Key themes
- What makes something — or someone — real
- Empathy as the basis of humanity
- The ethics of creating life to destroy it
About this book
A bounty hunter chases androids in a decayed future and starts to wonder what makes anyone human; the basis for Blade Runner.
Published in 1968, the novel is set after World War Terminus — a nuclear war that has made real animals almost extinct and driven most of humanity to off-world colonies.
Discussion questions
- The test for whether someone is human is a test for empathy. Do you find empathy a convincing basis for personhood — and does the novel itself seem to believe it?
- Rachael and the other androids are indistinguishable from humans by every measure except the test. Does the novel ask us to mourn them — and if so, what does that ask of the reader?
- Mercerism is a collective empathy technology that may be a fraud. What is Dick saying about the relationship between shared feeling and authenticity?
- Real animals are enormously precious in this world; electric replicas are shameful substitutes. What is Dick saying about authenticity, simulation and the value we assign to what is 'natural'?
- Blade Runner, the film adaptation, famously omits most of the novel's religious and philosophical content. What do you think the film loses — and does reading the novel change how you see the film?
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This is a set text
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? appears on the following curriculum reading lists.
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