Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick (1968)

Book club selection (via PJr; session held November 13, 2016).

Author is consistently creative, ahead of his time.  This book - primarily about exploring the line between humans and high-functioning androids - seems quite timely almost 50 years after being written.

Protagonist is a bounty hunter - paid to "retire" renegade androids who are increasingly difficult to distinguish from humans in post-nuclear war San Francisco and environs.  Android manufacturing company based in Seattle (Rachel's company).

Chickenheads - Isadore.  Kipple.  Earth in decline; efforts to move folks to Mars, including offering a high-end android to each re-settler, delivered on arrival.  But Mars apparently no utopia; renegade androids escape from there.

Empathy as a defining human characteristic - efforts to construct empathy-based tests to weed out hidden androids.  Reminds of a Turing test.

Quite a few threads that were hard to follow, at least for me - Mercerism; the obsession with animals (real or "electric"); the Penfield device; Buster Friendly; androids establish an alternative police station (but to what end?)

Rachel and the live goat.

Interesting idea - that these androids are built from a cellular material that lasts no more than four years - perhaps that's for the best if androids are prone to becoming unreliable.

The Valley of the Assassins - Freya Stark (1930-1932)

I very much liked this.  Per the "Introduction" we learn that the author was a most unlikely candidate to come up with a book like this - young, inexperienced, difficult growing-up circumstances.  She somehow took to the notion of spending time in various Islamic countries; in this case (early 1930s), mountainous hinterlands between Iran and Iraq ("Luristan").  These areas had barely seen Europeans (let alone female travelers).  Perhaps sensing some value from map-making etc., British authorities facilitate her travels.

I like that she tells a small-scale story of her travels.  It's the 1930s - but she is in a remote area - generally poor, deeply traditional, conservatively Islamic - her style permits a reader to somewhat imagine how travelers "got by" in remote areas like this not just in the 1930s, but no doubt for centuries and centuries before.  Are there still any areas so remote such that this kind of trip could happen?

And the travel story (and interaction with folks she encounters) is woven into the area's geography and history - in particular the Assassins  - who show up in Crusader and other tales - finally subjugated by Mongol invaders in 14th century.

Banditry everywhere - but travelers encountering groups residing in tents - or in some areas villages - are invariably treated well.  (Though I suspect her English-ness helped in this regard.)  Often the hosts are heartrendingly poor - yet would be deeply offended if their hospitality was refused.  There is an incredibly powerful passage around page 61 of the paperback version - the author is treated to dinner by poor folks - who harvest their entire (and paltry) crop of tomatoes to serve their guests a tiny meal - the host's children (at least the three sons) are so sad to see this long-awaited treat used in such a fashion - the daughter less affected because she knew - as a daughter - she had no hope of getting a bite anyway - an instructive intersection of traditional hospitality, poverty, gender roles, etc.

I hadn't connected that - so close by Tehran - there are jungles and rice-growing areas (and malaria) as one crosses beyond mountainous areas (still unmapped in the 1930s) on the way to the Caspian Sea.

Reminded me somewhat of the Fermor books (in particular this one, and also this one) - he's traveling through Europe in the 1930s - of course an entirely different stage of development, but like Stark, Fermor was describing a world in the midst of rapid change.

Lots to think about here.