Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a dystopian science fiction novel by the American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in 1968. Set in a radioactively contaminated San Francisco after a devastating nuclear war, it follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter tasked with hunting down and retiring six escaped Nexus-6 androids who are passing as human, in a world where real animals have become rare and precious status symbols and most people keep artificial replacements instead. A parallel storyline follows John Isidore, an intellectually impaired man left behind on the ruined Earth, who unknowingly shelters some of the same fugitive androids Deckard is pursuing, and whose growing sympathy for them complicates the novel's central question of what, if anything, reliably separates authentic human feeling from a convincing artificial imitation of it. The novel became the direct basis for Ridley Scott's acclaimed 1982 film Blade Runner, which altered many plot details while carrying its core themes forward into a work that itself later shaped the 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049, and Dick's original book is regarded as a foundational text of both cyberpunk and new-wave science fiction for its bleak, morally uncertain treatment of identity, empathy, and consciousness.