Spookhouse, Volume 2 Book

The only exposure I've had with Philip K. Dick's science fiction before reading this graphic novel adaptation of his story was to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. I saw the former on a grainy Betamax tape more than a dozen years ago and the latter when it was on rotation on HBO.I even wrote a short easy on Blade Runner as required after the school sanctioned viewing. I did some basic research on it and that was when the internet was still young and didn't have much content available (no Wikipedia). I found out that it was based on Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? a seminal work that would soon inspire a lot of creative people, like Scott, the director of the film.

After reading the graphic novel, I realized if I thought about it, this short story can serve as a sequel to the film. The movie ended without resolving the lead character's ambiguous humanity. The opening scene in Electric Ant has its lead waking up with a missing hand and being told by the hospital staff that he wasn't human but an android electricant or electric ant. The character had no idea that he was a robot as he was programmed to do so.

Still they are different stories and with different themes. Blade Runner asked the question, that if an android replicant can feel empathy, would that make it human? Would emotions be the Blue Fairy that grants the replicants their humanity denied them by their human creators? Electric Ant answers that question with a question of its own, "why be human?", when you can be a god and control your own reality.

In experiencing these two works, the author uses science fiction to explore concepts that humanity has used to distinguish itself from lower life forms. Can an android be human if it can feel emotion? If a machine develops a glitch in its programming and transcends it and gain free will, has it become human?

This book is more serious fare than the superhero comics I've been reading lately. I was able to finish it in a day. It is an excellent adaptation though I think a five issue miniseries is overly long. It can be done in an oversized issue perhaps. It is just a short story after all.