A scion in the Science Fiction realm, Philp K. Dick is one the genre's truly unique individuals, authoring over 30 novels
and countless short stories all expanding the boundaries of modern literature. Like many gifted though unconventional writers, Dick's artistic vision has come into the public conscience via Hollywood; most notably with Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner based on Dick's futuristic dystopian novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The movie quickly became a cult hit and is still unanimously praised as a cinematic masterpiece..
In a world ravaged by nuclear war and the military-industrial complex, li
fe in the purely organic sense has become almost obsolete. While advancements in science have helped preserve much of humanity, plants and animals are all but extinct. With radiation fallout imminent, humans meeting certain requirements are routinely encouraged to emigrate to fledgling colonies on Mars where, as an added incentive, each is paired with a servant android, or "andy"..
Though androids are manufactured robots indistinguishable from humans, each are programmed with enough innate intellectual capacities to simulate psychological sensitivities, a condition giving rise to renegade behavior and rogue droids clandestinely infiltrating earth's population. Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter in charge of rounding up and "retiring" six escaped Nexus-6 model androids, some of the most advanced and therefore most threatening forms of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile truck driver John Isidore, labeled a "special" for defective medical problems, deals with being relegated as substandard within the human realm and subsequently being denied potential emigration to the more desirable planetary colonies.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is ultimately a book about what it means to be human; and, furthermore, man's exploitation of technology at the expense of nature. From Deckard's personal war against the d
roids to the irony of John Isidore's "special" qualities and planet earth's post-apocalyptic decrepitude, it's a story emphasizing the contradictory atmosphere of "real life". Man's dissident caretaking of the natural world and the faulty side-effects of man-made innovations hold staggering consequences. Rather than improving on the inadequacies of existence, technology has wrought the demise of "life" in the purest sense; and while humanity has survived, the biological world is a mere degenerate habitat now infested by man's own 'personal recreations'.
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