Book Bearings
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- 224 pages · about 4 hours
- First published 1968
- 90 editions
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1 About this book
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (retrospectively titled Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in some later printings) is a 1968 dystopian science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, where Earth's life has been greatly damaged by a nuclear global war. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who has to "retire" (a euphemism for kill) six escaped Nexus-6 model androids, while a secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of low IQ who aids the fugitive androids.
The book served as the basis for the 1982 film Blade Runner, its 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049, and numerous other adaptations and spin-offs in other media.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Science fiction
- Adventure
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Androids
- Twenty-first century
- Bounty hunters
- Movie-TV Tie-In
- Movies
2 What to expect
A short science fiction novel set in a ruined San Francisco after a nuclear war, where a bounty hunter is paid to track down escaped androids that pass for human. The chase is the frame for questions about empathy, what separates people from machines, and the longing for real animals in a dying world. It is stranger, sadder and more philosophical than the film Blade Runner, with a religion and a home life that the film left out.
Good for readers who want: classic science fiction, what makes us human, and a short, strange read.
3 About Philip K. Dick
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Philip K. Dick
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