We Can Build You

Yet another classic PKD. :) A lot of great humor in this one, too. Lincoln and Edward Stanton, brought back to life and running a corporation that sells simulacra, android re-creations of real people? Well, that's hardly everything in this novel.

Most of it knocks the ball out of the park about relationships, madness, and a misdiagnosis. I really think it's not Schizophrenia he's talking about, but Autism. Or in the spectrum. And that's all kinds of cool, too, when it comes to modern novels. But of course, PKD has always jumped feet-first in that particular pool.

Interestingly enough, this novel deals with the pre-Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep time, with Simulacra JUST getting on the market, getting that push to take on and prepare show more colonies off Earth, and EVEN Mood Organs. :) So much of that is hilarious and/or disturbing when you think about how things go later on.

This is definitely one of the livelier and light PKD novels out there, focusing more on doomed relationships and fantasies than most. Kinda fitting, considering the theme. Are we just machines? Are we slaves to our passions, or are we making new slaves for our passions? Even funnier when you consider that LINCOLN himself has become a slave of sorts. :) show less

Just a warning to anyone thinking of reading this who's not already a Philip K. Dick fan: This is not really a sci-fi novel! Sure, a couple of major characters are robots, and it is set in a sort of dystopian future, but it's not really about that. It's more about obsession and mental health and... business? It really is all over the place.

As a fan (this was PKD book #33 according to Goodreads), I found myself cringing a few times at clumsy wording and the awkward behavior of certain characters, but overall it was still better than most non-PKD books I've read. I would have liked to see more mechanical Abe Lincoln, honestly. But the book was about Pris. For that matter, I would have liked to know more about Pris, but we only know what show more the narrator knows. And he's nuts. Oh well. show less

Explores humanity and mental illness through the creation of lifelike androids based on Civil War figures, particularly Abraham Lincoln. Louis Rosen, a keyboard manufacturer, creates these robots to impress a businessman for a lunar colony, but becomes trapped in a toxic relationship with Pris Frauenzimmer, a troubled woman, while battling his deteriorating sanity.

Philip K. Dick is one of my favourite authors of all time, but it's fair to say that We Can Build You doesn't represent his best work. There's little to no action and it re-uses tropes that have been dealt with better elsewhere, such as simulacra, artifical intelligence, a lunar colony, small business management, the nature of consciousness. It also leans heavily on a rather disturbing sub-plot about the main character's sexual obsession with his business partner's barely-legal and mentally unstable daughter.

Dick is up to his usual psych tricks: A robot Abe Lincoln, with more soul than its schizophrenic teen creator, appears as deus ex machina.

A depressing Dick novel of a doomed, one-sided love affair that also had the usual Dick humor, realistic dialogue, and superb characterization. The book's only flaw was that it seemed to wander at times, but that was probably due to its emphasis not on plot (some of the problems seemed artificial, easily solved, and there just to advance the plot) but on character.

Despite it's hungarian title, this book is not about an android, simulacrum, impersonating Lincoln but much more a strange, sad love story. In the background there is everything makes a PKD book special. Great part of the population (allegedly) has mental illness, androids indistinguishable from humans, paranoia is a normal part of life, etc. Not his best by far, but if you like PKD, you won't be disappointed.