Product Description

World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal -- the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life. Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were never that simple, and his assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit -- and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5850 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a book that most people think they remember, and almost always get more or less wrong. Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner took a lot from it, and threw a lot away; wonderful in itself, it is a flash thriller where Dick's novel is a sober meditation. As we all know, bounty hunter Rick Deckard is stalking a group of androids returned from space with short life spans and murder on their minds--where Scott's Deckard was Harrison Ford, Dick's is a financially over-stretched municipal employee with bills to pay and a depressed wife. In a world where most animals have died, and pet-keeping is a social duty, he can only afford a robot imitation, unless he gets a big financial break. The genetically warped "chickenhead" John Isidore has visions of a tomb-world where entropy has finally won. And everyone plugs in to the spiritual agony of Mercer, whose sufferings for the sins of humanity are broadcast several times a day. Prefiguring the religious obsessions of Dick's last novels, this asks dark questions about identity and altruism. After all, is it right to kill the killers just because Mercer says so? --Roz Kaveney

Review
Those who come to Dick's marvellous novel (one of the defining books of the genre) after seeing the film Blade Runner will be surprised to find that Ridley Scott strip-mined Dick's novel for its powerful plot and futuristic detail, but threw away all the mordant humour. The tale of bounty hunter Rick Deckard, on the trail of murderous androids, is far more complex and allusive in its literary version, and remains a kaleidoscopic nightmare of false appearances and breathtaking concepts. The acclaim that has greeted the book over the years is more than ever justified by reading it in the late 1990s: so many SF visions of the future have dated badly, but this most famous book by the man who is generally regarded as one of its most influential practitioners is unmissable. New readers would do well to start here but be warned - you'll probably be rushing out to buy his other 70 or so books. (Kirkus UK)

Mr. Dick's hero Deckard lives in a dying world where animals are a status symbol; you can dial an emotion to fit a mood and the Voigt-Kampff test for telling an android from its human counterpart appears to have become fallible. It's an empathy test...how would you respond to a purse made of homo sapiens baby hide? But it also seems that schizoids fit the android psychological (?) make-up. A problem for Deckard since he's an android bounty-hunter who only pauses long enough to go to bed with one of them. Even electric sheep could find greener pastures. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was born in Chicago but lived in California for most of his life. He went to college at Berkeley for a year, ran a record store and had his own classical-music show on a local radio station. He published his first short story, 'Beyond Lies the Wub' in 1952. Among his many fine novels are The Man in the High Castle, Time Out of Joint, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.

Customer Reviews

Science Fiction, Suspense and Philosophy
I became a rabid fan of Philip K. Dick from the first novel of his that I read. All of his books are excellent, and this one ranks as one of the best. Unlike a lot of sci-fi writers Dick's background is in philosophy which was his major as a student at UCLA Berkeley. The plot of this book is well-known from the movie:the human race in tatters, the natural world is slipping away, androids escape to earth and bounty hunters track them down to eliminate them. The book brings up some interesting questions. Are humans becoming more like machines or machines becoming more like humans? As machines become more human-like do their rights as living creatures increase? Does technology bring us closer to creating life or destroying it? The great thing about Dick books are that the questions they stir in us are endless. From an entertainment point of view this one provides fast dialogue, constant surprises and a perspective like none other.

Empathy, Androids and Enigmas
The book is a masterwork but do not expect the Bladerunner film. The same ideas and themes are there but they are developed in a different way. The book is more subtle. It explores how empathy is used as the defining test of androids. They are more intelligent than humans but they do not get empathy and so they are dumb. But the interesting thing about empathy is how it affects the "blade runners".

The story is as complex as the film with a parallel world of police and bounty hunters that do not know of each other but that been infiltrated by androids and here for me there is a plot problem, but maybe it isn't maybe Dick meant something else, maybe he meant people to come to the same conclusions as the film but he is not around to ask.

blade runner ?
i watched blade runner as a young boy and loved the story , so i thought i would give electric sheep a go , the vision of dick i found is amazing and some of the ideas in the book are starting to come true, but all that said i was disappoint with the book , it was my own fault because i wanted blade runner and got k dicks vision of it . ridley scotts story i found was far developed from the k dick , which is easy really i suppose. but before reading be awhere that this is not blade runner? but with an open mind give it a go.