Good Reads Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

**spoiler alert** A story much talked about due to its connections to Blade Runner, it would be a critical mistake to go into this book with the assumption that it is the same as the film.

While the influences are certainly there in the form of similar characters and a derelict, polluted and dystopian California, and story has specific scenes that match the format from the film, the story and world itself is noticeably different. Taking place over the course of one day, it follows Rick Deckard as he aims to track down six Nexus-6 units to retire, a goal that would help him achieve his dream of owning the ultimate status symbol: a real animal.

The ideas of what is human and what constitutes the real and not real (as well as the suffocating world of capitalism) permeates throughout the novel, but they are not explored remotely in way that Blade Runner does, through a lens of moral and philosophical mindsets.

Dick makes a lot of comments about politics and the price of status over life, to the point where the book feels like a completely different story, but no less rich. It is best therefore to view this story on its own merits, and in that regard it stands very strongly on its own.

While I prefer the moral questions that the Blade Runner version of this story evokes, reading the story that inspired it is still something you should absolutely do. Dick is a wonderful storyteller, and despite their differences the characters in this world still remain incredibly compelling.

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