This 1968 novel by Philip K. Dick is better known to the masses as the book that inspired Blade Runner. The year is 2021. (What was 53 years in the future at publication is now only two years away!) Android technology has advanced to the point where it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between a robot and a real human. This led the government of earth to bar androids from the planet—they were only welcome with the lonely people in the Mars colonies. Rick Deckard (who will always look like Harrison Ford in my mind) is a bounty hunter who ‘retires’ the androids who make it back to earth.

Dick’s world is dark and full of detail. It includes a bizarre religion called Mercerism where people use an electric device to zone-out and experience empathy with a Christ-figure who walks endlessly up a mountain while stones rain down. The world is also inhabited my a myriad of electronic animals (including “electric sheep”) since natural animals were scarce and ridiculously valuable. Somehow, Dick makes all of this make sense.

On a philosophical level, the question about what makes a person human is fascinating. If androids are indistinguishable from humans, why don’t they have the rights of humans? What makes us human anyway? Is it merely neural circuitry that can be technologically replicated or something more embodied—something the android Rachael tries to discover?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a cult classic that is still well worth reading.

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Del Rey, 1996.