Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick (1968)
“A bounty hunter who kills androids for a living begins to wonder if he is one — and whether the question even matters.”
This page prints on a single page. Use Ctrl+P / Cmd+P.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick (1968) · 210pages · New Wave Science Fiction · 4 AP appearances
Summary
In a post-nuclear San Francisco, bounty hunter Rick Deckard is assigned to 'retire' six escaped Nexus-6 androids. To do so he must administer the Voigt-Kampff empathy test — which measures emotional responses and is the only thing distinguishing human from android. As he retires each android, his certainty about what constitutes life, empathy, and humanity erodes. Alongside his story runs John Isidore's, a 'chickenhead' — a radiation-diminished human — whose apartment is infiltrated by the escaped androids. Both men care for creatures that may not care back. The novel ends without resolution: Deckard returns to an empty apartment, finds a toad he believes is real, and discovers it is electric. It doesn't change how he holds it.
Why It Matters
Published to modest commercial response in 1968, the novel was transformed into a cultural landmark by Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner, which adapted it loosely but amplified its philosophical questions into the mainstream. The book is now among the most taught science-fiction texts in coll...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: Flat, functional prose punctuated by recursive philosophical anxiety — Dick writes in the cadence of a man who suspects his own thoughts
Narrator: Third-person limited, primarily attached to Rick but switching to Isidore. Dick's narrator is deliberately withholdin...
Figurative Language: Low
Historical Context
Late 1960s America — Vietnam, civil rights, nuclear anxiety, counter-culture: Dick wrote the novel at a moment when the American government was using institutional language to conduct a war that many citizens believed was morally catastrophic. The 'retirement' euphemism maps...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- The Voigt-Kampff test is the only legal instrument for distinguishing human from android. By the end of the novel, has it been proven reliable, unreliable, or something more complicated? Use Phil Resch, Luba Luft, and John Isidore as your three test cases.
- Dick uses two protagonists — Rick Deckard and John Isidore — running in parallel. What is gained structurally by telling both stories? What does each reveal about the other's worldview?
- Mercerism is revealed to be a fraud: Wilbur Mercer is a hired actor and the footage was shot on a back lot. Why does Dick include this revelation, and why does Isidore argue it doesn't matter?
- Why does Rick buy Luba Luft a book of Munch prints before arresting her? What does this gesture reveal about his state of mind — and about his relationship to the Voigt-Kampff test's conclusions?
- The word 'retire' is used throughout the novel to mean 'kill.' What is the effect of this linguistic choice? How does euphemism function in the world of the novel, and what does it do to Rick as a moral agent?
Notable Quotes
“I schedule an hour of self-recrimination. It's a legitimate setting, one I often use.”
“Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's aro...”
“He had abruptly come to the realization that the silence of the world could be heard. He had never really paid attention to it before; the TV had a...”
Why Read This
Because ChatGPT exists. The question this novel asks — how do you know if the thing talking to you is genuinely feeling anything, or simulating feeling well enough that the difference doesn't matter — is no longer science fiction. Dick wrote the p...