A review by cocosreviews
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

5.0

“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is a SF novel published in 1968 and written by Phillip K. Dick (haha), centrally concerned with the question of what is real. Have you seen the Blade Runner movies? Well this is the book they are based on. The story is centered around 2 humans, very different but similar in one way: stuck on earth, unable to escape the toxic dust damaging their brains, along with everyone else who is not rich enough to go to a colony in space. One is a detective, or “bounty hunter” who’s job is to hunt escaped androids from off-world colonies, and the other one is a “chickenhead”, an individual affected by the toxicity of the war and the dust that now covers the Earth. As the plot unfolds, the detective is tasked with finding a group of escaped androids operating the latest technology. His whole world gets turned upside down when he meets Rachel, an android so sophisticated that she almost passes the humanity test. The book is filled with an acute sense of humor and absurdity. You can notice it from the very beginning, when you read about an electric goat that is programmed to pretend to eat grass, and the inner conflict this goat causes the protagonist, who has to pretend to feed it each morning. Dick spends a lot of time on character rather than the visuals, focusing a lot on the philosophical questions that emerge from the character's minds autonomously. What is a fake? And, if you can make a fake seem authentic enough, why does it matter? If nothing else, he seems to be saying: the fakes have value. If you were an android, and you dreamt of electric sheep, would it make you less you? I loved it, but then, I love all that SF shi-