Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Study Guide

Shortly after Dick was born, his family moved to Berkeley, California, where he spent most of his childhood. Dick’s parents divorced when he was young, and he lived with his mother, who encouraged his intellectual curiosity. Dick’s academic career was sporadic. After briefly attending the University of California, Berkeley, he dropped out, choosing to focus on his passion for writing. His early career involved working at a record store, a job that fed his love of music and allowed him to engage with countercultural ideas. By the 1950s, Dick began publishing short stories in pulp science fiction magazines. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Dick wrote many of his most significant works, including The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won the Hugo Award. Other key novels include Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Ubik (1969), A Scanner Darkly (1977), and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974). Dick passed away in 1982 from complications following a stroke, just months before the release of the film Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s famous adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? during the late 1960s, a period shaped by Cold War tensions, rapid technological advancements, and widespread societal upheaval. The fear of nuclear annihilation loomed large, reflected in the novel’s depiction of a post-apocalyptic Earth devastated by radiation. This context mirrors real-world concerns about the environmental and existential threats that nuclear weapons and fallout pose to humanity. The Space Race also dominated the era, with humanity’s reach for technological progress contrasting starkly with the destructive potential of its innovations. Additionally, the civil rights movement gained momentum during this period, challenging systemic inequality, and demanding greater empathy and understanding across racial and social divides. Dick’s focus on empathy as a measure of humanity reflects these broader cultural debates. The androids’ struggle for recognition and freedom parallels the fight for civil rights, questioning the boundaries of inclusion and the ethics of exclusion.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? shares thematic and narrative threads with many works of science fiction and dystopian literature. Philip K. Dick’s other novels, such as Ubik and A Scanner Darkly, explore similar concerns about identity, reality, and the impact of technology on human lives. Ubik questions the boundaries between life and death in a technologically manipulated reality, while A Scanner Darkly examines paranoia, surveillance, and the fragility of identity. These works, like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, blend speculative elements with philosophical depth. The novel also echoes the ideas found in Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 similarly resonate with Dick’s exploration of dystopian futures where technology and control define existence. Additionally, the novel’s influence extends to later works such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer, which shaped the cyberpunk genre, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, which questions the humanity of clones.