How to Build an Android
The True Story of Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection

Name: How to Build an Android
Brand: Blackstone Audiobooks
Availability: InStock
Author: David F. Dufty
ISBN: 9781483086804

Author: David F. Dufty

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot

Unabridged: 7 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Published: 06/05/2012

Categories: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Technology & Engineering, Robotics

Synopsis

The stranger-than-fiction story of the ingenious creation and loss of an artificially intelligent android of science fiction writer Philip K. DickIn December 2005, a young robotocist on his way to Google headquarters lost an overnight bag on a flight somewhere between Dallas and Las Vegas. In it was the fully functional head of an android replica of Philip K. Dick, cult science fiction writer and counterculture guru. It has never been recovered.In a story that echoes some of the most paranoid fantasies of a Dick novel, listeners will get a fascinating inside look at the scientists and technology that made this amazing android possible. The author, who was a fellow researcher at the University of Memphis Institute for Intelligent Systems while the android was being built, introduces listeners to the cutting-edge technology in robotics, artificial intelligence, and sculpture that came together in this remarkable machine and captured the imagination of scientists, artists, and science fiction fans alike. There are also great stories about Dick himself—his inspired yet deeply pessimistic worldview, his bizarre lifestyle, and his enduring creative legacy. In the tradition of popular science classics such as Packing for Mars and The Disappearing Spoon, How to Build an Android is entertaining and informative—popular science at its best.

About David F. Dufty

David F. Dufty is a senior research officer at the Australian Bureau of Statistics. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Memphis at the time the android was being developed and worked closely with the team of scientists who created it. He completed a psychology degree with honors at the University of Newcastle and has a PhD in psychology from Macquarie University.

About Bronson Pinchot

Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Chad on March 25, 2017

Don't fall asleep when you have a million dollar head in the overhead compartment!......more

Goodreads review by Alicea on May 09, 2017

How to Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick's Robotic Resurrection by David F. Dufty covers the creation of a robotic incarnation of the famous sci-fi author which (according to its creators) has the ability to learn as it communicates with humans i.e. it is self-aware. The novelty of......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on September 29, 2022

I had a very mixed reaction to this book. I'm into Philip K. Dick, I am interested in artificial intelligence and robotics, and this book delivered lots of repeatable factoids in those arenas. BUT it also kept rubbing me the wrong way. I understand that this is a book of non-fiction and that the maj......more

Goodreads review by Patrick on September 11, 2016

Really interesting and worthwhile book ... still feels relevant even if the main events of the book mostly took place a little over a decade ago. I.E. issues like starting to blur the line between artificial and regular intelligence, and whether to 'immortalise' people like Phillip K Dick in android......more

Goodreads review by Benjamin on June 17, 2021

First, a spoiler warning; the last sentence of this review is going to tell you the end of the story, BUT, the introduction of the book does the same, so I don't think I'm giving anything away. In fact, the choice to disclose the end of the story in the introduction probably reduced my enjoyment of......more

Quotes

“You’ve got to love a book that includes physics-lecturing fish, android Einsteins, and researchers intent on building robot replicas of their wives and girlfriends. Not to mention Philip K. Dick himself. This is an instant classic of weird science.” Alex Boese, bestselling author of Elephants on Acid and Electric Sheep

“This story is touching, absorbing and, ultimately, an exploration of what it means to be human.” Spectator

“Dufty engagingly chronicles the efforts of a team of University of Memphis roboticists to build an android modeled on science fiction writer Philip K. Dick…A fun read.” Publishers Weekly

“It’s good that true story appears in this book’s subtitle because it could easily pass, with very minor tweaks, for something produced by the prodigious imagination of late sf writer Philip K. Dick…A fascinating and mind-bending book, written for the general reader, although experts in the field of robotics will find it particularly stimulating, and fans of Dick’s oeuvre will be captivated by the whole idea of turning the legendary storyteller into a mechanical man.” Booklist

“An enjoyable book that reads more like a memoir than a history; highly recommended to anyone with an interest in robotics or modern technology.” Library Journal

“Literally incredible.” Age