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Off-world: The Blade Runner Wiki
1,262
pages
Explore
Main Page
Discuss
All Pages
Community
Interactive Maps
Recent Blog Posts
Books
Fiction
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Blade Runner: A Story of the Future
Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human
Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night
Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon
Non-fiction
Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner
The Art and Soul of Blade Runner 2049
Blade Runner 2049: Interlinked - The Art
Blade Runner 2049: The Storyboards
The Art of Blade Runner: Black Lotus
Film/TV
Blade Runner
Blade Runner 2049
Short films
2036: Nexus Dawn
2048: Nowhere To Run
Blade Runner Black Out 2022
Television
Blade Runner: Black Lotus
Blade Runner 2099
Comics
Marvel
BOOM! Studios
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dust to Dust
Titan Comics
Aahna Ashina trilogy
Blade Runner 2019
Blade Runner 2029
Blade Runner 2039
Blade Runner Origins
Blade Runner: Black Lotus
Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus
Games
Tabletop games
Blade Runner (canceled board game)
Blade Runner 2049: Nexus Protocol
Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game
Video games
Blade Runner (1985 video game)
Blade Runner (1997 video game)
Blade Runner 2049: Memory Lab
Blade Runner: Revelations
Blade Runner: Rogue
Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
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===False hierarchies and divisions of life=== On post-war Earth life forms, natural and artificial, are classified on hierarchies. Animals are considered endlessly precious, humans are considered less so and androids are considered meaningless. After their sexual encounter, Rosen explains this to Deckard, “That goat. You love that goat more than you love me, more than you love your wife probably” (page 177). The three groups are also sub-classified. ''Sidney's Catalog'' gives the exact worth of every type of animal, humans are divided between those who can immigrate off-world and those who can't ("chickenheads") and new androids, that are superior to previous models, are constantly produced. Yet these classifications have many flaws, especially between humans and androids. The latest androids are more intelligent than some classes of humans. Isidore even calls the three androids living with him "superior beings." Empathy is the trait that definitively separates human psyches from those of androids. Yet Deckard notes that, to perform their job, bounty hunters must not be empathetic towards androids, thus their superiority to the androids they hunt is questionable. Two of the most respected “persons” on Earth may be artificial creations: Buster Friendly and Wilbur Mercer. Friendly, who often mocks Mercerism, reveals in an exposé that the stimuli humans encounter in an empathy box is based on old Hollywood films starring an alcoholic actor. Thus, Mercer may be nothing more than a repeating computer program. Plus, androids’ flights to Earth reveal that they have the capacity to imagine a better life for themselves. This is epitomized by Luba Luft, the android opera singer, who likely performed menial work on an off-world colony. While androids struggle for true contentment, many human beings are relying on artificial means of happiness, such as the mood organ. “Most androids have more vitality and desire to live than my wife,” Deckard notes (page 83). At the novel's end, Deckard comments on the way that his conflict with his profession has turned him into an “unnatural self,” which would make him android-like.
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