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===Audiobook=== |
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The novel has been released in [[audiobook]] form at least twice. A version was released in 1994 that featured actors such as [[Matthew Modine]] and [[Callista Flockhart]]. It was an [[abridgement|abridged]] version running approximately three hours over two [[Compact Cassette|audio cassettes]].<ref>[http://www.philipkdickfans.com/pkdweb/DO%20ANDROIDS%20DREAM. |
The novel has been released in [[audiobook]] form at least twice. A version was released in 1994 that featured actors such as [[Matthew Modine]] and [[Callista Flockhart]]. It was an [[abridgement|abridged]] version running approximately three hours over two [[Compact Cassette|audio cassettes]].<ref>[http://www.philipkdickfans.com/pkdweb/DO%20ANDROIDS%20DREAM.HTM DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?] PKD Web, philipkdickfans.com</ref> |
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A new audiobook version was released in 2007 by [[Random House Audio]] to coincide with the release of ''[[Blade Runner#Versions|Blade Runner: The Final Cut]]''. This version, read by [[Scott Brick]], is [[abridgement|unabridged]] and runs approximately 9.5 hours over eight [[Compact Disc|CD]]s. This version is a [[movie tie-in (book)|tie-in]], using the ''Blade Runner: The Final Cut'' film poster and ''Blade Runner'' title.<ref>[http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?9780739342756 Blade Runner (Movie-Tie-In Edition) by Philip K. Dick - Unabridged Compact Disc] Random House, November 27, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7393-4275-6 (0-7393-4275-4)</ref> |
A new audiobook version was released in 2007 by [[Random House Audio]] to coincide with the release of ''[[Blade Runner#Versions|Blade Runner: The Final Cut]]''. This version, read by [[Scott Brick]], is [[abridgement|unabridged]] and runs approximately 9.5 hours over eight [[Compact Disc|CD]]s. This version is a [[movie tie-in (book)|tie-in]], using the ''Blade Runner: The Final Cut'' film poster and ''Blade Runner'' title.<ref>[http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?9780739342756 Blade Runner (Movie-Tie-In Edition) by Philip K. Dick - Unabridged Compact Disc] Random House, November 27, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7393-4275-6 (0-7393-4275-4)</ref> |
Revision as of 11:50, 13 February 2012
Author | Philip K. Dick |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction novel |
Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date | 1968 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
Pages | 210 pp |
ISBN | 0-345-40447-5 |
OCLC | 34818133 |
Followed by | Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human |
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick and first published in 1968. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter of androids, while a secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-normal intelligence who aids some fugitive androids.
The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic near future, where Earth and its populations have been damaged greatly by Nuclear War during World War Terminus. Most types of animals are endangered or extinct due to extreme radiation poisoning from the war. To own an animal is a sign of status, but what is emphasized more is the empathic emotions humans experience towards an animal.
Deckard is faced with "retiring" six escaped Nexus-6 brain model androids, the latest and most advanced model. Because of this task, the novel explores the issue of what it is to be human. Unlike humans, the androids possess no empathic sense. In essence, Deckard probes the existence of defining qualities that separate humans from androids.
The book's plot served as the primary basis for the 1982 film Blade Runner.
The story centers on the lower peninsula below San Francisco, which is still relatively free from radio-active dust fallout. The dust originates from the sand dunes of Oregon, blown in by the Santa Ana winds, which is monitored by meteorologists with the Mongoose weather satellite in orbit.
Setting
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? takes place in the year 1992 (2021 in later editions), projecting 25 years in the future after the author's 1967 writing, years after the radioactive fallout of World War Terminus destroyed most of Earth. The U.N. encourages emigration to off-world colonies, in hope of preserving the human race from the terminal effects of the fallout. One emigration incentive is giving each emigrant an "andy" — a servant android.
The remaining populace live in cluttered, decaying cities wherein radiation poisoning sickens them and damages their genes. Animals are rare and people are expected to keep them and help preserve them. But many people turn towards the much cheaper synthetic, or electric, animals to keep up the pretense. Prior to the story's beginning Rick Deckard owned a real sheep, but it died of tetanus, and he replaced it with an electric one.
The main Earth religion is Mercerism, in which Empathy Boxes link simultaneous users into a collective consciousness based on the suffering of Wilbur Mercer, a man who takes an endless walk up a mountain while stones are thrown at him, the pain of which the users share. The television appearances of Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends, broadcast twenty-three hours a day, represents a second religion, designed to undermine Mercerism and allow androids to partake in a kind of consumerist spirituality. It is revealed that neither Mercer nor Friendly are actual humans despite popular belief.
Androids
Androids are used only in the colonies (the only colonies mentioned in the book are on Mars, although humans attempted to colonize the star Proxima), yet many escape to Earth, fleeing the psychological isolation and chattel slavery. Although made of biological materials and physically all but indistinguishable from humans, they are considered to be pieces of machinery. Bounty hunters, such as Rick Deckard, hunt and 'retire' (kill) fugitive androids passing for humans. Often, the police department will collect and analyze the corpses of suspected "andys" to confirm that they are, in fact, 'artificial'.
Earlier androids were easier to detect because of their limited intelligence. As android technology improved, bounty hunters had to apply an empathy test — the Voigt-Kampff test — to distinguish humans from androids, by measuring empathetic responses, or lack thereof, from questions designed to evoke an emotional response, often including animal subjects and themes. Because androids are not sympathetic, their responses are either absent or feigned, and measurably slower than a human's. The simpler Boneli Test, used by another police department in San Francisco, measures the reflex-arc velocity in the spinal column's upper ganglia, by testing their reaction time to visual stimuli. However, the only way to be sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that an individual is an android is to take a bone marrow sample.
Plot summary
The novel follows bounty hunter Rick Deckard through one day of his life, January 3, 1992, as he tracks down renegade androids who have assumed human identities.
The story is set in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco, still relatively free of radio-active dust fallout compared to other cities, especially on the peninsula to the south, is monitored daily by meteorologists using the Mongoose weather satellite in Earth's orbit above. While San Francisico is still relatively habitable, the sandy desert of Oregon to the north is highly contaminated by radiation. Rick Deckard stays in a building on the east-side of the bay with his wife, Iran, who is depressed.
Deckard, seldom works in and does not consider himself to be either a peace officer or a full-time bounty hunter, as the entire Northern California area is the territory of the district's senior bounty hunter, Dave Holden. Deckard accepts, using his notes, the very few left-over cases that Holden either does not want or does not have the time to pursue. He comes to learn that Holden is across the bay inside a hospital in San Francisco (the story being written before the Transamerica tower altered the city's skyline) receiving a plastic spinal cord due to an earlier attack by an android that almost killed him. Deckard, who only considers himself to be a part-time relief worker to the senior bounty hunter, is given his notes by the police chief but is still reluctant to work in Holden's territory. On the other hand, he is attempting to acquire the funds for a real black-faced Suffolk ewe—the only jobs being common, sanitation worker for garbage trucks due to that the earth has been used up, its resources and air depleted, and abandoned by the remaining qualifying healthy human population who have left their "kipple" behind. He decides to pursue Holden's notes based solely on the accumulative pay-off of each android, in relation to the price towards the purchase of a head of sheep in Sydney's Animal & Fowl Catalogue January supplement. Deckard, himself, suspecting that he will succumb to and die of radiation poisoning in a few months, anyway, and that a specimen of livestock contributed to the world in a gesture of empathy, in that the natural world is far more important than the humans continued existence, and that an animal may outlive him.
The novel begins with Deckard feeling alienated from his bed-ridden wife, Iran, who, he feels, is misusing her mood organ by dialing inappropriate moods, like depression. After an encounter with his neighbor, Bill Barbour, on the building's rooftop where the flying cars and penned robotic animals are, about Deckard not being able to afford a real or artificial animal, he realizes in order to obtain any abstract non-personal meaning that he must acquire one.
Deckard meets Rachael Rosen after traveling to Rosen Industries by flying car, alone, from San Francisco to Seattle, Washington, in order to test the validity of the new empathy test on the android-type's new nervous system/brain the Nexus 6. Having landed on the roof of Rosen Industries once in Seattle, Deckard interviews Rachael and performs an empathy test on her, which she fails. Rosen Industries then explains that Rachael is, indeed human, but she lacks normal empathy due to her youth being raised on a spaceship that was attempting to colonize the star Proxima before turning back. After attempting to then bribe Deckard with a supposedly real owl, Deckard asks Rachael one last question and verifies that she is, indeed, an android and Rosen Industries was trying to discredit the empathy test. The company then presents that Rachael had false memories implanted in her and she is not conscious to her state as being an android. However, it is later implied this was also a ruse and that Rachael not only knew that she is an android, but used by the corporation to protect other androids targeted by bounty hunters, mostly through sexual favors.
Deckard becomes confused about humanity, morality and empathy after attempting to retire an android opera singer. He is arrested and taken to what appears to be a fully functional and publicly accessible police station—but it is not a police station Deckard knows about. Deckard is accused of being an android with false memories. Deckard escapes with fellow bounty hunter Phil Resch after deducing that the station is staffed by androids. His moral quandary deepens after working briefly with Phil Resch, who Deckard first believes is an android but then learns is a particularly callous fellow human bounty hunter.
Deckard's story is interwoven with that of J.R. Isidore (a surname Dick also used in Confessions of a Crap Artist), a "special" (i.e. genetically-damaged) driver for an animal repair shop who cannot qualify to leave Earth due to his "special" status. Isidore, who has a low I.Q. due to the radioactive dust-induced genetic damage, is a "chickenhead" who lives alone in an entirely empty apartment building with little outside contact other than his Empathy Box. Pris Stratton, a twin android identical to Rachael Rosen, moves into the building and the lonely Isidore attempts to befriend her. Pris and her friends get Isidore to help them trap Deckard as he comes to retire them. Once Deckard realizes the size of the challenge ahead, he enlists Rachael to help him, and they proceed to have sexual relations. By Deckard's having relations with her, Rachael hoped to stop him from bounty hunting. After Deckard confesses his love for Rachael, the empathy-less Rachael then reveals that she has slept with multiple bounty hunters and was able to get all of them to stop bounty hunting except Phil Resch. Deckard almost "retires" Rachael, but then tells her to return to Rosen Industries.
Deckard then confronts the androids alone and succeeds in killing them, causing Isidore to break down from the loss of his only friends, and earning Deckard a citation for a near record number of kills in one day. He returns home and his wife reports having seen Rachael Rosen kill his real pet goat. He understands that Rachael was taking revenge and is thankful that the loss is only financial; the android could instead have killed his wife.
He travels by car up the highway to an isolated sand dunes area in the state of Oregon to meditate and has an epiphany. He also finds a toad, thought to be extinct and considered to be Mercer's favorite animal. Deckard brings it home, where his wife discovers that the toad is in fact synthetic. While Deckard is not glad, he 'prefers' to know that the toad—after all—is artificial.
Adaptations
Film
In 1982, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples' loose cinematic adaptation became the film Blade Runner, which was directed by Ridley Scott. The international success of Blade Runner[1] helped bring Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and its author into the public eye. For that reason, after 1982 some editions of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? were branded with the title Blade Runner.
Audiobook
The novel has been released in audiobook form at least twice. A version was released in 1994 that featured actors such as Matthew Modine and Callista Flockhart. It was an abridged version running approximately three hours over two audio cassettes.[2]
A new audiobook version was released in 2007 by Random House Audio to coincide with the release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. This version, read by Scott Brick, is unabridged and runs approximately 9.5 hours over eight CDs. This version is a tie-in, using the Blade Runner: The Final Cut film poster and Blade Runner title.[3]
Theater
A stage adaptation of the book, written by Edward Einhorn, ran from November to December 2010 at the 3LD theater in New York.[4]
Comic book
In 1982, a comic book adaptation of the film called A Marvel Comics Super Special: Blade Runner was released by Marvel Comics. It was written by Archie Goodwin with art by Al Williamson, Ralph Reese and Dan Green.
Beginning in 2009, BOOM! Studios started publishing a 24-issue comic book limited series adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, containing the full text of the novel.[5] In April 2010, Boom! Studios announced a follow up comic was in production. Dust To Dust is an eight issue miniseries starting on May 26, 2010 and written by Chris Roberson and drawn by Robert Adler.[6]
Sequels
Three novels intended to serve as sequels to both Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner have been published: Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996), Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon (2000). The official and authorized novels were written by Philip K. Dick's friend, K. W. Jeter. They continue the story of Rick Deckard and attempt to resolve many of the differences between the novel and the film.
Awards
- 1968 - Nebula Award nominee[7]
- 1998 - Locus Poll Award, All-Time Best SF Novel before 1990 (Place: 51)
See also
References
- ^ Sammon, Paul M (1996). Future Noir: the Making of Blade Runner. London: Orion Media. pp. 318–329. ISBN 0-06-105314-7.
- ^ DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? PKD Web, philipkdickfans.com
- ^ Blade Runner (Movie-Tie-In Edition) by Philip K. Dick - Unabridged Compact Disc Random House, November 27, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7393-4275-6 (0-7393-4275-4)
- ^ "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep for the stage".
- ^ Philip K. Dick Press Release - BOOM! ANNOUNCES DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?
- ^ BOOM! expands on 'Blade Runner' universe
- ^ "1968 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-09-27.
Further reading
- Dick, Philip K. (1968). Do androids dream of electric sheep? New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. ISBN 0-345-40447-5. First published in Philip K. Dick: Electric Shepherd, Norstrilla Press.
Zelazny, Roger (1975). "Introduction" - Scott, Ridley (1982). Blade Runner. Warner Brothers.
- The Electric Sheep screensaver software is an homage to Do Androids dream of electric sheep?.
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? at Worlds Without End
Criticism
- Benesch, Klaus. "Technology, Art, and the Cybernetic Body: The Cyborg As Cultural Other in Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", Amerikastudien/AmericanStudies, 44:3, 1999, pp. 379–92.
- Butler, Andrew M. "Reality versus Transience: An Examination of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner", Philip K. Dick: A Celebration [Programme Book], Merrifield, Jeff (ed.) Epping Forest College, Loughton: Connections, 1991.
- Gallo, Domenico. "Avvampando gli angeli caddero: Blade Runner, Philip K. Dick e il cyberpunk", Lo sguardo degli angeli: Intorno e oltre Blade Runner, Bertetti and Scolari (eds.), Torino: Testo & Immagine, 2002, pp. 206–18.
- Galvan, Jill. "Entering the Posthuman Collective in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Science-Fiction Studies # 73, 24:3, 1997, pp. 413–29.
External links
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? at the Internet Book List
- Complete publication history and cover gallery
- Template:It Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?