We Can Build You

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we can build you  
We Can Build You
By Philip K. Dick

Originally published in 1972
Trade paperback published by Vintage
Currently available

  Plot Summary:
Louis Rosen and his partners sell people--ingeniously designed, historically authentic simulacra of personages such as Edwin M. Stanton and Abraham Lincoln. The problem is that the only prospective buyer is a rapacious billionaire whose plans for the simulacra could land Louis in jail. Then there's the added complication that someone--or something--like Abraham Lincoln may not want to be sold.

Is an electronic Lincoln any less alive than his creators? Is a machine that cares and suffers inferior to the woman Louis loves--a borderline psychopath who does neither? With irresistible momentum, intelligence, and wit, Philip K. Dick creates an arresting techno-thriller that suggests a marriage of Bladerunner and Barbarians at the Gate.
  Reviews
"...We Can Build You is not one of Dick's greatest books (ie.not on a par with those mentioned above) but the themes are characteristically Dicksian and it is far from being a pot-boiler written with only the bank balance in mind. We Can Build You is a sombre and highly depressing novel in which Dick manages both to attain and to sustain a frighteningly realistic tone, despite some over-exaggeration in stressing the misery and frailty of human existence. ...Conspicious by its absence is the touch of Dick's superb inventiveness; there are no talking taxis to lighten the atmosphere. Incidentally, and unusually for Dick, the story is told entirely in the first person, lending even more weight to the didactic nature of the book."
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    Review by Any Muir, 1978.


The "We Can Build You" Cover Art Gallery

We Can Build You
We Can Build You 2
We Can Build You 3
We Can Build You 4
We Can Build You 5
We Can Build You 6 (Dutch)
We Can Build You 7 (French)
We Can Build You 8 (French)
We Can Build You 9 (French) Artist: Raymond Hermange
We Can Build You 10 (Finnish)
We Can Build You 11
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