Loose summary and thoughts on the 1968 novel by Philip K. Dick, and some contrast with Blade Runner (1982), and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Obviously, spoilers ahead.
The novel’s epigraph is an obituary for a turtle from 1966.
A turtle which explorer Captain Cook gave to the King of Tonga in 1777 died yesterday. It was nearly 200 years old.
The animal, called Tu’i Malila, died at the Royal Palace ground in the Tongan capital of Nuku, Alofa.
The people of Tonga regarded the animal as a chief and specal keepers were appointed to look after it. It was blinded in a bush fire a few years ago.
Tonga radio said Tu’i Malila’s carcass would be sent to the Auckland Museum in New Zealand.
The story takes place in 2021, San Francisco, California. A nuclear war has greatly reduced the human population, and has driven most of the planet’s fauna and flora into extinction. Everyone who could has already left Earth for nearby Mars, or uncertain Proxima. Radioactive dust covers the night sky; no one has seen a star in years. There is an undertone of mourning for the irreparable loss of animal life and the attempt at its preservation throughout the story.
This is the name given to the nuclear war that wiped out most life on Earth. By 2021, its more virulent effects are already diminishing. That is to say, the fallout is not immediately fatal to the remaining population. It does, however, continue to cause mental degradation and congenital deformities. The government runs a continuous emigration campaign under the slogan:
Emigrate or degenerate! The choice is yours!
WWT was promoted by the Pentagon, as well as the Rand Corporation (presumably in an advisory or contractual role). The Rand Corporation promptly left the planet after the war. No one remembers the participants, the cause, or the victor of the war (if anyone could be considered to have won at all).
As mentioned above, the remaining population is continually degraded by exposure to the radioactive fallout from the war. Citizens are required to submit to yearly medical tests, to ensure they continue to be “regulars”, people who can reproduce within the tolerances set by law. They are also required to take yearly IQ tests, failing which, they are categorized as “specials” and forbidden from emigrating. Specials are relegated to menial jobs according to their capacities. They are further categorized into:
chickenheads, such as John Isidore, who works as a delivery driver at a false animal repair shop
antheads, who are very deteriorated specials, lower-functioning even than chickenheads, and can only be assigned to the simplest of tasks
The mass extinction caused by the war ignited the empathy for animals that forms the backdrop for the story; it used to be a crime, right after the war, to not take care of an animal, should you come across one.
The war also spawned the “Synthetic Freedom Fighter”, later to be known as “humanoid robots”, “organic androids”, or just androids (“andy” for short). These would later be modified into slave labor for off-world colonists (every emigrant from Earth was entitled to one android).
One element that is absent from the Blade Runner movies is the religion of the post-WWT world: Mercerism. It is named after Wilbur Mercer, a haggard middle-aged man who must climb a mountain, only to be assailed by unseen enemies, who throw him back down. After this, Mercer must once again begin to climb from the bottom of the mountain. This repeating ordeal is referred to by the faithful as The Ascent.
How Mercer’s backstory has been communicated to the public is not explained, but presumably it is absorbed through the empathy box. The story goes that Mercer had the power to bring the dead back to life, but this practice had been outlawed. When caught using his power, he was punished by radioactive bombardment of the abnormality in his brain responsible for it. As further punishment, he was cast into “the tomb world”, where his ordeal takes place.
According to one character, Mercer is:
…not a human being at all, but an archetypal entity from the stars, superimposed on our culture by a cosmic template.
The drama of Mercer’s struggle plays out on the screen of the empathy box. This device features a pair of handles, grasping which, the user is mentally transported into Mercer’s point of view. The user feels everything that happens to Mercer, and may come away from the experience with physical wounds corresponding to those inflicted by Mercer’s assailants (some have even died during the final confrontation at the top of the mountain).
Mercer’s unseen assailants are dubbed The Killers, and they figure in the major tenet of Mercerism:
Thou shalt kill only The Killers.
Thus, the Killers become an abstraction that may be sensed anywhere by a Mercerite. For example:
For Rick Deckard an escaped humanoid robot, which had killed its master, which had been equipped with an intelligence greater than that of many human beings, which had no regard for animals, which had no ability to feel empathic joy for another life form’s success or grief at its defeat—that, for him, epitomized The Killers.
As mentioned earlier, androids started out as synthetic soldiers in WWT, but were made into slave labor afterwards, to work in the Martian colony, or on the hopefully succesful mission to Proxima (presumably Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun). They are illegal on Earth, although the Rosen Association (the main android manufacturer) is headquartered in Seattle. Since androids all have a human master, it is presumed that any android on Earth has killed its master, as well as anyone who stood in its way. Android detection is increasingly difficult. They have not been reliably caught by mere intelligence tests since the earliest models, and they are internally so human-like that only a bone marrow test can reliably determine their nature (in the movies their eyeballs and bones are inscribed with a serial number). In order to reliably identify them, the Pavlov Institute devised the Voigt-Kampff test, which measures the flattening of affect, a weakening and delay in normal emotional response.
Androids fail the Voigt-Kampff test because they lack empathy for other living beings, including other androids (insofar as androids can be said to be alive). This shows in the fact that animals tend to die in their care, as they can’t be bothered to look after them. They are also unable, by a deliberate built-in defect, to commune with Wilbur Mercer through the empathy box; in fact, some of them may think of Mercerism as a lie told collectively by humans for some incomprehensible reason (this from the way the android Irmgard Baty talks about it).
Android cells do not reproduce, so their lifespans are extremely short (about 4 years). They are incapable of sexual reproduction, an exception to which sets the premise for Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Also, they can hold their breath until they die.
The prohibition of androids on Earth is enforced by bounty hunters, who “retire” them (not kill, since they’re not technically alive) for $1000 each. This all takes place out of public view, since the governments of the world (the US and the Soviets) maintain the lie that there are no androids on Earth. Their daily work consists of tracking down suspected androids (arrived at mostly through background checks on job applicants and immigrants from off-world), and administering the Voigt-Kampff test.
Another element absent from the movies is the Penfield artificial brain stimulation device, also known as a mood organ, which alters the user’s state of mind according to codes input by the user. It appears to have a fairly nuanced emotional catalogue. The moods mentioned in the book (some accompanied by their codes) are:
businesslike professional attitude
self-accusatory depression
382: apathy
481:
…awareness of the manifold possibilities open to me in the future; new hope that…
104: undefined
888:
The desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on it.
3: wanting to dial (use the mood organ itself)
594:
…pleased acknowledgement of husband’s superior wisdom in all matters.
670:
long deserved peace
The story centers around a bounty hunter named Rick Deckard (one of the few characters that kept his name in the movies). Deckard lives with his wife Iran (absent from the film adaptation), who is very conflicted about her husband’s line of work, and is also severely depressed (which she complements by dialing for depression on their household mood organ). At the forefront of his mind is the fact that he is unable to acquire an animal. In the Mercerite system, it is every citizen’s moral obligation to own and take care of at least one animal. Deckard used to hava a sheep, given to him by his father-in-law, who then migrated off-world. This original sheep died, which Deckard covered up from his neighbors by acquiring an “electric sheep”. Even though the sheep is a perfect simulation of the original, this falsehood weighs shamefully on Deckard. He yearns for the day when he retires enough androids to buy a real animal.
The opportunity presents itself when Deckard is called in by his boss, who informs him that Dave Holden, the San Francisco Police Deportment’s head bounty hunter, has been seriously wounded by an android going by the name Max Polokov. Deckard is asked to take over Holden’s case, which entails tracking down 6 androids remaining on Holden’s list, including Polokov. He is informed that the androids in question are the new Nexus-6 types, and ordered to go to the Rosen Association headquarters in Seattle, in order to confirm that the Voigt-Kampff test can still reliably distinguish between an android and a human.
At the Rosen Association headquarters, Deckard meets Rachael Rosen (love interest in the Blade Runner movies), niece of Eldon Rosen, head of the company. Rachael is to be Deckard’s first subject in a sampling of 6 humans and 6 androids. After a few questions, Rachael fails the test, and Eldon explains that his niece was born and raised off-world, which stunted her empathic response towards animals. This seems to invalidate the test and open up the bounty hunters to the possibility of “retiring” a human by mistake. This is quickly revealed to be a ruse, though, and Eldon admits that Rachael is an android with his niece’s memories. Having validated his methodology, Deckard heads out to hunt down Polokov.
Before he can go after Polokov, though, Deckard is informed that a Soviet cop named Sandor Kadalyi is flying in (by rocket) from Russia to participate in the investigation. Kadalyi turns out to be Polokov himself, and although Deckard manages to retire him, he is left to wonder how the impersonation was possible. Deckard then moves on to the next name on Holden’s list, one Luba Luft, opera singer (a stripper in the 1982 movie). Deckard is surprised to see her named as a suspected android; he owns several recordings of her and considers her to be exceptionally talented. He follows throuhg nonetheless, and approaches miss Luft in her dressing room. Due to the sexual content of some of the questions on the Voigt-Kampff, she accuses him of being some sort of pervert, and calls the police while holding him at gunpoint. A police officer arrives, arrests Deckard, and takes him in under suspicion of murder (pending a bone marrow test on Polokov’s body in Deckard’s car).
The Police Department Deckard is taken to is not his own, and he is informed that the station he thinks he works at is the old headquarters, and has been abandoned for years. For a time, Deckard is confronted by the possibility that he himself may be an android with false memories. This alternate station is quickly revealed to be a front for a network of androids helping other androids assume false identities. Deckard is able to escape from the station with the help of bounty hunter Phil Resch, who may unknowingly be an android himself. Resch then helps Deckard apprehend and kill Luba Luft. Afterwards, Resch advises Deckard to have sex with an android before killing it, as some sort of exercise in will power, to purge himself of any sympathy for androids.
After cashing in the reward for the androids he has retired so far, Deckard is finally able to buy an animal. He brings home a goat, but is called back in by his boss, who orders him to go after the remaining androids before they go deeper into hiding. Deckard then proceeds to meet with Rachael Rosen at a hotel, following Resch’s advice. After having sex with Rachael, he finds that although he is unable to kill her specifically, he has found the motivation to go on and retire the remaining androids. At this point, Rachael reveals that she is in collaboration with the group of androids Deckard is after, and that she has neutralized several other bounty hunters who have been unable to continue their work after having sex with her (with the exception of a psychopathic man named Phil Resch). Deckard proceeds to track the remaining androids down to an apartment complex where they make their final stand.
After successfully retiring the remaining 3 androids, Deckard finds out from his wife that Rachael Rosen has killed his goat. He sets out once more to confront her, but is forced to stop on the way to Seattle. Somewhere on the California-Oregon border, he has a spiritual experience of being merged with Mercer without the need for an empathy box. Then he miraculously finds a toad (Mercer’s favorite animal), and decides to head back home to his wife. At home, he shows Iran the toad, and they soon discover it’s an electric toad. The story ends with Deckard just going to sleep and Iran calling a false animal store to ask about electric flies to feed the toad.
The story alternates between the viewpoints of Deckard and one John R. Isidore (J. F. Sebastian in the 1982 film), a chickenhead (genetic engineer in the movie). Out of loneliness and gullibility, Isidore decides to harbor the three remaining androids on Deckard’s list after they take refuge in his apartment building. He first meets Pris Stratton, who has taken residence one floor below him. Pris calls in her two android friends, Roy and Irmgard Baty, and they vote 2 to 1 against killing Isidore, deciding he can be used as a decoy if a bounty hunter comes knocking on their door. Near the end of the novel, Isidore finds a spider, which is a rare sight in the dying Earth, and decides to show his new friends. The androids wonder why it would need eight legs, when 4 should suffice, and they proceed to cut off 4 legs. Then when the spider refuses to move, they goad it with the flame of a match. This cruelty is too much for Isidore, who drowns the spider at the sink and runs over to the empathy box. After having an experience with Mercer directly talking to him and giving him another spider, he walks out of the building and sets the spider on the grass (somehow the spider Mercer gave him has materialized in his hand). At this point he meets Deckard about to go into the building. He still refuses to tell Deckard exactly where the androids are.
The post-apocalyptic nature of the setting is accentuated by the fact that everything in the daily lives of humans is artificial. The planet is dead, and the only way to inhabit it is by pretending there’s hope that it’s not.
The novel starts by introducing us to the concept of the mood organ. It’s not quite that the human population has lost the ability to feel, but rather that their spontaneous emotions have become stunted to the point where they are dependent on brain stimulation, not just to really feel, but to feel what they want to feel. Since there is no hope of improving a person’s surroundings, humanity has collectively accepted that they might as well achieve happiness artificially. Not just happiness, though, but whatever the individual thinks he ought to feel. We see Iran wanting to dial for depression because that’s what she thinks she should be feeling when she contemplates the desolation of the world. This shows a huge distancing from the spontaneity of feeling, if you have to think about what would be appropriate to feel in response to a given situation. It’s ironic, considering the novel later introduces the concept of flattening of affect by which androids can be identified.
People keeping artificial animals is a collective coping mechanism in response to the irreparable damage humanity has caused. It represents the denial aspect of humanity’s mourning for the world that once was, raised to a pathological degree, in that a religion has been devised that mandates that you at least pretend to own an animal. Since life on the planet can’t be preserved, one must at least pretend to be participating in an effort to preserve it. The last electric animal we see, the toad Deckard finds an believes to be real, is a bleak suggestion that eventually all the animals will be artificial, and that they’ll even roam free. The Earth will be populated, however sparsely, by animal automata, senselessly acting out their programmed lives until they break down.
Androids are the obvious example of artificiality. The same industrial, all-consuming greed that brought about the planet’s destruction has spawned the organic android. They’ve been so perfected that their bodies can only be distinguished through a bone marrow test, and they even simulate emotion. But one must question how humans who are increasingly dependent on technology to really feel at all, whose sorrows can be alleviated by caring for artificial animals, purport to establish through emotion which life is artificial.
Of course we see an answer in the scene with Isidore’s spider, where the androids satisfy their curiosity by taking it apart. A human wouldn’t do such a thing, certainly not one that has been brought up under Mercerism. There, at least, the difference between real humans and their simulated counterparts can still be found.
Mercerism is the epitome of artificiality. It is a religion that man has made for himself when faced with the absence and impossibility of spirituality. It is an absurd religion. Mercer’s Ascent is a reference to the myth of Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down when he reaches the top. Humanity has accepted the absurdist outlook that life is without purpose, and that the only way forward is to embrace the struggle, despite knowing full well it is pointless.
The religion is even immune to being exposed as a fraud. After the TV host Buster Friendly reveals that the person identified as Mercer is actually a pre-war bit actor, and that the setting of the climb experienced by millions is a painted backdrop, Isidore and Deckard still have experiences where they talk to Mercer. Mercer confirms his artificiality to Isidore, yet is somehow able to give him a spider (probably an electric one) to replace the one the androids mutilated. When talking to Deckard, he says:
You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.
Creation is defeated. All that is left is to simulate it and tend to the simulation, which is in itself a violation of humanity’s identity.
The first movie cut out all the weird religious elements from the novel, as well as the absurdist messaging, which would presumably have been unpallatable to audiences back then. Instead it takes the route of an unlikely love story, when Deckard (unmarried in the film) runs off with Rachael Rosen.
Blade Runner 2049 in some sense recaptures the absurdist character of the narrative. Ryan Gosling’s character, K, is an android engineered to obey and hunt down previous generation androids. He has been implanted with memories which he knows to be false, but is confronted with the fact that a female android has given birth and that elements from the child’s life line up with these supposedly false memories. He harbors the hope that he himself may be this child, and is devastated when he finds the true miracle child. It turns out she (the child, now grown) has been working for K’s manufacturer, and has implanted her own memories into the product. In other words, not only are K’s memories fake, they are standard issue.
This represents an identity-shattering disappointment. K’s life is completely devoid of meaning once again. Not even the company of his AI girlfriend can cheer him up. Despite this, he chooses to help Deckard reunite with his daughter. He chooses to keep pushing the boulder, keep climbing Mercer’s hill. In the end his life mattered because he created meaning for himself out of his senseless strife, in spite of and because of its senselessness.