73 pages • 2 hours read
Philip K. DickDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Background
Cultural Context: Film Adaptation and Blade Runner
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published in 1968 and the film rights to the novel were sold shortly after. Throughout the 1970s, numerous screenwriters attempted to fashion the novel into a working film script, but Philip K. Dick was not impressed with the results. By 1977, an approved script was finished, and British director Ridley Scott officially joined the project in 1980, 22 years after the novel’s publication. Scott was a relatively new director but had achieved commercial and critical success with his 1979 sci-fi film Alien. Dick was pleased with the test footage shot by Scott that demonstrated the special effects that would be used in the film. Dick felt that the special effects closely matched the world he imagined when writing his novel.
Scott requested numerous changes to the script, the most prominent of which was the title. Instead of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Scott preferred to use a phrase that he borrowed from an unproduced film plot outline by William S. Burroughs. The Burroughs project adapted a 1974 novel by Alan E. Nourse titled The Bladerunner. After securing the rights to this undeveloped film, Scott was able to change the title of the ongoing project from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to the now-infamous Blade Runner. Scott cast Harrison Ford, who played Han Solo in Star Wars, in the lead role of Rick Deckard, which lent to the film’s sci-fi bona fides. Dick died in 1982, shortly before the film’s release. Blade Runner was dedicated to him.
Although the script was very different from his novel, Philip K. Dick felt it functioned as a complimentary text. The film is set in Los Angeles, whereas the novel is set in San Francisco. The nature of these cities is also different, as the depopulated, irradiated San Francisco of the book becomes the heavily populated, futuristic Los Angeles in the movie. The character Isidore undergoes heavy changes, including his name and profession. The role of animals is greatly diminished in the film, to the point where the film’s Deckard rarely interacts with or mentions animals, real or fake. Mood organs, empathy boxes, and Mercerism are removed from the film while the role of Roy Baty is greatly expanded, turning him into the film’s primary antagonist. The novel’s discussions about empathy are largely replaced in the film with discussions about humanity. Like the novel’s Deckard, the film’s Deckard meets Rachael Rosen and begins to ponder the nature of authenticity, artificiality, and humanity. Unlike in the novel, he develops a genuine affection for Rachael. Various cuts of the film even hint at the possibility that Deckard himself is an android.
The film was well-received by critics at the time and its critical acclaim has grown; the film is now considered a landmark in science fiction cinema. Responses among audiences followed a similar trajectory; after an initially disappointing box office return, Blade Runner grew in fame and popularity, spawning a wide range of associated media that stretches beyond the scope of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Current editions of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are sometimes released under the title Blade Runner with the original name used as a subtitle.
Literary Genre Context: Androids and Science Fiction
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction novel that was published nearly a century after the first wave of science fiction literature appeared. Philip K. Dick had written over 30 books and dozens of short stories before Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and the novel meditates on several of Dick’s hallmark themes including artificiality, authenticity, humans vs. machines, and entropy. One of the foremost science fiction authors of the 20th century, Dick’s work has been published around the world and adapted into films, television shows, and video games.
Androids are a core part of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Not only do they lend the novel its title, but the question of their humanity is a vital part of the novel’s themes of Essential Empathy and Artificiality. The androids portrayed in the novel are highly advanced robots who—aesthetically, at least—are indistinguishable from humans. These androids are an important part of life in the off-world colonies as they handle the work that is too dangerous or dull for humans.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is part of the science fiction canon dealing with robots, androids, and other forms of artificial life. From older works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to more contemporary works like Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, many novels explore the humanity in artificial life. Like these novels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? asks if androids are capable of fundamentally human qualities as a springboard for interrogating different aspects of human society. In this case, Dick questions species-based hierarchies both by imbuing real animals with incredible value and asking what right humans have to crush an android rebellion. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is unique in that it presents empathy as the only notable difference between androids and humans. While human life can be recreated in most ways, empathy is impossible to replicate and impossible for a machine to comprehend.
Authorial Context: Philip K. Dick’s Experience of War
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set in the aftermath of World War Terminus. This highly destructive, global conflict is not explained in the novel; the characters barely remember who fought in the war or why the war was fought at all. Now, however, they live in the shadow of this apocalyptic event, and Earth’s environment has been utterly decimated. The loss of most plant and animal life on the planet is a direct consequence of the war, as is the radioactive dust that blows across the environment and poisons humans, turning them into so-called “chickenheads.”
The inspiration for World War Terminus and its bleak aftermath comes from Dick’s own experiences living through World War II, the Cold War, and the early days of the Vietnam War. The nuclear fallout that causes the book’s radioactive dust is based on the destruction caused by the United States dropping nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cold, dispassionate killing of androids by police officers, bounty hunters, and bureaucrats is rooted in Dick’s research into World War II’s concentration camps, where guards were able to carry out mass killings and torture by dehumanizing their victims.
Dick’s writing career began during the Cold War era. The tense relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States of America continues into Dick’s imagined future. There’s an anachronism because the novel is set in 1992 after the actual Soviet Union collapsed; some recent editions of the text update the setting to 2022, though this anachronism remains. In the novel, Soviet culture is as distant and alien as life on the Mars colonies. Though tensions remain between the United States and the Soviet Union, World War Terminus appears to have destroyed the ideological differences between the states, just as it destroyed the environment and the economy. While international conflicts don’t factor into Dick’s imagined future, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is still a world filled with discrimination and violence. With this, Dick speculates on the unending nature of war and violence.
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