Hey, if you like books.....

A pretty solid list. I'd have to include Frank Herbert's Dune series (especially God Emperor) and Clive Barker's Weaveworld. God Emperor is unique and I love the way Weaveworld mixes the ordinary with the fantastical, lots of contrasts that mix well.

I have read most of the SF on the list: 1984, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse 5, Never Let me Go...... at uni, we read Catch 22 and Middlemarch, there way have been one or two others. Middlemarch I found thoroughly depressing. 

No Phillip K Dicks I noticed. And I was surprised that from the good Nevil Shute there was only a Town like Alice, rather than On the Beach? I read the latter at 17 and had nightmsres for weeks afterwards. I suspect a war like that would be much messier than depicted here - it is absolute extinction of all human life, but really everyone just keeps enjoying what they already enjoyed doing, the lie back with their favourite drink and the cyanide pill. I think it was the thoroughly 50's stoicism of his characters that got me. 

Oh and I heard about and ordered the Connie Willis, The Domesday Book. Historians can travel on time but the girl student ends up witnessing the Black Death.

I did like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at the time, though it might seem a bit flaky for nowaday's tastes. He could have been on the spectrum....

I have read most of the SF on the list: 1984, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse 5, Never Let me Go...... at uni, we read Catch 22 and Middlemarch, there way have been one or two others. Middlemarch I found thoroughly depressing. 

No Phillip K Dicks I noticed. And I was surprised that from the good Nevil Shute there was only a Town like Alice, rather than On the Beach? I read the latter at 17 and had nightmsres for weeks afterwards. I suspect a war like that would be much messier than depicted here - it is absolute extinction of all human life, but really everyone just keeps enjoying what they already enjoyed doing, the lie back with their favourite drink and the cyanide pill. I think it was the thoroughly 50's stoicism of his characters that got me. 

Oh and I heard about and ordered the Connie Willis, The Domesday Book. Historians can travel on time but the girl student ends up witnessing the Black Death.

I did like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at the time, though it might seem a bit flaky for nowaday's tastes. He could have been on the spectrum....

No worries! Deckard's attitude to the Toad was kind of a transformation for Deckard for me. He found meaning in Mercer's reverence for the natural world and at the same time he had found empathy for the synthetic world because he kept it regardless of the outcome. He sort of found peace with the two aspects of sentience in that part. Out of all the fantastic things that happen in the book he finds his epiphany in something that we would take for granted. 

Ok had a bit of a doh moment there. He thought it was real but his wife then found the control panel. I thought it pointed at a profound pessimism, in terms of discerning any difference between the real and the ersatz

Thank you for confirming my suspicions about the goat but the toad had a control panel. It was a real synthetic though. Are synthetics real? That brings us back to the start.

Hopefully Attenborough's dead or attitudes have changed before he gives that voiceover! It did bring a smile to my face though!

And I must say I wonder if it is all humans who are like that? Or just so-called humans from industrially developed cultures?

Remember in the states, Australia and New Zealand, the so-called called savages in fact had a far more evolved understanding of our place within Nature, that we are part of it, than the newly-arrived Europeans did. It was not they that overfished the seas, created polluting factories, over farmed the land, drive the buffalo into near extinction?

The mentality that allows humans to create machines, factories, to keys, computers alongside robots may be what is also behind that inability to Ree that we are also so good at cutting off the branch we are sitting in. There is s kind of of a myopia there.

I am not saying that I would rather live in a nomadic tribe in a teepee necessarily as slavish adherence to custom can mean horrors like FGM too. 

Something is very wrong with s species though if it could justify having a nuclear war and push all other life into extinction beyondbtgat anywaylet alone with all the inequality that exists. 

Actually the other androids are spiteful and cruel too. The fugitive Pris is more than happy to bait the chickenhearted Isidore once she realises he is a retard, thanks to the radiation. 

I thought the pod people demonstrate better what it might mean to be less than human. In Invasion of the Body snatchers.

I doubt they had doughnuts in his time. They certainly had the plague. Other than that it was about Catholics being naughty and behaving badly, mainly by bringing lots of new little monks and nuns into this wicked world. 

Yes, the toad was real and an android killed the goat

Does that mean the NTs that secretly (or otherwise) wish to destroy me, see me as of value...

mmmmm.....

... like a hunting safari to kill the last Aspie...

cue David Attenborough’s dolcit tones from a nearby shrubbery...

”... here we have the trembling figure of an Aspie, alert, poised, dumbfounded and overwhelmed by its surroundings.., it must run and be free or freeze in shutdown, the hunter hypnotising its pray with small talk, illogical sentences and crazy bodily gesticulations...”

....

the last Aspie.....think of that..

”All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

on the other hand... empathy to other individuals and working for the good of the community.

...you mean... hope? Quiet, mute acceptance  that the current model is wrong? Or, not working, at least?

Henry Miller... Death of a Salesman! - yes!

Reading that link it's strange they never touched on Mercerism. Ironically they end up worshipping the things they have destroyed.

I was trying to tell them that the goat and the toad were a plot device for empathy. Empathy doesn't necessarily have to be positive. When she kills the goat she shows a clear understanding for empathy, Deckard barely manages the same level when he discovers the "mystical" toad is synthetic. Meanwhile he couldn't manage the same level of empathy for the Nexus-6 models. That theme for me was sort of thought provoking too. Was man's creation more in tune with the balance than gods in the context of the story. I'm going to read that link, should be interesting.

Phillip K Todger has a dim view of man imo! It served as great fuel for his imagination though!

How about the follow-up, "Lila"?

Have been meaning to go back to ZMM for a while. 

Henry Miller? I find the anti-establishment vibe in the two Tropics to be the likely reason for the 20th century bans. 

A recurring theme of the author is our relationship with the natural world and conversely ourselves and our own humanity.

”humans don’t just want to have contact with animals; they want to own them, thereby proving that they have time and the money to spend on the natural world. In the end, *** steers us toward the cynical conclusion that it’s human nature not only to love the environment but also to control it and thus ultimately destroy it. One of the few times in the novel when the android Rachel Rosen demonstrates a recognizably human emotion (spitefulness and cruelty) is when she pushes Rick Deckard’s goat off the roof, killing it. There’s something disturbingly human about Rachel’s act of vengeance: humans feel a tragic instinct to assert their power by conquering and destroying the natural world. In the book, the deserts surrounding San Francisco are concrete proof of mankind’s need to control the environment. Moreover, the fact that characters want to colonize other planets—asserting their control over new, unfamiliar environments—suggests that humans haven’t learned from their mistakes.“

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep/themes/animals-and-the-environment

There is a short story in Second Variety of a similar vein.. in which humans create a micro-cosmic world in which they can nurture their own mini species evolution. The winner in accepting the award smashes his own creation to the ground...

so man wants to kill its creator and kill what it controls

Funny you mention Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I was talking to someone how important the toad and the goat were the other day. They didn't get it.

I have no idea if it was attributed to Boccaccio but it is a common Italian saying, such as:

Non tutte le ciambelle riescono col buco.

Literally meaning “Not all doughnuts come out with a hole.”... or mistakes happen

This is getting silly!! Lol.

however I particularly enjoyed the short stories in Second Variety and consequently my first philosophy lecture was on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? As an opener on what it means to be human and the concept of killing your maker

 Phillip K Shlong had a problem with hardbacks. He was an amphetamine addict so they were few and far between.

Lol.. consequently... it might not 

The first suggestion might be hard.....