Okay, so let’s disregard the awful title of this book and instead pretend the title reflects the content. In that case the title would be incisive, something about religion, humanity, and empathy. It would not be an awful pun.
I hate puns and there will be no puns in this review.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set in a future after a devastating world war. Most of Earth’s population has emigrated to a colony on Mars, yet some people remain behind for reasons I’m not quite sure of. These people follow a religion called Mercerism, a religion that seems to worship empathy and dictates that people should care for animals and, because humans are garbage, owning and caring for an animal becomes a status symbol. Enter Rick Deckard who is a bounty hunter with a shameful secret. He owns a sheep – but it’s electric! Luckily, he’s about to get a big break. Deckard hunts and ‘retires’ androids and six of them are on the loose. If he retires all six he might be able to afford a real animal.
“I love you,’ Rachael said. ‘If I entered a room and found a sofa covered with your hide I’d score very high on the Voigt-Kampff test.”
There we go, that’s it, that’s the motive. But of course things go awry. Deckard hunts and identifies the androids by administering an empathy test. The validity of the test is called into question and the line between human and android seems blurred. Throughout the book Dick explores empathy in humans and animals alike.
“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
The entire tale is set against a backdrop of Mercer-religion that takes empathy and structures it, makes a thing that can be dialled into via an empathy machine, yet still reserves it for a select few. No androids allowed. No stupid people. Empathy is a ritual that must be carried out, but is still kept unobtainable. Sympathy and compassion becomes what separates the human from the artificial, so it revered and idolized and completely depleted.
Of course Deckard realizes something throughout this book as he simultaneously loses and becomes his religion. I could say a lot about this, but here’s a tumblr post about a roomba that really says it all for me.
This is such a great review. After all the sympathetic AI characters I read last year, I would 100% worry about my Roomba’s feelings.