Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) is a short science fiction novel of the cyberpunk subgenre by author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) initially published in 1968. It was loosely adapted by Ridley Scott in the 1982 film Blade Runner. Dick He died that same year, before the film was released. It was later also adapted into comics, a play and a radio serial.

The action takes place in a world full of radioactive dust after a nuclear war that ended up killing most of the animals, leading to people having electric animals. The protagonist is Rick Deckard, an expert hunter of renegade androids, a task he himself refers to as "removing." In the story, you will have to remove a group of latest generation androids, model Nexus-6, whose peculiarity is that they are almost identical to human beings and who have come to Earth fleeing from a space colony due to the terrible conditions in which they live. who were subjected.

The novel, one of the author's classics, deals with topics such as the imprecise limit between the artificial and the natural, the decadence of life and society, and addresses various ethical problems regarding androids. Also, given its aesthetics and descriptions of a destroyed, abandoned world, where technology is omnipresent, within science fiction it can be framed in the cyberpunk subgenre.

Concepts and argument

Do androids dream of electric sheep? takes place in 1992 (2021 in some more recent editions of the novel), several years after the radioactive fallout caused by the World War Terminus, which destroyed much part of the Earth. This radioactive dust that contaminates much of the Earth had not originated in any country and had not been foreseen, and yet it had spread to cover much of the globe.

As a consequence, the United Nations encourages and encourages people to emigrate to colonies outside of Earth to preserve the human race from the effects of radioactive dust produced by war. The UN uses media such as television to promote emigration, through phrases such as "Emigrate or degenerate!" Choose!". One of the incentives is that each family that decides to emigrate will receive a custom-made servant android. In the novel the term "android" is generally used to refer to artificial beings of biological composition - "Organic Android" according to the book - although in modern science fiction the term has come to mean non-biological machines, e.g. e.g.: robots.

People who remain on Earth live in chaotic cities where radiation causes illness and damages their genes. All animals are in danger of extinction: radioactive dust has killed all birds and decimated other animal species. Owning and caring for an animal is considered a symbol of high social status and a moral responsibility, depending on the rarity of the species. The animals are bought and sold based on the latest issue of the Sydney bird and animal magazine; The animals are listed there with the price of the last specimen sold. The high cost of real animals makes it prohibitive for most families to own one so they choose to purchase an artificial one to maintain their social position. The story's protagonist, Rick Deckard, had a sheep that died of tetanus and replaced it with an electric replica of the animal to keep up appearances. Companies in charge of creating, repairing and caring for electric animals are popular in this society. Asking if your neighbor's animal is electric is considered rude, "even more so than asking if a person's teeth, hair, or internal organs are genuine."

Androids are used in human colonies, mainly on Mars, but many of them flee to Earth to escape the loneliness of the red planet and to be free from the slavery to which humans subject them. They are made with completely organic elements and are physically indistinguishable from people. Officials like Deckard track down and "retire" fugitive androids who generally pose as humans because their stay on Earth is prohibited. After being removed, a bone marrow analysis is performed on the android's remains to verify that a human being has not been murdered. Due to differences in the vagus nerve, an android can commit suicide simply by holding its breath.

It is necessary for bounty hunters to apply tests such as the Voight-Kampff empathy test to differentiate humans from androids. The test measures reaction and eye movement in response to emotional triggers, many of which involve animal abuse. Since androids cannot feel empathy, their emotional response is significantly different from that of humans, either in intensity or response time. The Boneli test, somewhat simpler, measures the response speed of the Reflex Arc that occurs in the upper ganglia of the spinal column.

Another of the novel's instruments is the "Penfield Mood Organ" ("Penfield Mood Air Conditioner" in some translations), named after neurologist Wilder Penfield, which induces emotions in users. The user can dial a number and automatically experience a certain mood or emotion. Examples include: "Awareness of the many possibilities that the future offers me" (481), "Satisfactory recognition of the husband's superior wisdom in all matters" (594), "Desire to watch television, no matter what is on" (888), "Restorative and well-deserved rest" (670) and "Desire to score" (3). Many users have a daily encouragement program.

The most significant cultural icon on Earth is "Friendly Buster", the jovial host of the comedy talk show The Friendly Buster Program, broadcast simultaneously on both radio and television 23 hours a day, so some characters in the novel infer that it is an android. Buster frequently attacks Mercerism in his programs.

Mercerism

Mercerism is a prominent religious/philosophical movement on Earth. The movement is based on the story of Wilbur Mercer, a man who lived before the War. He strives to reverse the putrefaction, the decay of the tomb world and ascend back to Earth by climbing an immense slope. His opponents throw rocks at him along the way, until Mercer reaches the top, and the cycle begins again.

Adherents of Mercerism grasp the handles of an electrically powered "empathy box" while watching a monitor that displays seemingly meaningless patterns until the handles are grasped. After a short interval, the user feels transported to the world of Wilbur Mercer, where he immerses their mind in an experience shared with everyone who is wearing an empathy box at the moment. Users of empathy boxes, when using it, relive firsthand Mercer's eternal rise and feel how the stones hit them, just as they hit Mercer. Those in the empathic boxes resent Mercer's rise, they feel Mercer's suffering, emotions are shared among all users.

Mercerism mixes the concept of a deity with a cycle of life-death-rebirth, in the manner of Jesus Christ, with the importance of union and empathy. It is very important for Merceristas to share, when they feel they need to, their feelings. They believe that if a person has a feeling of happiness it is immoral for them to keep it to themselves and not "merge with Mercer in an act of gratitude." In the same way, a person who feels depressed can alleviate their depression by merging with Mercer. When a person "melts" through the box they share their feelings with everyone else. Thus, if one person has a feeling of regret, everyone else will be able to feel a small portion of that suffering, in the same way with joy or happiness. A conversation between Rick and his wife about this experience is especially illuminating (p. 179):

"I want everyone to know," he said. It happened to me once: I melted and someone had just acquired an animal. And another day—their features were darkened for a moment; the pleasure had dissipated—I felt a person whose animal had died. Others had joys to share... I didn't have any, as you know; but that revived that person. One can reach a potential suicide; what one has, what one feels, can...

"They will receive our joy," Rick replied, "but we will change what we feel about what they feel and lose it. [... ]

"We will not really lose what we feel, if we have it clearly in the spirit. You've never felt the whole fusion, have you, Rick?».

Philip K. Dick, Do the androids dream of electric sheep?

Main themes

When reading the novel we are presented with the dilemma of what the main theme is. On a first reading we see that there are two main themes: the religious issue of Mercerism and the relationship between men and androids, but both themes are so closely linked that they lead to a single theme: reality (a recurring theme in the novels of Philip K. Dick).

Throughout the novel, the idea of spiritual union between all human beings through a machine with which the feelings of each individual person are shared by the rest stands out. However, it is curious that to achieve this unity, human beings must resort to a machine and that, at a certain point in the novel, the theory is raised that Mercer may be an impostor. This deepens the idea that everything that seems real to humans is false, as is the case with androids. On the other hand, in many aspects, artificial objects are more perfect than real ones since they do not degenerate: electric animals do not get sick and human androids seem more aware of the importance of the concept of humanity than men themselves.

But what is reality in this book? As mentioned before, it is difficult to draw the lines between what is real and what is not. The difficulty that the protagonist encounters when it comes to distinguishing humans from androids is proof of this confusion between what is real and what is fictional. Likewise, Mercerism itself triumphs due to the cult of the false: false sensations that help to escape from reality, the probable falsehood of Mercer... The protagonist's dream of reality, identified with his need for a live animal, is lost in the nothing. Once again the unreal prevails over the real. The living is condemned to die and degenerate; the non-living will remain there forever.

Apart from the main theme of reality, the novel raises many other interesting themes:

Hierarchies and subdivisions of living beings and androids

On post-World War Terminus Earth, real and artificial life forms are divided into hierarchies. Animals are considered enormously precious, humans receive less consideration, and androids are simply insignificant. After a sexual encounter, Rachael tells Deckard, “You love that black Nubian goat more than you love me. And probably more than your wife” (p. 205). Phil Resch tells Deckard at another time:

«If we include the androids in our empathic identification spectrum, as we do with the animals [...] These Nexus-6... would pass us over and crush us. You and I, all the bounty hunters, rise between the Nexus-6 and humanity as a barrier that keeps them separate from both."

Philip K. Dick, Do the androids dream of electric sheep?

The three groups are also subdivided. Humans are divided between those who can emigrate off Earth and those who, due to genetic defects produced mostly by radioactive dust, are not allowed to leave the planet (the so-called "special ones" or "knuckleheads"); and androids are continually being improved, with companies creating new android models that are superior to the previous ones.

However, this classification has many flaws, especially between humans and androids. The latest android models are more intelligent than some kinds of humans. Isidore often recognizes the three androids who live with him as "superior beings." Empathy is the trait that definitively separates these humans from the androids. However, Deckard notes that, to do his job, the hunters of "andys" (or "andrillos" in some translations) do not have to feel empathy towards them; Thus, the superiority over the androids that hunt is questionable. A conversation between Deckard and Luba Luft mentions this aspect:

“—A android doesn’t care what happens to another android,” he replied. That's one of the signs we're looking for.

"Then," said Miss Luft, "you must be an android. That stopped him. He looked at her. - Because your job is to kill them, isn't it? You're what they call... he tried to remember. - A bonus hunter. But not an android.

"And the test that wants to apply to me," he said, "recovering the voice, have they done it to you?"

Philip K. Dick, Do the androids dream of electric sheep?

The imprecise limit between the natural and the artificial

Two of the most respected "people" on Earth could be artificial creations: Friendly Buster and Wilbur Mercer. Buster, who does 23 hours of television and radio a day and often mocks Mercerism, reveals in one of his programs that the visions shown in the empathy box could be filmed from old Hollywood movies starring an alcoholic actor. As one of the rebel androids clarifies, Buster's attitude is due to the fact that he himself is an android. So Mercer could only be a computer program or an android, since he, like Buster, boasts the apparent immortality and infinite resistance to fatigue that allow him to continually renew himself: falling into the grave world and then rising again.

Another fact in which this difficult differentiation is reflected is in the fact of the existence of electric animals that replace real animals and seem to feel and live like them, and towards which their owners have feelings as if they were pets. true.

In addition, the androids' clandestine escapes to Earth reveal that they have a capacity to desire and imagine a better life for themselves. This is clearly shown in the character of Luba Luft, the opera singing android. The androids in the story, although they do not have feelings of empathy, have dreams, desires, fear of death; However, they are not considered comparable to what humans feel.

While androids strive for true satisfaction, many humans rely on artificial means to experience feelings or happiness, such as the Penfield Mood Organ.

"Most of the androids I've met had more desire to live than my wife."

Philip K. Dick, Do the androids dream of electric sheep?

Decay and renewal

The opposing forces of decline and renewal play a very important role in this book. This is clearly seen in the allegory of Mercer, who possesses the ability to resurrect life and who is continually sinking back into the "grave world" and then resurrecting and climbing the slope again.

The world of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a gray, desolate world, full of silent empty apartments in progressive ruin, where everything seems to deteriorate minute by minute, simply because the Earth is being abandoned: people seek to emigrate at all costs and the UN encourages people to leave the planet. In this way, the planet becomes progressively more and more empty and "kippelized." "Kippel" ("kipple" in the original version and "trash" in some translations) is the term used for unwanted or useless objects that tend to accumulate progressively. Dick is referring here to the physical concept of entropy.

"Kippel are the useless objects, the propaganda letters, the match boxes after the last one has been spent, the paper wrapper of the previous day. When there are no people the kippel reproduces [...] there are more and more”.

Philip K. Dick, Do the androids dream of electric sheep?

Kippel's first Law is that kippel expels what is not kippel. Other terms referring to kippel are: kippelized, kippel factor and kippelization. An apartment can become infested with kippel. As Isidore explains (Page 74):

"No one can beat the kippel, except, perhaps, in temporary form and at a certain point, as my apartment [...] But one day I will go away, or die, and then the kippel will dominate everything. The whole universe advances towards a final phase of absolute kippelization”.

Philip K. Dick, Do the androids dream of electric sheep?

Deckard sees the inevitable decay of the world and his own role in it while watching Luba Luft sing at the rehearsal of The Magic Flute (Page 106):

"This essay will end, the representation also, the singers will die and finally the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another, the name of Mozart will fade and the dust will have vanquished, if it is not on this planet in any other. We can only escape for a while. And the rakes can escape from me, and survive for a while. But I'll reach them or make it another bounty hunter. In a way — he observed — I am part of the process of intropic destruction. The Rossen Association creates and I destroy. Or at least that should look like the androids."

Philip K. Dick, Do the androids dream of electric sheep?

Later, when Deckard considers leaving his job, Mercer tells him:

“You will be forced to do evil wherever you go,” the old man said. It is the essential condition of life to be required to betray one's own identity. There's always the time when everything is alive must do it. It is the last shadow, the defeat of creation: it is the curse of the work, the curse that feeds on all life. Even in the last corner of the universe."

Philip K. Dick, Do the androids dream of electric sheep?

Film adaptation: Blade Runner

Around 1977 Hampton Fancher wrote the script for a film loosely based on the novel by Philip K. Dick. However, Fancher's drafts focused more on environmental problems and less on questions of humanity and religion, which was the central part of the novel. When director Ridley Scott joined the film, he wanted to make numerous changes to the script and eventually hired David Webb Peoples to make the alterations after Fancher refused.

As a result of the differences between Fancher's script and the novel, the numerous rewrites before and during filming, and the fact that Ridley Scott had not fully read Dick's work, the film deviated noticeably from its original inspiration. The changes have prompted many critics and fans to consider both as independent works, despite the fact that the novel was reprinted in 1982 with the title Blade Runner and below the original name in parentheses, due to reasons of marketing due to the popularity of the film. Some of the novel's themes were minimized or eliminated entirely, including population fertility/sterility, religion, the media, real and synthetic pets, and emotions.

At first, Philip K. Dick criticized Fancher's first drafts in an article in Select TV Guide of Los Angeles. However, after seeing several clips of Douglas Trumbull's special effects on KNBC-TV news, reading the February 1981 version of the script—which he called a "quantum leap upwards"—and watching the filming of After Ford's pursuit of Hooray for Hollywood on KABC-TV, he became enthusiastic, despite the plot differing significantly from his book and his skepticism about Hollywood.

"I couldn't believe what I was reading! It was simply sensational: it was still the script of Hampton Fancher, but miraculously transfigured, so to speak. Everything had been simply rejuvenated in a very fundamental way [...] I was surprised that Peoples could make some of those scenes work. He taught me things about writing that he did not know [...] You read the script and then you go to the novel, and it's like two halves of a meta-work, a meta-artefacto. It's just exciting. As my agent, Russell Galen, said, "When a Hollywood film adaptation on a book works, it's always a miracle." Because it can't really happen. It happened with The Man Who Fell to Earth and has happened Blade RunnerI'm sure now."
—Philip K. Dick, in September 1981, after reading the film script signed by Fancher and Peoples

Although he did not see the film in its entirety, in December 1981, shortly before his death, Dick was invited by the producers to the studio where it was being edited. There he met with Scott and was able to view twenty minutes of scenes from Blade Runner. Dick was captivated by them and asked that they be shown again, stating that they had captured the texture and tone of the images. images that he had imagined. The writer died in March 1982, about three months before the film's premiere. In the final credits of Blade Runner the dedication to Philip K. Dick appears.

Differences between the novel and the movie

The plot and characterizations of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are very different from those of its film adaptation, Blade Runner. It could be said that the film is set in a universe close to that described in Philip K. Dick's book, but it ignores issues of great importance in it, such as religion (with the presence of Mercer, a kind of Supreme Being), animal care as a symbol of social status, the presence of radioactive dust, etc. Some differences are:

• The film takes place in the city of Los Angeles in 2019, while the novel takes place in San Francisco in 1992 (2021 in some recent editions).
• The Penfield Organ, the boxes of empathy, the Amigable Buster and mercerism are not mentioned in the film.
• In the film it is not mentioned that the atmosphere has radioactive dust, while in the novel it is constantly present. Male characters in the novel should use lead genital protectors to avoid sterile.
• In the novel, the planet has lost most of the world's population because of the Terminus World War and the subsequent flight to the colonies in Mars. Buildings of thousands of apartments are empty or, in many cases, only a hundred people live. In the film, the city of Los Angeles is presented as a metropolis with millions of inhabitants, similar to Tokyo in real life.
• In the novel, possessing and caring for an animal is considered a sign of high social status, but as they are extremely costly due to their scarcity after the Terminus World War, artificial replicas are often used. One of Deckard's obsessions is to replace his electric sheep with a living animal. He even accepts the work of removing the Nexus-6 to get the rewards and so he can buy it.
• In the original version of the film, Deckard is divorced and unmarried, and his relationship with Rachael is more intensely romantic and enjoy a happy ending. In the assembly of the director and the final assembly they also have an affair, but no mention is made of a wife or a divorce from Deckard.
• At the beginning of the film Deckard is retired, while at the beginning of the book he acts as a reward hunter.
• In the movie, android hunters are known as blade runners. The book does not mention that denomination, but that of a "cazarer of rewards" or "catcher of bonuses".
• The androids are called "replicants" in the film, while in the book they are often referred to as "andys" (from "android", derogatory).
• In the film, the character of Luba Luft is replaced by Zhora, an exotic dancer. In the novel, Luft is a talented young opera singer that Deckard admires. When she is murdered by Phil Resch, another bounty hunter, Rick thinks a lot about the fact that the world had been deprived of a voice as beautiful as Luba's. This anguish is not mentioned in the film, although it may appear implicit through music and camera effects.

«Luba was a wonderful singer, everyone could enjoy his skills. This is crazy."

Philip K. Dick, Do the androids dream of electric sheep?

• In the novel, the androids seem “to give up” when they encounter a death that seems inevitable, while in the film they are more militant. In addition, the androids are much less graceful fighting in the novel than in the film, where the scenes of struggle are more dramatic.
• Roy, the leader of the rebellious androids, does not force a confrontation to death with his creator in the book. In this, he stays hidden in Isidore's apartment until Deckard will find him to "retreat him."
• In the novel, Rachael and Pris are physically identical. In the film they are not, being interpreted by two different actresses, Sean Young and Daryl Hannah.
• In the book, J. R. Isidore is a "chief head", a person considered sub-intelligent, an abnormal, so he is not allowed to emigrate. In the film it is called J. F. Sebastian and is a brilliant android designer who cannot emigrate because of a hormonal disorder that makes it age faster.
• In the novel, androids live an average of about four years, because their cells cannot be replaced as they deteriorate. The film Blade Runner He describes the four more years of life as a security measure than a metabolic problem, since it is sought to ensure that the androids do not live long enough to reach a greater degree of "humanity".
• The film leaves in the air the question of whether Deckard is or not an android. In the novel Deckard seems to be human, passing the Voight-Kampff test, although during it the reliability of the test is questioned.

Comic adaptation

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

In 2009, BOOM! Studios published Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a 24-issue comic book limited series and direct adaptation of the novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick. It was drawn by Tony Parker and nominated for an Eisner Award in the category of Best New Series. The characters in the adaptation were drawn with a similar appearance to the one they present in the 1982 film. The series has an average rating of 7 with based on 13 professional opinions on the Comic Book Roundup review aggregator.

Dust to Dust

For 2010, BOOM! Studios launched Dust to Dust, a new 8-issue comic book limited series that serves as a prequel to the events of the novel, Blade Runner (1982) and the comic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (2009). Written by Chris Roberson and drawn by Robert Adler, it details the days after the end of World War Terminus. It was marketed with an eight-page digital preview released on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. It is rated with an average score of 7.7 based on 8 professional reviews on the Comic Book Roundup website.

Sequels

There are three official and authorized novels that are sequels to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner. They were written by Dick's friend, K. W. Jeter, and continue the story of Rick Deckard trying to resolve the differences between Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By introducing The first of them, some inconsistencies with Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, including the return of a dead character, J. F. Sebastian, or the modification of Pris' nature, are considered within the Blade Runner franchise as part of a non-canonical expanded universe.

• Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995)
• Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996)
• Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon (2000)

Prizes

• 1968 - Nominated for the Nébula Awards, category Novela
• 1998 - “Locus Poll Award”, the best science fiction novel before 1990 (Lugar: 51)

In popular culture

• «Do the androids dream of electric sheep?» is also a song by the Barcelonese group Piorreah belonging to its 2nd model All day (1985), inspired by Dick's story and Ridley Scott's film.
• The sign "Phillip K. Dick Cinema» (sic.) appears on the album cover Somewhere in Time (1986) of Iron Maiden, which includes numerous scripts to the universe of Blade Runner.
• A 2017 television series based on Dick's work gets the name Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams in reference to the title of the novel.