Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K.Dick

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip K.Dick
This is a Sci-fi novel and you guessed it right with the title giving it away. It is the story of our lead character Rick Deckard who is a bounty hunter. He kills androids (human like robots ). Earth is no longer the only planet humans live on , we have colonised other planets in the solar system and most of the reference in the book is to Mars , not much about other planets. Earth has gone through World War 3 and the dust it self has killed almost all the animals and every human has to have atleast one living animal he tends to, so that he can brag about it to his friends, scary thought eh?
Androids are not allowed on earth, they are manufactured and used as slaves on Mars. Some of them escape to earth, mostly Nexus-6 types which are the latest and closest looking humanoids. Rick is employed by the San Francisco police to kill the androids but not before a test is administered, Voigt-Kampff test which tests the Empathy quotient and can always tell if you are an android except on schizophrenics.
Rick is assigned to kill the 6 androids who are on the hit list and the violence though short lived , sticks with you. He gets an android, Polokov who poses like a cop in his hovercar, in the head with his lasergun, brains all over. To know more about the Nexus-6 he goes to the corporation that manufactures these, Rosen Corp and gets introduced to the lady Android, Rachael Rosen who he administers the test as an example.
The plot kind of goes slow here with another character J R Isidore being introduced who helps the remaining three androids Rick wants to kill. Mercer is another character we hear of often and he exists in a different world, people have a spiritual fusing with him, when they try to talk to him through the Mercer boxes they have. Is it reference to organised religion's evolution in the future, maybe!
Rick doesn't have a real animal, he only has an electric sheep, his real animal we hear has died. He gets the bounty money and does get a real goat for a huge amount from a pet shop, it is killed by Rachael at the exact moment when he is killing one of the last andys, Pris Stratton, twin android of Rachael. He sleeps with Rachael and doesn't want to think about it, he knows that he can know if it is right or wrong and hence decided not to think about it.
Androids don't have empathy, they don't have feelings except for themselves, a probable reference to what we have become, isolated, lonely, made every other animal extinct, it is the future that the author talks about, it has arrived.
Rick ends up killing all andys and finds another extinct animal, a toad which he brings home to her wife Iran Deckard, she shows him that it is electric almost saddening him and relieving him at the same time.
He goes to sleep and we know that he will not be a bounty hunter anymore, with no androids left and his new feeling to electric animals that they have a right to live as much as we do.

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