The year is somewhere in the future after World War Terminus. Rick Deckard works as a bounty hunter on Earth where the planet is nearly uninhabitable due to a release of toxic nuclear dust years before. Animals and humans are nearly extinct on the planet, either having died from the dust or emigrated to Mars. Androids are not allowed on Earth and are killed or "retired" without most of Earth's population even realizing that they are a problem.
To own an animal on Earth is a sign of status. Rick Deckard had a real sheep that died and now owns an electric sheep. His goal is to collect enough bounty money to buy another real animal.
Rick "retires" androids that look and have intelligence as human beings. Their own true identifying character is their lack of empathy, something all humans, no matter their intelligence level, possess. In order to "retire" an "andy", Rick must perform a test on them called Voight-Kamff test that analyzes empathy based on a series of questions.
His most recent job is to find and retire a group of 6 Nexus-6 type android, the latest in technology. They are so human that it's nearly impossible to distinguish them from actual humans. The novel follows his adventures tracking down and killing the illegals.
A secondary plot follows a man named J.R. Isidore who leaves in a nearly uninhabitable suburb to San Francisco. Isidore drives a truck for an artificial animal hospital disguised as a real vet. He has a substandard intelligence caused by the dust and cannot emigrate off of Earth. He is doomed to live his meaningless and uneventful life in filth and dirt. However, he meets a beautiful young woman new to his apartment building and his life quickly becomes much more exciting.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It was short and was easy to read. The plot never really slows down and after reading it, you realize that the story takes place in about a day. At first I was apprehensive about the book, thinking that I may not enjoy the story because of androids and their lack of personality - it seemed like the last thing I wanted to read about was some stupid robots. I was wrong. In fact, the best part of this novel is that it's based on empathy - our ability to express emotion. By following Deckard while he interviews an android, we begin to understand what it is that makes us human and them unemotional.
Dick creates beautiful characters in this novel and paints them in two different categories: human and android. We can imagine what it might be like to meet an android and never realize that they aren't human but at the same time it is difficult to understand how they can be so in-human without our senses and fears and sympathy.
This story is a study on human nature. The science fiction helped to make the story more "realistic." It was easy to imagine the novel taking place in a little spot in my head. It was very enjoyable.
Okay. I'm definitely getting WORSE at reviews.
My next review will be on Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel...I'm two chapters away from finishing it!!
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