| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? | |
Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | Philip K. Dick |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Publication date | 1968 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 210 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-345-40447-5 |
| Followed by | Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human |
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), by Philip K. Dick, is a science fiction novel about Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter of androids in San Francisco, California. It is a definitive, science fiction exploration of the ethical dimensions inherent to the android concept[1] literary device, in order to understand the persecution of a person based upon artificial distinctions such as "ethnic group".
In 1982, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples' loose, cinematic adaptation became the film Blade Runner (1982). For that reason, later (post-1982) editions of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? were titled Blade Runner.
Contents |
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? occurs in 1992 [2021, in some editions], years after the radioactive fallout of World War Terminus destroyed most of Earth. The U.N. encourage emigration to off-world colonies, in hope of preserving the human race from the terminal effects of the fallout. One emigration incentive is giving each emigrant an “andy” — a servant android.
The remaining populace live in cluttered, decaying cities wherein radiation poisoning sickens them and damages their genes. All animals are endangered; owning and caring for one is a civic virtue, and a social status symbol, per the animal's rarity. They are bought and sold as priced in “Sidney's Catalog” — which includes extinct species, marked “E”, and currently unavailable animals, marked in italic text and at the last price paid. People who cannot afford a real animal buy an electric animal for the sake of social status. The protagonist, Rick Deckard, owned a sheep, but it died of tetanus, and he replaced it with an electric sheep, thus maintaining his illusion of animal ownership.
Androids are used only in the Martian colonies, yet many escape to Earth, fleeing the psychological isolation and chattel slavery; although organic and indistinguishable from humans, they are considered things. Police bounty hunters, such as Rick Deckard, hunt and “retire” (kill) fugitive androids passing for human. Afterwards, the killed android's bone marrow is tested to confirm it was not a human. Because of anatomic vagus nerve differences, an android can commit suicide by holding his or her breath. Androids live some four years, because they cannot reproduce most life-function cells.
Early androids were detectable, because of their limited intelligence. As androids were improved, bounty hunters had to apply empathy tests — the Boneli Test and the Voight-Kampff — distinguishing human from android, by measuring blushing, involuntary eye movement, and responses to emotional questions about harming animals. Because androids are unempathic, their responses are either absent or fake — measurably slower than a human's; the simpler Boneli Test measures the reflex-arc velocity in the spinal column's upper ganglia.
People cope with existential angst using the “Penfield Mood Organ” (by neurologist Wilder Penfield), to inducing feeling by availing the user of a selection of moods, e.g. "awareness of the manifold possibilities of the future", the "desire to watch television, no matter what's on it"; the "pleased acknowledgement of husband's superior wisdom in all matters", and the "desire to dial". Users schedule their moods — even a depression — which contradicts the mood organ's cheerful purpose.
The Earth's most significant cultural icon, Buster Friendly, is a jovial talk show host whose simultaneous radio and television programs are broadcast twenty-three hours daily. Roy Baty identifies him as an android. Buster Friendly ideologically competes with Mercerism, openly attacking it in his programs.
Mercerism is a prominent religious/philosophical movement on Earth. The movement is based on the legend of Wilbur Mercer, a man who lived before the war. Adherents of Mercerism grip the handles of an electrically powered empathy box, while viewing a monitor which displays patterns that are meaningless until the handles are gripped. After a short interval the user's senses are transported to the world of Wilbur Mercer, where they inhabit his mind in an experience shared with any other people using an empathy box at that moment.
Mercerism blends the concept of a life-death-rebirth deity with the values of unity and empathy. According to legend, Mercer had the power to revive dead animals, but local officials used radioactive cobalt to nullify the part of his brain where the ability originated. This forced Mercer into the "tomb world." He strives to reverse the decay of the tomb world and ascend back to Earth by climbing an enormous hill. His adversaries throw rocks at him along the way (inflicting actual physical injuries on the adherents "fused" with Mercer), until he reaches the top, when the cycle starts again, much like the plight of Sisyphus.
Rick Deckard, an active bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police Department, prepares for a typical work day. He feeds his electric sheep, as usual, to prevent his neighbour's suspecting its artifice, and his wife, Iran, stays at home, under the influences of the empathy box and the mood organ.
At the police station, he learns that Dave Holden, the senior bounty hunter, was incapacitated by a Nexus-6 android, the most advanced humanoid to date. Deckard is chosen to find and "retire" (kill) the six remaining Nexus-6 androids who are hiding in metropolitan San Francisco. Deckard goes to the Seattle headquarters of the Rosen Association, manufacturers of the Nexus-6 android, to confirm that the Voigt-Kampff empathy test works on the latest android model. There, he meets Rachael Rosen, a sharp-tongued, brunette woman claiming to be heiress to the company.
Rachael Rosen is the first test subject; she is an android. The Rosens then tell Deckard that Rachael, in fact, is a schizoid human being — thus invalidating the Voigt-Kampff test, and so requiring a new empathy test. Deckard asks a last question, testing her reaction to a fabric supposedly made from human baby skin. Rachael's delayed emotional response conclusively demonstrates her android nature.
Deckard returns to San Francisco to begin his work. After searching the apartment of Max Polokov, the first Nexus-6 android in his retirement list, Rachael telephones Deckard, offering her help; he dismisses her offer. Deckard meets with W.P.O. agent Sandor Kadalyi, from Russia, who is Polokov. Later, Deckard and Polokov struggle in the hovercar; he shoots Polokov in the head with his still-holstered .38 Magnum pistol.
Next, he goes to see opera singer Luba Luft. After his failed attempt to administer the Voigt-Kampff test to her, she calls the police, claiming Deckard is a sexual deviant; the police take him to a headquarters he did not know exists. There, he is sent to officer Garland, his next retirement target, and is introduced to Phil Resch, that HQ's bounty hunter, who, in light of Polokov's android identification, conflicts with Garland about administering the Boneli Reflex-Arc test (a simpler, Voigt-Kampff test variant) to the station's policemen. Resch goes to fetch the test kit, while Garland draws a laser tube, but he hesitates shooting Resch until he re-enters the office. Anticipating his reaction, the quicker Resch shoots Garland; Deckard and Resch escape the police station, to find and kill the opera singer Luba Luft.
After killing Luft at an art gallery, Deckard administers the Voigt-Kampff test to Resch, who, fearfully, suspects himself an android, after unwittingly working with them for two years. Given Resch's eager killing, Deckard believes him inhuman, but, to Resch's relief, he passes the empathy test. Deckard then becomes concerned about the degree of his empathy with androids; to ethically reassure himself, he buys a real goat.
The last three androids are hiding in an abandoned, suburban, apartment building, living with John R. Isidore, a "chickenhead" (officially, a "Special", whose intelligence is too radiation-deteriorated to be allowed off Earth). Despite his kindness to them, they are indifferent to him, demonstrating the android's typical lack of empathy. When they find a spider, they tear off its legs, singly, to see how many it needs to walk. Meanwhile, at his home, Deckard is connected to his empathy box; Mercer talks with him, saying that doing the wrong thing is sometimes necessary.
Deckard's boss insists he kill all the remaining androids in the same day, to surprise them. Deciding he needs Rachael's help, they meet in a hotel room in San Francisco. There, they drink antique bourbon, and, after reviewing the remaining retirements, act upon their sexual attraction. Afterwards, in the hovercar, Rachael tells him she seduced nine other bounty hunters, to stop them hunting androids, and that only Phil Resch remained a bounty hunter after her seduction. At that, he threatens killing her, but wavers; Rachael won a minor victory, but he continues on assignment.
The bounty hunter reaches Isidore's building to hunt androids. During the hunt, Mercer appears to Deckard, saving him from being shot in the back by Pris Stratton — a Nexus-6 android identical to Rachael Rosen — on killing her, he then kills the other two.
At home, Rick Deckard learns that Rachael Rosen went there and pushed his goat off the roof. To clear his mind, he takes "one last trip" north in his hovercar, to the radioactive Oregon desert. He walks uphill, like Mercer, and is struck with a rock, whereupon, he quickly returns to his hovercar, and finds a live toad buried in the sand. Back home, Iran Deckard finds a control panel in the toad's belly — it is electric; Rick is too exhausted to mind. When he is asleep, Iran orders artificial flies for the artificial toad.
In 2009, the book will be adapted as a stage play titled Łowca Androidów (Android Hunter, also the Polish title of the movie Blade Runner) by Polish director Grzegorz Wiśniewski. The play will premiere in June 2009 in Teatr Wybrzeże in Gdańsk[2].
Three novels intended to serve as sequels to both Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner have been published: Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996), Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon (2000). The official and authorized novels were written by Philip K. Dick's friend K. W. Jeter. They continue the story of Rick Deckard and attempt to resolve many of the differences between the novel and the film.
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