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Get startedHow to Build an Android
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Learn moreThe stranger-than-fiction story of the ingenious creation and loss of an artificially intelligent android of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick
In 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.
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.
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
“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.”
“This story is touching, absorbing and, ultimately, an exploration of what it means to be human.”
“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.”
“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.”
“An enjoyable book that reads more like a memoir than a history; highly recommended to anyone with an interest in robotics or modern technology.”
“Literally incredible.”
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