Book Review : Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

This is a fascinating book. Every few pages I’d stop and try to think about the ‘Blade Runner’ film and wonder whether what I’d just read happened in the film. This is distracting but enjoyable too.

World War Terminus on Earth killed many tens of millions of people and the after effects of radioactive dust and radioactivity kill more each day. Most animal species have become extinct but artificial animals, goats, sheep, horses etc are available for a price.

Much of humanity moved to Mars and each human who did received an android so sophisticated that they are largely indistinguishable from humans. The Earth government banned them from the planet but some still made their way back to the ‘home’ planet.

Bounty hunters try to keep the number of Androids in check. However, the latest Nexus-6 Android is very difficult to spot and the bounty hunters have to conduct a test of the Android to confirm its status before ‘retiring’ the ‘andy’ (Android) via laser gun. Eight Nexus-6 have arrived on Earth, one of them all but kills the most senior bounty hunter, so Rick Deckard takes on the role. He meets the ‘daughter’ of the man whose company produced / produces these sophisticated Androids and falls in love with her – her name is Rachael Rosen – and she is a Nexus-6. Deckard takes his work seriously and begins to eliminate the Androids. But they fight back as some of them have infiltrated the police force, however Deckard is nimble enough to evade them.

To my point earlier, the ending of the book is different to that of the film and that’s as much as I will say.