Lágrimas en la lluvia by Rosa MonteroMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Like Tears in the Rain" by Rosa Montero.
I read the book in the original language which is Castilian.
Here are my thoughts on the first book of a trilogy that was recommended by a friend. My friend is an author in her own rights. She has recently tasted science fiction and is enjoying it. So I won't spoil things for her :-). The story is based on the Philip K Dick Universe. He was a very interesting author with serious mental issues. Nobody perfect, you will see these issues in his writings and books.
The entire setting for this particular book branches out from his novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". It was later Rewritten as Blade Runner and continuous in Blade Runner 2049. There have also been various books written stemming from that universe; not all of them follow a sequential timeline.
In the original book, The Androids were made using organic material, this is a contradiction of the definition of what an android is. Androids are usually mechanical and synthetic in nature according to your average science fiction lore. For example, Data of Star Trek the Next Generation is an android; he is mechanical or synthetic in nature, but his behavior is human-like which makes people believe around him believe he's an actual living thing and not an artificially created one. In the reimagined Battlestar Galactica this problem is solved by renaming organic Androids as Cylons which make them a separate branch of mechanical and bioengineering or sophisticated cybernetic organisms the only problem that they have is that they cannot reproduce.
In Blade Runner, they are no longer Androids but bio-engineered humans. Not Cylons. Not clones, just humans with certain abilities. For example, her combat replicants have feline eyes for night vision.(biologically she is wrong, feline eyes are to control light during the day, and some cat species eyes are just like most mammals) Here is where Rosa Montero diverges (keep in mind I read this in another language and definitions will be different). In Montero's books, she refers sometimes to the replicants as androids and vice-versa. In Blade Runner the replicants are intentionally programmed to die after 4 years we called them the Nexus 6 model. In Rosa Montero's book they died of TTT after 10 years.
She also wants her book to be different in the sense that she refers to the original Blade Runner book a few times. The title of her book is a line from the replicant Roy Batty right before he dies. And her anti-hero Bruna Husky refers to Blade Runner a few times. There are many other similarities that if you are familiar with Philip K.Dick's novel you will find entertaining.
As for the plot or the storyline, it is an interesting one but common in fact it was so, that I couldn't figure it out I don't know if it because my language skills are rusty, or I was distracted with other things but it is a good detective story, and it also deals with many of the prejudices and biases we see today in a multicultural world. Because it is a trilogy I will get the other books in time if I am still around in the meantime I highly recommend the book.
And those are my thoughts and remember I am just a... Well, look at the title of my blog.
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