Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Because it was adapted into Ridley Scott’s legendary 1982 film Blade Runner, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is one of Philip K. Dick’s most widely-read novels. Which is a bit of a shame, since it’s one of Dick’s worst-written and most underdeveloped works. Based on an earlier short story (“The Little Black Box,” written in 1964), the book centers on a bounty hunter (Rick Deckard) who is hired to track down escaped human-like androids. The book is hardly without merit; it includes an intensely bleak and dystopian setting, one in which emotions and religion have been fully commodified, and where a nuclear catastrophe has killed so many animals that the highest status symbol is to own a real sheep rather than a mechanical simulacrum. Unfortunately, Dick doesn't sufficiently develop these ideas or bring them together into a cohesive novel.