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I watched Blade Runner long before I’d heard of the novel that inspired it.  I also came late to Blade Runner. When it was released 1982, I was eleven years old and more  interested in Michael Jackson, roller skating, and ET.

It would have been the early 90s when I first saw Blade Runner, the director’s cut, which I watched on my television one Sunday afternoon while nursing a particularly punishing hangover. It is the perfect hangover movie: dark, melancholic, and more than a little pessimistic.

I still love Blade Runner for its cinematic beauty and the renegade sexiness of Harrison Ford, but it just barely skims the surface of the themes explored in the novel.

The novel is, of course, the cult classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I recently read the novel for my book club, and many of us were surprised by how much it differs from the film. Most notably, the plot of DADES is very much concerned with animals, or lack of animals. Deckard hunts and retires androids to in order to acquire enough money to purchase a real live animal, which are rare in the post-nuclear war world, and therefore very expensive. He owns an electric sheep, which grazes on the roof of his half-empty apartment building, but still, the heart longs for something authentic.

The question of authenticity runs through the core of this novel. All science fiction probes for expanded definitions of what makes a human being human, but Dick is preoccupied with the more specific questions of what is real, and what is fake? In DADES, he asks, if the fake is indistinguishable from the real, does it matter?  This question plagues our protagonist and makes it difficult for him to “retire” the escaped slave androids and fill his quota.

By the novel’s end, Deckard questions his own humanity, the reality of his world, and the authenticity of his experiences and relationships. He wants to quit his job as a bounty hunter; however, he still wants a real animal of his very own, and a bounty hunter’s salary is the only way he can make the money for such a luxury.

There are other themes in DADES, such as the human desire to believe in something bigger than ourselves, which is explored through the cult religion of Mercerism, the role of empathy in humanity, and the authenticity of human emotion, which is brought into question by the characters’ use of a “mood organ” (a metaphor for mood- altering pharmaceuticals).

This novel makes for a fantastic book club discussion; it operates on several levels and raises challenging and interesting philosophical questions. I am glad, however, that I saw the less-complex (but equally enjoyable)
film adaptation first. In 1990, I don’t think my booze-addled brain could have handled Dick’s allegorical storytelling and deep probing into the human psyche.

Conclusion: Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep? is perfect book club material, but far too complex for a lazy hangover Sunday riding the couch; that’s what the slick movie adaptation is for.

Edition pictured here:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick, Gollancz 2010, 208 pages, £7.99, trade paperback (SF Masterworks). ISBN: 978-575-09418-5

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