Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

After a nuclear war, most people have left Earth, and those who remain keep animals as status symbols, real or electric. Rick Deckard wants a real animal, and the bounty for retiring six rogue androids will get him one.

The film Blade Runner borrowed the setting, but the novel is stranger and more philosophical. It asks what empathy is, whether it can be measured and what it means that the hunters begin to feel less human than their prey.

Dick's style is rough and the plot jumps between threads, yet the paranoia and melancholy are intensely effective. This is science fiction at its most unsettling and humane.