This scene is a tour de force; at the same"With the scissors Pris snipped off time that Pris is torturing the spider, an endless talk show which broadcasts 24 hours a day (Buster Friendly and his friendly friends) - Dick's morbidly funny take on the media - is debunking the "Mercerism" religion of compassion in the background. Philip Dick, with a very sure touch, shifts back and forth between Pris, the talk show host's revelations, and Isidore's reaction to both. Finally, Isidore can take no more and falls through the floor into the "tomb world", where he sees dead things coming back to life, and meets Mercer, who freely admits that he is a fraud but is undeniably human, therefore real, at the same time. He lifts Isidore from the tomb world and says (in Philip K. Dick's truest voice): "I lifted you from the tomb world just |
Isidore then returns back to the mainuntil you lose interest and want narrative to find that the spider, which Mercer had restored, is back alive again (after he had drowned it in the kitchen sink). Dick usually leaves a loose end like this one to avoid complete incorporation of the hallucinatory set- piece into the narrative - to let the reader know that the vision is more real than the life which it temporarily interrupted. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is |
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