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

This is another classic piece of science fiction literature.  Anyone who has read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick highly recommends it, so I gave it a whirl.

As you may or may not know, this book was the basis for the movie Blade Runner, even though the events that show up in the movie are really just a portion of the book. The book is another tome written during the Cold War Era with a grim outlook for the future. Mankind migrates to Mars after the final world war leaves the Earth as a dying pile of ash. Those who are able to be fruitful and multiply have the option to leave the planet for the colonies and they get an android servant to boot! But the radiation and ash has taken it's toll on many o the population. Sterility and lowered intelligence are usually the hallmarks. I would venture a guess that this book invented the term, "special" for those having lower intelligence. The less politically correct terms used in the book are chickenhead (mildly unintelligent) and anthead (barely functional).

What happens is a bunch of androids from Mars kill their human masters and make their way to Earth to live free. Unfortunately for them it's illegal for androids to live on Earth and a bounty hunter is dispatched to "retire" the lot. He gets put in the hospital and Richard Decker is next man up for the job. He is in a religious crisis, he wants a REAL animal, not his electric sheep so he can be more in tune with their future religion "Mercerism" so the job will afford him the real animal that he wants / needs.

The rest of the book is about religion, empathy, and tracking down the "andys."

The book is really well written and keeps you turning pages. You can see where the movie was pulled from the pages, but you can see that there is a lot more to the story than just killing some renegede androids. A must-read for fans of science fiction.