Today we are looking at something a little different from last week. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick was published in 1968. It is probably best known as the literary source for the Ridley Scott movie Blade Runner (1982), but in the movie, through a manuscript written and re-written countless times, shares only a few aspects with the book. Cyberpunk noir, this is not.
The book opens with a quarrel between a man, our protagonist Rick Deckard, and his wife, Iran. What follows is the story of Rick’s last day on the job, hunting down escaped androids (humanoid machines) and terminating them. The way an android is discerned from a real human being is by way of the empathy test, a series of questions meant to evoke emotional responses. In this post-nuclear world, San Fransisco to be exact, the wealthiest and smartest people have all escaped to colonies on Mars. Escaped the toxic environment of Earth were most forms of life have been eradicated. What is left of humanity desperately clings to a notion that they are better than machines, who pose an obvious threat to their dominance, in that they are more suitable to adapt to the new conditions of life. The government stresses the importance of empathy, caring for each other and feeling each others pain, namely through the empathy box, a device that lets the user join the collective experience of a man, Mercer, who’s Sisyphus-like struggle is meant to encourage empathy. People are also incentivised to vest their empathy in a living animal, which are rare and very expensive. Rick and his wife own a sheep, which grasses lazily on the roof of their apartment building. Rick tends the sheep and cares for it, something which the androids, supposedly, would be unable to do, but the reader soon discovers that the sheep is fake, or rather artificial, bought by Rick when the real sheep died. No one can know, not even Iran, since a live animal carries status. To replace the electric sheep Rick must kill 6 escaped androids, but through the day, ticking off the names on his list, he is filled with thoughts of doubt and contempt for his task. Are the machines really devoid of humanity? What does that even mean?
Herein lies the brilliance of Philip K. Dick’s story. It is about being human. It is about the post-human condition of being a cog in the great machine, being fooled and being controlled. People’s quest for humanity, for what the machines lack, turns into consumerism. Since most cannot afford real animals, they end up with a replica of the thing they seek, undermining the whole enterprise.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is science-fiction for those who want to avoid the pimpled juvenility of Flash Gordon or Barbarella. What this book does, and what many other books in Philip K. Dicks authorship do, is to handle serious topics in the context of science-fiction tropes, hover-cars, humanoid robots etc. Do Androids… is the best of the bunch. Anyone looking for a thoughtful and (still) relevant book aught to pick this up.
Buy it from Amazon or AbeBooks.
For those so inclined:
A paper on the post-human theme of Do Androids… Click here.
Paperback Rider 