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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

By Philip K. Dick

(372)

| Paperback | 9780752864303

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Book Description

"The most consistently brilliant science fiction writer in the world."
--John Brunner
THE INSPIRATION FOR BLADERUNNER. . .
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published in 1968. Grim and foreboding, even today it is a masterpiece ahead of its time.
By 2021, the World War had killedContinue

Critics

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick

World War Terminus is over, and Earth is in ruins. While most people have emigrated to Mars, some continue to live their lives on Earth while radioactivity slowly impairs their brain and reproductive function. Upon emigrating to Mars, all citizens we ... (read full critics)

thebookbag published on Tue, 28 Sep 2010

Kick over the Scenery

When an art form or genre once dismissed as kids’ stuff starts to get taken seriously by gatekeepers – by journals, for example, such as the one you are reading now – respect doesn’t come smoothly, or all at once. Often one artist gets lifted above t ... (read full critics)

lrb published on Mon, 6 Sep 2010

15 Reviews

2 people find this helpful

This is the 1968 novel that inspired "Blade Runner", the notorious Ridley Scott's movie whose worldwide, enduring success almost obliterated the book. However, compared to Scott's cold, purely aesthetical film, the novel has much more to offer. In the movie the plot was subordinated to powerful visu ... (continue)

This is the 1968 novel that inspired "Blade Runner", the notorious Ridley Scott's movie whose worldwide, enduring success almost obliterated the book. However, compared to Scott's cold, purely aesthetical film, the novel has much more to offer. In the movie the plot was subordinated to powerful visuals, while an already light script got further diluted in two hours of impersonal detours through suggestive sceneries. Emotions and reflections were almost absent. As a matter of fact, if some lines of the movie's script are sometimes remembered by the fans, these are the pathetic monologue uttered by the dying android Rutger Hauer in one of the final scenes (which, interestingly, is no Dick's original material).
The novel is very different. The plot is clearly visible there, while the futuristic setting is no superficial gimmick but serves to lay down all those moral paradoxes about humanity, artificial life, and the nature of emotions that make up the story. Throughout the novel there is an ongoing introspection by the main character Rick Deckard, which could simply not be rendered in the movie by the inexpressive Harrison Ford. Some fundamental leitmotifs in the book are also missing in the movie. The most prominent one is the high symbolic value owned by living (i.e. non-robotic) pets in the future world. There, the extincion of many animal species by a devastating nuclear war has made pets invaluable signs of social distinction among humans. Deckard cannot afford an expensive living pet and has to content himself with an artificial one, an electric version of a "black-faced Suffolk ewe". Deckard devotes himself to the care of his non-sentient pet for the sake of social acceptance, but by doing so he eventually subordinates himself to a machine. This generates a repulsion towards robots in him ("He thought, too, about his need for a real animal; within him an actual hatred once more manifested itself towards his electric sheep, which he had to tend, had to care about, as if it lived. The tyranny of an object, he thought. It doesn't know I exist. Like the androids, it had no ability to appreciate the existence of another."). The robotic pet, as a "subform" of the much more sophisticated androids, easily reveals its lack of empathy to Deckard and, in turn, helps him to shed a light on the fundamental limits of the androids, although those limits are so well concealed under the finest of technologies. Chasing androids is thus not only a job for Deckard, but primarily a statement against the superiority that machines have over humans as a consequence of their lack of emotional constraints. To fight his enemies, Deckard has to dehumanize himself and get rid of the internal conflicts that his empathic instincts create in his conscience. He has to lower himself to the same level of his hated opponents. By the end of the book, Deckard will discover that this game is going too far when he has to face a female-robot which is the exact copy of another android he has possibly fallen in love with.
Many other intriguing themes can be found in the book, which are all totally absent in the movie. For example "Mercerism", a sort of religion which appears to be a rudimental form of Christianity spread by its prophet Wilbur Mercer, and targeted at the "specials", namely persons with an underperforming intelligence that are excluded by society and live segregated in metropolitan suburbs. Mercerism is practiced through a machine which allows mental fusion between all church members and therefore recalls the main theme of empathy as a distinctive human sign. On the other side, as it is easy to imagine, androids maintain a sarcastic contempt towards Mercerism, which is considered by them as an elementary system of values set up to deceive simple (human) minds.
There is much more to this book than in this review. I can just recommend its reading to anyone who loves philosophy at work in science fiction.

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Felino De Gattis said on Apr 14, 2011 about the Others edition | 2 feedbacks

1 person find this helpful

What is human?

A bounty hunter paid by the police department has to kill 6 escaped androids in one day. The difficult but monetarily rewarding job, though, turns out to be much more challenging for the protagonist than ever in the past, and makes him start to ask himself questions, and eventually brings him to a k ... (continue)

A bounty hunter paid by the police department has to kill 6 escaped androids in one day. The difficult but monetarily rewarding job, though, turns out to be much more challenging for the protagonist than ever in the past, and makes him start to ask himself questions, and eventually brings him to a kind of mystic experience that will change his life.
The sci-fi setting and dark atmosphere of this book are just a pretext for the author to talk about profound and interesting questions, such as: what can we consider human nature? Has humanity lost touch with its roots and bound with nature in this age of technology? How important is ecology? And so on.
And by the way, if you have seen Blade Runner, and think you know everything about this book, you are completely wrong.

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Zugi ☯ said on May 14, 2009 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

A morality play disguised as a sci-fi novel.

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Readingrat said on Apr 8, 2008 | Add your feedback

" do androids dream of electric sheeps? "

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kovalski said on Dec 18, 2011 | Add your feedback

is your dog electric?

Not my kind of SciFi but I found it interesting.
It's a really sad story. In a post post apocalyptic world a man has to "Ritire" bad androids, but during his job finds something new. A change that put at risk his life and his mind.
Androids and electric pets. A depressed wife and a very attractive ... (continue)

Not my kind of SciFi but I found it interesting.
It's a really sad story. In a post post apocalyptic world a man has to "Ritire" bad androids, but during his job finds something new. A change that put at risk his life and his mind.
Androids and electric pets. A depressed wife and a very attractive female android.
note:Fight scenes are weak.

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Fayd said on May 15, 2011 | Add your feedback

I watched the movie first, and I found the book to be less dark than the movie, although the general mood was pretty sombre. The religious aspect of the story was played up a lot, and I finished the book feeling as if there was a lot of symolism I'd missed. Oh well; I enjoyed it nonetheless.

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oldladyofchertsey said on Jul 5, 2010 | Add your feedback