Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

As a fan of Blade Runner, I had to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I like it a lot, even though its quite different from the Blade Runner film. Philip K. Dick has a way of engaging the reader with dense symbolism, foreshadowing, suspense, and a truly horrific dystopic future. And, naturally, the deeper philosophical questions about what it means to be human, and what are the differences between the already blurred line between android and human. Last but certainly not least, Rachel is actually more interesting in this novel than the film, and Iran, Deckard's wife, is a positive influence on empathy for Deckard.

I think it's interesting as well how the novel strengthens all those aforementioned points by highlighting the 'special,' Isidore (which reminded me of the masses in Vonnegut's Player Piano, and also the classic story, Flower For Algernon just because we have a sympathetic mentally disabled character), the Sisyphean religion, Mercerism (which reminded me of Camus's take on the myth of Sisyphus through existentialist lens), slavery and colonialism (it's quite overt and more detailed in the novel what's going on with the corporations manufacturing androids, human colonization off-planet) and exploring the question of empathy in the human experience.

Given the catastrophic aftermath of World War Terminus, the highly unequal, depopulated world devoid of most animal life, and the disturbing tendency of some bounty hunters (Phil Resch, namely) to enjoy killing androids, who are organic entities and becoming more human with each new model, one must say that humanness should be conceptually extended to recognize humanoid robots capable of expressing true feeling for others. Much like the issue of slavery in the not too long ago American past, there is an economic motive for the corporations producing android slaves for colonial expansion, and that requires dehumanization and exploitation.

I could rant excessively about this novel, so I'll stop here. Due to its medium and the time it was written in, this book still holds up quite well. Its exploration of the condition of 'specials' and the dystopic society on an Earth decimated by fall-out and dust was also informative, since it provided another way of looking at the lack of empathy among so-called humans. The use of Penfield mood organs and Mercerism fusion to get humans to feel empathy is also pertinent to the question of how technology can help humanity.