Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick Book Club Review:  We had a very interesting discussion about the book and it’s complex themes.  Most of us agreed that the author’s tendency to leave characters’ stories unresolved was aggravating.  Similarly, we wanted some of the story lines to lead to better conclusions.  But this is a book that wraps up a lot of moral and ethical dilemmas within a story and Philip K. Dick leaves a lot for the reader to decide for themselves.  Much of the decision is about what is ‘real’ and what is ‘made’.  Androids and mechanical animals are made to be so real that they don’t even know they are manufactured.  The only way to tell if a humanoid being is human or android is to administer an empathy test: only humans have empathy (hence they all keep animals to demonstrate this quality).  Beings failing the test are ‘retired’.  But what about human sociopaths, psychopaths and even people with autism who don’t have empathy?  And what about those androids who are so advanced that they can outwit the tests?  A bit like antibiotics nowadays, there is only one test that still works, and that is at risk of becoming obsolete as the major company makes more and more advanced androids.  Indeed, our group of escaped androids are a group of friends, including one couple, that fear ‘retirement’ and seem to feel loss when they are picked off one by one by the bounty-hunter, Deckard. So Deckard begins to question the differences between humans and androids, real and mechanical animals.  This led us to a discussion on whether Deckard himself was an android or not.  As a police officer, he can only afford a mechanical animal.  But it seems that his desire to own a real animal is only due to the monetary value of ownership, not empathy.  He shows no guilt at sleeping with an android, an illegal act, and cheating on his wife – but is this just an awakening of the realisation that androids might not just be ‘machines’ but thinking and feeling beings?  In fact, one character in the book, another police officer whose job is to ‘retire’ androids, turns out to be an android himself and is duly sent to the android graveyard. The theme of ‘reality’ carried on when we thought about the ‘better’ side of human life on Mars.  In the book, humans left on earth are ‘entertained’ by a TV show and are adherents to a type of religion, Mercerism.  Mercerism seems to combine virtual reality with actual bodily harm. None of the group could understand how a stone thrown in a virtual world caused bruises in the real one!  Another aspect of ‘having the wool pulled over ones eyes’ was to do with the lure of Mars.  Most people left on earth after World War Terminus are either rejected for emigration to Mars on the grounds of being ‘special’, or have chosen to stay in the hope that they wouldn’t succumb to the radioactive dust.  Emigration is encouraged by building up Mars as a great place to live and emigrants are given an android.  A give-away line by one of the androids indicates that life on Mars is not that great after all. Again, we were drawn back to the blurred lines between reality and myth. So the book gave us a lot to talk, and think, about.  There were definite drawbacks to the book in terms of the quite ugly characters in it and the absence of any real conclusions to the stories and the themes.  It is certainly a strange book and not one to read relaxing with a glass of wine and the radio on!  It is intense.  But it is also a great read in that it is unpredictable, with no great plot twists but no straight story-lines either.  And if you like a book that keeps you thinking about its ideas after you’ve closed the last page, this is one for you. Book Club Verdict: 8/10