Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
1968
- androids
- fiction
- rick deckard (fictitious character)
- science fiction
- twenty-first century
- open_syllabus_project
- bounty hunters
- fiction, science fiction, general
- movie-tv tie-in
- movies
The story
It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignment--find them and then..."retire" them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn't want to be found!
What it’s like
Bleak, rain-soaked and slightly paranoid, with a dry, wry undertow that keeps it from tipping into despair. Dick's prose is plain and brisk, full of flat declaratives, abrupt shifts and odd domestic detail: a dying landscape of dust storms, dead animals, cheap ersatz pets and drab apartment blocks under a perpetually overcast sky. The sensory world is sepia and grey rather than neon, with the hum of hovercars, the ache of empty streets and the mood-organ's artificial emotions reinforcing a sense of manufactured feeling. Pacing is steady and restless, with long interior stretches of Deckard's doubt punctuated by sudden encounters, and the emotional register is melancholy and existential, circling questions of empathy and what makes a life worth living. Intensity is moderate: some shootings and a violent confrontation or two, handled matter-of-factly, with no gore and little sexual content. It suits a rainy weekend, a late-night read, or a reader who likes philosophical unease wrapped in noir-tinged procedural tension. It is for people who enjoy thoughtful, unsettling science fiction with a human heart beneath the cold surface.
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