fender bender in action: You really want to look away, mostly because you feel embarrassed on behalf of the driver, but also because there isn't much to look at, and yet, you can't help staring.

I was drawn to it, intrigued by the Philip K Dick reference, but found it completely boring and ridiculous. Still, I was unable to stop reading, even though I really REALLY wanted to. Quite seriously, every single male character was the same, with the same pathetically sarcastic sense of humour, despite the clear implication of division between good and bad. So... boring. As for the women, well, there were only two - one half sheep lady and an artificial intelligence, and still they were pretty much show more indistinguishable from the men. As for the plot... well, I can't bring myself to wonder where to begin. All the same, rating this book is hard, considering the masochistic side of me that couldn't drag herself away. It was stupid, and I didn't like it, but it was strangely captivating. show less

I should have reviewed this right after I finished listening to it, but I just wanted to move on to something else. My memories of certain details may be a bit fuzzy, but I'll do the best I can.

The story: A human diplomat figures out how to use his own farts to get revenge against the Nidu diplomat who played a part in his father's death. The incident results in both diplomats' deaths and might lead to war, unless Earth's government is able to locate a breed of sheep known as “Android's Dream” and present it to the Nidu for use in their upcoming coronation ceremony. Unfortunately, someone's been killing off every Android's Dream sheep in existence. Harry Creek, a war hero and brilliant hacker, will have to push his skills to the show more limit in order to locate the last remaining suitable specimen and save Earth.

I got this during an Audible sale because Wil Wheaton's narration in the excerpt seemed pretty good, and because I enjoyed Scalzi's Lock In. Lock In felt fast-paced despite its massive infodumps, and even though its characters didn't really grab me, it made up for that by being a lot of fun. I was expecting more of the same from The Android's Dream, and I was looking forward to the AI mentioned in the description.

A good chunk of the beginning was basically an elaborate fart joke. It was totally juvenile, and I felt a little embarrassed about laughing, but I did laugh. I settled down for what I figured would be a humorous but forgettable story. What I got instead was a forgettable slog up to a part that pissed me off to the point that, if this had been the first thing by Scalzi I'd ever read/listened to, I might never have picked up one of his works again. Instead of quitting, like I kind of wanted to do, I kept slogging until I finally made it to the end, by which time my anger had cooled.

Lock In had a problem with infodumps, but for some reason I didn't mind them in that book. In this one, I did. It felt like the sections on Nidu politics, the Church of the Evolved Lamb, and more went on and on, and I often had trouble staying interested. It helped that Wheaton's voice was nice to listen to, but I eventually realized that one of the drawbacks to Wheaton's narration was that he seemed to only have maybe four or five distinct character voices in his repertoire, and there were way more than four or five characters with speaking parts. Scalzi's writing didn't help much: Creek and Robin, a pet shop owner Creek found himself having to protect, tended to have the exact same snarky tone.

What transformed this book from mediocre to something worse was what Scalzi did with Robin, who, if I remember correctly, was the only confirmed female character with dialogue (there was one character whose gender was never identified). I'm going to have to enter spoiler territory to properly write about this.

Okay, so Creek got word that the last remaining Android's Dream specimen could be found at Robin's pet shop. He thought that the sheep was one of the animals for sale at the store, but he misunderstood. In reality, Robin was the sheep, or at least as close to being one as anyone was going to be able to get. You see, she was adopted. Her biological mother was a lab creation, a sheep-human hybrid so deformed she couldn't even walk. She and the other animal-human hybrids were created so that wealthy and influential people could rape them. The person who created the hybrids tweaked the sheep-human hybrid so that she could get pregnant and planned to use the pregnancy as blackmail material. However, things went wrong and Robin was born, a healthy human-looking girl who happened to have 18% sheep DNA (all in places that had no effect on her physical appearance and little-to-no effect on anything else).

I'm honestly not sure whether this was all supposed to be considered darkly humorous or completely horrifying. I, personally, considered it horrifying. I was fine with the giant fart joke, locust-like alien babies, and the weird cult filled with a bunch of people trying to see if fake prophecies could become real. Bestiality-as-backstory went too far for me.

Robin got crapped on in this book. There are those who would probably disagree with me. After all, she was technically the most important character, and by the end of the story she was briefly the richest and most powerful person on two planets. However, not only did she have a horrifying backstory, she was also a completely worthless character. Creek and Brian, the AI Creek created using a copy of his long-dead friend Brian's personality and memories (or something), did the bulk of the work, and Robin was just there. She wasn't even able to help herself when she decided that she didn't actually want all the things that had just fallen into her lap. Once again, it was Creek to the rescue.

I managed to listen to the whole book, and now I've finally reviewed it. Hurrah. A note to myself, in case I ever get the urge to give it another try, maybe see if it's better in print than in audio: don't do it. Remember the bestiality. Remember the loyal pet dog that was killed and then shot in the head in front of its owner. The AI was not worth it and mostly just felt like a guy who could do amazing stuff with computers and didn't happen to have a body. You're better off reading something else.

Rating Note:

I had a tough time deciding how to rate this. It felt like a 3-star and 1-star book had been stitched together, with the bulk of it leaning more towards 3 stars. However, as I wrote this review, all the distaste I felt for Robin's backstory and the way she was handled in general came welling back up.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less