Luis Rafael Vernaza/ Ecuador
This book is a science fiction story about a dystopian society in which androids have been created to aid humanity after the world was devastated by World War III. A couple of years go by and now the androids are no longer needed, and those that resist deactivation are hunted down by the Blade Runners. The story follows Rick Deckard, an ex-Blade Runner with a semi-damaged relationship with his wife, who is called to come out of retirement to hunt down six androids that are at large, and in the process he meets a female android named Rachael who makes him question the true meaning of life, and if he himself is an android. The leader of the androids, Roy Batty, leads them to track their creator so he can extend their lifespan and become independent beings. To do so, one of the androids befriends John R. Isodore, a radioactively-damaged, intellectually slow human classified as a “special.”
During the section of the book where Deckard questions if he is an android, the only thing he is focused on is to find the answer, whether he is human or machine. This foreshadows the ending of the book, which ends with Rick going hiking to Oregon where he finds a toad and brings it back to his wife, who realizes that it’s artificial and is mad at Rick for not bringing a real animal, but he doesn’t care because he gets the answer to the question, whether something is human or not.
Both the author and the book do an amazing job at teaching the reader about the effects of war and what could happen to Earth in the aftermath. He also takes us into the depths of a damaged futuristic San Francisco and shows us the state that its inhabitants live. I think that this is a classic science fiction book for its time which is why it did so well when it was written. It has a lot of futuristic elements that exist today in the real world. If you like reading books, especially those of science fiction, then you’ll probably find this classic of that genre as one of the best you have ever read.
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