Of Rocky Roads and Electric Sheep

Over Labor Day weekend awhile back Cait and I hiked up to Blue Lake. It felt great—even though the 6-mile round trip had me hobbling and begging for a hot tub the next day. The rocky, steep terrain reminded me of a novel I finished recently by one of the finest science fiction writers of all time, Philip K. Dick, called “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

It is the basis for the movie “Bladerunner,” but is quite different from the movie. In a world that has barely survived a multi-world war, most of Earth’s population has been bribed into migrating to other planets to survive. Only a few humans remain on Earth including the main character, a bounty hunter named Rick Deckard who tracks down and “kills” renegade androids. The androids are manufactured so skillfully that it is quite difficult to tell them from humans. The bounty hunter administers empathy tests to force androids to reveal themselves, since technology has not advanced to the point where they can be taught the most human of traits, empathy.

Meanwhile, there are so few animals left on earth that they are greatly prized as pets, and the less fortunate must settle for android animals. Our hero has a sheep and keeps it a secret from his neighbors that the sheep is not real, but an android. Throughout the novel we’re kept guessing about who and what is an android, and who is “real”—we even begin to suspect Deckard at times. Earth is bleak, polluted and radioactive, so humans derive some comfort from a device in every home that, when grasped by its handles, plunges them into a shared dream in which a man named Wilbur Mercer trudges endlessly up a rocky trail. (You were wondering how this would end up relating to a rocky trail, weren’t you?). In this way all share in Mercer’s feelings and travail as he endlessly climbs up the trail in his attempts to escape the “tomb world,” fending off the occasional rock thrown at him from above. Mercer is also said to have been able to heal animals at one time, a sacred ability given the high value placed on the few animals still remaining on Earth. As a result there is a religion of sorts called Mercerism. Eventually the androids discover and reveal a terrible truth about the genuineness of Mercerism, and those who believe are put to the test. But perhaps faith and empathy are stronger than we thought?

Walking up a rocky mountain trail not unlike the one I imagined Mercer to have climbed in the novel, I pondered all of this and tried to explain it to a perplexed Cait between short breaths as we climbed higher and higher. Is empathy a true test of what it means to be human, and if someone doesn’t feel empathy does that mean they are less human?

Check out the book if you haven’t read it—it’s fascinating. PKD wrote it in 1968 and it is amazing how relevant it still is today.