I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. Take one of my favorite sci-fi books and go through it chapter by chapter. Share my thoughts, break it down, and maybe convince a few people to pick it up.
Chapter 1 opens with a married couple fighting. Not about money. Not about the kids. About which emotion to feel today.
Chapter 1 gave us Rick Deckard and his cranky morning. Chapter 2 flips the camera entirely. We meet John Isidore, and honestly, he might be the most important character in this whole book.
Rick Deckard is late to work. But before he even makes it to the office, he stops in front of a pet shop and stares at an ostrich. A real one. The only ostrich on the entire West Coast. Thirty thousand dollars.
Before Rick can go hunt androids, his boss sends him on a field trip. To Seattle. To prove that his testing equipment actually works.
Chapter 5 is where Rick Deckard sits across from Rachael Rosen, shines a light into her eye, and starts asking questions designed to make her feel things. And the whole chapter reads like a poker game where both sides are cheating.
John Isidore hears a TV playing somewhere below him in the building. That’s it. That’s all it takes. He grabs a cube of margarine and goes downstairs to meet whoever is there.
We’re back with John Isidore, and this chapter is one of those scenes where you don’t know if you should laugh or feel terrible. So you do both.
Chapter 8 is the one where the talking stops and the killing starts. Rick Deckard has spent the last few chapters traveling, testing, arguing. Now he has to actually shoot someone. And it almost goes very wrong.
This chapter is one of my favorites in the whole book. Rick Deckard walks into the War Memorial Opera House, sits down in a dress circle seat, and listens to Mozart’s The Magic Flute. And for a few minutes, he just enjoys the music. He’s a bounty hunter on a kill list, but right now he’s an audience member, and the singing is beautiful.
Rick Deckard lands on the roof of the Mission Street Hall of Justice. It’s a fancy building, baroque spires, modern design, the works. There’s just one problem. He has never seen this building before in his life.
This chapter is tense from the first line to the last. And it ends with one of those quiet, devastating moments that Philip K. Dick does better than almost anyone.
This is the chapter that breaks Rick Deckard. Not physically. Not even professionally. Something worse. It breaks the wall between him and the things he kills.
John Isidore flies home from work carrying a bag of black-market groceries: bean curd, ripe peaches, stinky soft cheese. And under the seat, a bottle of Chablis wine he’s been keeping in a bank safety deposit box for years. He was saving it for this. For the day a girl finally appeared. That day is today.
The three surviving androids are finally in one place. Roy and Irmgard Baty have arrived at the decaying apartment building where Pris has been hiding. And J. R. Isidore, the lonely chickenhead who has been looking after Pris, is standing right there listening to everything.
This chapter starts with the androids’ vote and ends with Rick dialing Rachael Rosen from a dark hovercar. In between, he buys a goat, has a real moment with his wife, gets a call from his boss, and talks to God. It’s a lot for one chapter.
This is the chapter where everything gets personal. Not in an action movie way. In a quiet, bourbon-soaked, morally confusing hotel room kind of way.