Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick

I can tell why many people like this book. The world setting of this book is very well thought out and the characters have a good amount of development. I, however, am not usually a great fan of events that happen just because (or at least to me, they happen just because). I also prefer conclusions that are more conclusive rather than open-ended. Granted, the genre of cyberpunk, at least the novels I have read, seem to like ending rather ambiguously. It is a general commentary that cyberpunk tends to make, I imagine, that leads to such endings. I can't say, however, that I particularly enjoy such endings.

The overall story of the ever decreasing line between humans and androids is shown through the relationships between humans and androids on earth. The somewhat confusing plot line jumps from event to event and leaves the reader with a sort of empty listless feeling (again something I seem to find in all the cyberpunk I read) while at the same time the scenes themselves are interesting.

So, while I did not enjoy the novel per se, I think I will continue to read the genre as the events in the novels themselves are interesting.

Check out prices for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? at Amazon

Reviews for books

I am an avid user of goodreads which I believe I have mentioned at some point, and I post some reviews of books over there. I feel I should keep a copy of those reviews over here for recording purposes so over the course of the next few days/weeks there will be a series of book reviews posted.

Review: Changeless (Parasol Protectorate #2) by Gail Carriger


Changeless by Gail Carriger

Granted I never wrote a review on the first book but nevertheless I continue to enjoy the witticisms of Alexia and the addition of the character Madame Lefoux, who is quite a scandalous character for the Victorian era, was a great complement. The plot overall was enjoyable although not amazing.

In this book Carriger seems to have made Ivy even sillier which is great for comic relief, but is remarked upon so often as to be quite a bit heavy handed. The plot overall was enjoyable although not amazing.

I'm a bit disappointed in the ending, and the reaction of Lord Maccon at the end of the book. It seems in character but only mostly.

Check out prices for Changeless at Amazon

An Open Letter to Google

You have taken Nexus One out in the back and shot it in its head. It wasn't really the fault of the phone that its sales performance lagged behind other phones. It really just needed better backup.

You might argue that you advertised it on your own front page, but perhaps this suffers from the same problem that facebook suffers from with its advertising - lack of intent to buy. What you really need is a store - a brick and mortar store that showcases all the android products for people to touch and play with. This store needs to be located somewhere like downtown New York at least the first one.

The design of the store needs to speak to the what google and android are. It needs to have a sense of space and have the products as the front and center.

In this store, there needs to be sales representatives who know there stuff about all the plans available and can talk up each phone (tablets and netbooks too in the future). The representatives need to know which version of android each phone runs and what that means in terms of performance. They need to be compensated in a somewhat equitable fashion between different phones so that there isn't favoritism amongst the different plans with the exception of a launch week for a certain phone. They need to be knowledgeable in switching carriers.

There need to be customer service representatives who can answer questions about updates from the carriers and warranties in a genial attentive manner. They also need to be prepared for people who will come in and ask about how to search for things. Customers will ask about how to use all of your products despite this being an android store.

The store needs to be backed up by stellar tech support whether in the store or on the phone. This means attentativeness, ability to answer questions and resolve problems, enough power to execute, and a perceived excitedness and willingness to help the customer out no matter what it takes.

You need to negotiate with the carriers to carry all their products in a store and convincing them that an extra outlet and more press for all android products is beneficial to them in the end. You need to build hype around such a store so that when it opens, there are lines snaking around and around waiting to get in.

You need to take further advantage of the way you name your operating system. You could offer the treat currently being released to some number of those entering the store. You could have them sitting around during release parties for the latest operating system release or the latest phone running it.

Further down the road you can take the blog posts where internal teams create stickers, hoodies, and other paraphernalia and sell them in the store or have them on hand as giveaways for launch parties. You can showcase your other products and give demonstrations in the store.

Once this store is in place you can showcase something like the Nexus One. The idea is that once someone has their hands on the phone with the latest greatest OS version, they will fall in love with it and want to buy it. In this beautiful environment you have created, the customer feels confident in their purchase. You will sell more phones, create more hype, and make more advertising revenue from mobile search.

This is what you need Google.

Born Confused



There aren't a great many of Asian consciousness fiction novels. I wasn't expecting Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier to be excellent, but it surprised me in being quite good. Granted, parts of the book were somewhat shallow although considering that this is about teenage girls, (not that all of them are shallow it wasn't overly surprising.

Dimple seems to be rather fortunate in her parental lottery not necessarily just because she has a whole family as is pointed out in the book, but because of her parents' openness and a certain amount of flexibility in their thinking.

I do think that the novel runs a bit longer than it needed to. It will probably not reach the heights of the joy luck club and is certainly not as serious, but it's a book that weaves the clash and confusion of two different cultures for a more modern feel. Modern day clash seems to be less dire although it still exists and this novel achieves that tone well.

Pay As You Like Restaurants

This post is here to keep track of restaurants which use the pay as much as you want model.

SAME Cafe - Denver, CO
http://www.soallmayeat.org/

One World, Everyone Eats - Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.oneworldeverybodyeats.com/

Terra Bite Lounge - Seattle, WA
http://www.terrabite.org/

Panera Bread - Clayton, MO

Lentils as Anything - Melbourne, Australia
http://www.lentilasanything.com/

Der Wiener Deewan - Vienna, Austria
http://www.deewan.at/

In the Western Consciousness

I've mentioned before that I don't see much advertising for Asian American artists. Although now that I try to blog about these issues, I pay attention more and there seems to be quite a bit out there. In addition to supporting these artists, I think it is also beneficial for us to support other authors who pay tribute to our culture if they do it in a way that doesn't rely solely on stereotypes (martial arts movies maybe not so much).



One such book is Naamah's Kiss by Jacqueline Carey (and the rest of the series seems to follow in the same vein although is unpublished as of the writing of this post) which while the book itself is fairly scandalous, the author took a lot of time to visit China to view the scenery and read a lot of history to craft her characters. Granted her novels are alternate history so there is still some distortion, but her use of Chinese pronunciations lends an authentic flavor.

Another novel recently out which shows that Asia is infiltrating the Western consciousness is Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. He mentions in a post on John Scalzi's blog that his work was inspired by a poem by Du Fu. I look forward to reading it and perhaps posting here with a review

Escapism - Randomness

So here I am writing this post because I don't want to do homework or rather because I don't really know how I want to answer this one question. Instead, I will surf the internet reading random articles and blogs. I will waste my time on goodreads.com. Incidentally I have a comment I want to make about the distribution of books I read. On goodreads, you can see a distribution of the ratings you have made. I've found that the more books I add, the more that graph looks like a bell curve.

Immigrant Parents Have to be Stricter

Your parents' friends generally do not feel comfortable parenting you especially here in the US. They may offer subtle hints or advice, but they don't take much of an active role. A relative, however, is not as reserved and will take a somewhat more active parenting role. In the US though, relatives are far away and are not seen on much of a regular basis. This limits their ability to have much impact.

In Taiwan though, generally speaking, you live pretty close to your extended family. All your aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents are around constantly. Family reunions occur on a weekly or monthly schedule rather than a yearly one. So children are constantly being parented by a large number of adults. You do something wrong, and 10 different people reprimand you. It makes being obedient a much easier option.

Without this support structure of relatives to reinforce good behavior, the immigrant parents may feel they have to be stricter than they would have been otherwise in order to achieve the same level of obedience.

The Hiatus Ends?

So, I went to Taiwan and had almost no access to the internet. Then I came back and slept through the week, but now I'm back to writing so expect to see updates with pictures from Taiwan (hopefully as soon as I get around to taking them off my camera~~) as well as some thoughts on my trip.

Just a random question to the unlistening masses: why has gmail slowed down its storage increase again without ever announcing it? Granted the slowdown occured sometime last year, but we were promised 3.3 megs a day in this post but it's definitely more like .4 megs a day now. They never made an announcement about the slowdown so generally people haven't noticed it seems. This makes for sadness although it seems to make sense with the storage plans they announced. Google has made several pushes for joint storage with picasa so giving out storage increases slower is inline with that strategy. Ah well.
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