Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel was the source material for Blade Runner, but the book is a stranger and sadder thing than the film. In a near-future San Francisco that has lost most of its population to off-world colonies after a nuclear war, Rick Deckard is a married, mortgage-burdened bounty hunter who retires rogue androids for the police. His new contract is six brand-new Nexus-6 models who have killed their owners and slipped onto Earth. Around the procedural plot Dick weaves a religion called Mercerism in which empathy itself is the sacrament, an obsession with owning living animals after most species have died out, and the disturbing question of whether his prey or, more uncomfortably, Rick himself are real people. Funny, mournful, philosophically restless, the novel is one of Dick's most enduring.
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In a radioactive post-war San Francisco, bounty hunter Rick Deckard is assigned to retire six escaped Nexus-6 androids. The job will pay for a real animal to replace the electric sheep on his roof.
Blade Runner is loosely adapted from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The film keeps the central premise of a bounty hunter tracking androids but cuts major elements of the novel including Mercerism, Buster Friendly, and the live-animal economy.
No. Philip K. Dick's prose is direct and propulsive. The novel is around 250 pages and is widely considered a strong entry point to his work.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was written by Philip K. Dick, published in 1968 by Random House Publishing Group.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is 224 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? takes most readers 3 to 5 hours to finish.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a standalone novel by Philip K. Dick, not part of a series.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
