𝕰𝖈𝖆𝖙𝖊

The book is most known for being the inspiration for Blade Runner, but they are very different works. In Blade Runner the Replicant bots became a metaphor for exploited and disposable human lives. In Electric Sheep the Androids are a metaphor for people who lack empathy and humanity, specifically inspired by the Nazis. They may be Philosophical Zombies.

(This portrayal is a bit ableist toward sociopaths and people with empathy problems. So let me say that you can choose to be a good person even without empathy and move on.)

So the Androids are mean and they do nasty things like disprove the humans' favorite religion (not that it matters, ha!) and aren't good at taking care of animals. But it is really hard to tell Androids from real humans. It takes difficult tests to detect them and the companies who make Androids (which may be run entirely by Androids?) keep making new Androids even harder to detect.

So Electric Sheep portrays a world overrun by corporate psychopathy in which genuine human connection is stymied by both the possibility and actuality of Android infiltrators.

In our own real world dystopia, we rely heavily on social media that is filled with bots and scammers of varying sophistication. Corporate actors like Facebook are actively developing newer and 'more human' chatbots to populate our social landscape.

Our corporate overlords don't seem to understand that what we want and need is genuine human contact and connection.

I was thinking about the name Wendell bambleby, and I don't know if she did this on purpose but...

I looked it up, and Wendell means traveler or wanderer. Bambleby was a little harder to put together, but bembel in Norwegian means a mountain or round hill, and the ending -by means a village or farm (from viking linguistic influences, so also scandinavian).

The White Rat🐁