Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

Dick’s 1968 sci-fi classic that inspired the film Blade Runner, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a nightmarish tale of a San Francisco bounty hunter operating in a post-nuclear world, bereft of animal life.

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.
 

As the eagerly-anticipated new film Blade Runner 2049 finally comes to the screen, rediscover the world of Blade Runner . . . 
 

Philip Kindred Dick (1928-82) was born in Chicago in 1928. His career as a science fiction writer comprised an early burst of short stories followed by a stream of novels, typically character studies incorporating androids, drugs, and hallucinations. 

His best works are generally agreed to be The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the inspiration for the movie Blade Runner. 

MEDIA REVIEWS

One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction, Dick made most of the European avant-garde seem like navel-gazers in a cul-de-sac - Sunday Times

My literary hero - Fay Weldon

For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplicating realities of the modern world, remember: Philip K. Dick got there first - Terry Gilliam

A masterclass in sci-fi wonderment - Empire

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By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and “retire” them. But when cornered, androids fight back—with lethal force.