For the sake of full transparency, I’d like to start this response with saying that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep thoroughly confused me. I still enjoyed the novel, but I came away with more questions than answers.

  • Why make the androids so similar to humans to the point where the only way to tell them apart is through an empathy test and bone marrow examination? What’s the point?
  • What was that experience with Mercer that Rick had at the end of the novel? Is he hallucinating, reaching a new level of empathy, breaking down?
  • Why are animals one of the primary basis for testing empathy? If a human doesn’t particularly care for animals, wouldn’t they test as an android?
  • Are people really feeling empathy through Mercer when they can control how they feel through technology?

Regardless of my many questions, I did find Dick’s portrayal of androids to be compelling. Psychically, they’re indistinguishable from humans, but their behavior separates them; emphasis on empathy is key here. At first, Dick seems to be establishing that only humans are capable of displaying true, genuine emotion. Everything androids do is calculating, cold: even Isidore can sense their aloofness, their otherness. However, that raises a debate for me–what if this is simply the way that androids feel, and it can’t be compared to a human scale? If Rick can feel something for the androids, does that not make them more than emotionless machines? People don’t feel sympathy for tables or coffee machines, but I think it is valid to empathize with androids, emotionless as they supposedly are.