Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

A 1968 science-fiction novel by Philip K. Dick about bounty hunter Rick Deckard, who hunts escaped androids in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco. It explores empathy, artificial life, and the unstable boundary between human and machine.

Philip K. Dick: American science-fiction writer whose novels and stories often examine identity, reality, and authoritarian power. Dick wrote the novel, drawing its androids and fractured reality into his recurring concerns.
Empathy box: A fictional device that lets users experience a shared vision of Wilbur Mercer’s struggle. It turns Mercerism’s promise of shared suffering into a technological ritual.
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale: A 1966 Philip K. Dick story about a man whose implanted memories blur the line between fantasy and reality. It shows Dick exploring unstable identity and manufactured experience shortly before this novel.
Blade Runner 2049: A 2017 film sequel to Blade Runner directed by Denis Villeneuve. It extends the adaptation’s world rather than returning directly to the novel’s plot and religious motifs.
Blade Runner (franchise): A science-fiction media franchise originating with Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner. The franchise carried the novel’s android premise into sequels and a wider visual mythology.
Rick Deckard: A bounty hunter in the novel who is assigned to track down escaped androids. Deckard’s changing responses to his targets drive the novel’s moral conflict.
Electric sheep: A mechanical imitation of a sheep kept by Rick Deckard in the novel. Deckard’s electric animal embodies the stigma of owning an artificial substitute.
The Man in the High Castle: A 1962 alternate-history novel by Philip K. Dick set in a world where the Axis powers won World War II. This earlier novel likewise makes uncertain reality a central pressure on its characters.
The Turing test: A test proposed by Alan Turing that evaluates whether a machine can imitate human conversation convincingly. Unlike the novel’s physiological test, it judges machine intelligence through conversation.
Replicant: A bioengineered human-like being in the Blade Runner films. Replicants rework the novel’s androids into a distinct form of artificial personhood.

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NeuromancerCompared with: Its questions about artificial life predate Neuromancer but center on empathy rather than hacking.