Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep

In this vision of the future, all the animals are dead, except a few ones: every human must feed one of them, keep it safe at home. Having an animal is a kind of proof of your social status: that is why people who can't afford any animal buy electric ones...it explains the title of this story. The people who live on Earth dream of living it, to live on Mars for exemple...but most of them can't emigrate because they are mutants (it is not said, but we can suppose there had been a big nuclear apocalypse). The progress in robotic is impressive: the story begins a few months after the creation of a new kind of androids, or replicants: the Nexus -6. These replicants are so sohpisticated that they can come accross as human. They're even depicted as "more human than human". Only one thing can tell them apart from humans: a test, the Voight-Kampf? test, which analyse the movment of the eyes while being asked some questions concerning emotions. The population of the Earth is divided: a part supports Mercer, a strange man who keep waling in a desert, no one knows why, neither where, people can reach him and embody into him for a while thanks to a sort of console. It's almost a religion. The other part supports a TV show, probably controlled by the government.

Rick Deckard is a blade runner: he hunts replicants who escaped their masters. 6 replicants of the new model, the nexus-6, have just escaped from the moon where they were enslaved: one of Rick's collegues have been wounded by the first replicant, so Rick must do the job. His investigation will lead him to the Tyrel corporation, the guys who built the replicants, where he will meet Rachel. Rachel will help him in his inquiry, but they will also fall in love...The most interesting replicants are probably Priss, who has befriended with Isidore, a mutant, and Roy Batty, the most inteligent of the replicants. Rick catches the replicants thanks to the Voight-Kampf? test, but as he progresses, something begins to bother him: he discovers he is attracted to female android, and some replicants are not aware they are not human. Rick kills 5 replicants, the first ones without problems, the last ones almost against his will (Roy Batty and his wife are the last ones). Then he discovers that Rachel is the 6th replicant....he kills her, then turns crazy. He connects himself to a Mercer console, and experiences a sort of epiphany: for the first time he truly becomes Mercer. In the end, Rick comes back home with an electric animal, where he finds his wife...I guess he resigns from his job.

The main theme is humanity. Why is a human what he is? His emotions, his deeds? The replicants are shown as fully human, and Rick is depicted as heartless, making the reader wonders who is the most human character. Having an animal, even an electric one, has became the dream of everybody: the title means "Are androids human?" Another theme is love, between a man and a machine... Mercer is something important too: maybe a metaphor of Jesus Christ. If you are interested by this theme, you should read another P.K.Dick short story, called 'Mercer'.

First of all, Roy Batty is not the big ennemy he was in the movie: Rick kills him in two minutes. Rachel is the most important replicant. Rick doesn't go to any pub to find the dancer female replicant: he goes to an opera where she sings. There are 6 replicants, not 5 like in the movie: Rick is not one of them in the book (this was ambiguous in the movie). The movie didn't show Mercer or electric animal (that is probably why they changed the title to Blade Runner) Rick is not married in the movie: he doesn't cheat on his wife since he has none. Maybe this is a way to humanize him?