R- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (v, some x, b)

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: San Francisco, January 2021. World War Terminus has left a blanket of radioactive clouds over the Earth, and most of the healthy survivors have emigrated to offworld colonies. All animal species are either endangered or extinct, but everyone who can afford an animal has one--and those who can't have lifelike robotic imitations. The social backlash of W.W.T. has turned the need for basic human empathy into a religion.

Artificial biological entities--androids--paved the way to offworld colonization by freeing emigres from manual labor. However, "andys" occasionally go rogue, killing their owners and attempting to pass for humans. Those who make it to Earth become the prey of bounty hunters like Rick Deckard, who use empathy tests to distinguish man from machine, then "retire" (destroy) the andys. A new brain unit, the Nexus-6, threatens to make Deckard's job much harder: these androids come so close to simulating human responses that "special" (mentally ill or low-IQ) humans may test positive as andys more often than the constructs do. A group of Nexus-6 androids has hospitalized the S.F.P.D.'s senior bounty hunter, leaving Deckard to carry on in his place.

The movie Blade Runner (1982) is loosely based on this novel, but there are significant differences between the two works. The novel gives more time to the internal effects of isolation on the humans who remain on Earth, such as the cult of empathic fusion and the imperative to own and maintain an animal. The movie focuses and expands upon the action plot (Deckard hunting the androids) and creates a convincing visual context for the story. (While "cyberspace" plays no part in the story, Blade Runner pioneered the decaying high-tech look of a cyberpunk world.) The center of both works, however, is the same: exploring the effects of advanced technology on human identity.

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