The primary theme played with throughout the story is the idea of empathy, each character ties into the metaphysical representation of life and the understanding of life. Regardless, it is the story’s themes and messages that are perhaps the most important to be analyzed and understood by the public today. Video-based long-distance communication, the development of AI, and (to a lesser extent) the ability to manually control feelings, or the chemicals causing said emotions, in one’s brain. However, much of the technology mentioned has, to an extent, already been developed. Some technologies introduced in the story are still further off, such as police-issued laser firearms and hover vehicles for the general public’s use. One might find themselves wondering why a science fiction novel written almost half a century ago would have any relevance in today’s society, but the story of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is one that should undoubtedly be examined by individuals today.īecause the story is based in the year 2021, what was, at the time of its publication, seen as the far future, it is vastly interesting to read the predictions and compare them to lives people lead today. It is this nature of androids that leads to one of the driving conflicts of the story, are they simply too human to morally retire? Deckard, throughout his commission, is unable to help but harbor feelings of loss, guilt, and overall empathy toward the androids, the lives they’ve built, and the people they seem to be.
However, as one Pris, a member of the Nexus-6 androids who escaped to Earth, explains, as humans get lonely on the empty and newly developed Mars colony, so too do androids, and their escape to Earth is merely a desperate way to grasp their sentience and claim a life for themselves. In the world Dick has created, androids are not inherently based in malice, nor are they designed or created for the intent of harming human beings, they simply serve as companions to those emigrating to Mars in order to escape the toxic and radioactive dust and “kipple,” deteriorating the Earth and its residents. Deckard uses what is known as the Voigt-Kampff test, a company created means of measuring the empathy in an individual in order to discern their identity as human or android, in order to unmask Nexus-6 androids and eliminate them.
#I dream of electric sheep series
The story primarily follows one Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police Department, and his crusade to “retire,” a series of Mars Nexus-6 Androids who are posing as ex-emigrants hiding amongst the general public. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction technological dystopia based in the year 2021 in a post-apocalyptic war-torn and radioactive Earth.
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