Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) was first translated into Finnish in 1989 by Kari Nenonen in the wake of Blade Runner (1982), the film that is based on the novel. The translation got titled Palkkionmetsästäjä ("bounty hunter") and also had 'Blade Runner' on the cover like many later English printings of the novel -- impossible to make the connection between the book and the film just on their names. A couple of years ago, in 2022, there was a second Finnish translation by J. Pekka Mäkelä, instead titled after the original novel name: Uneksivatko androidit sähkölampaista?

I don't think I've ever read the first translation nor the original English novel. It has also been nearly three decades since I've seen the Ridley Scott film. I did regain some recollections of it when watching the sequel, Blade Runner 2049 back in 2017. (How has it been 8 years already? Geez.) Even with my hazy memories, it quickly became fairly clear that the adaptation dropped some elements that are in the original novel.

There's a religious and philosophical movement called Mercerism centered around a martyr-like character Wilbur Mercer. Via a device called empathy box, people can join a shared virtual experience of Mercer climbing a mountain and getting hit by rocks and whatnot. I'm pretty sure that was never featured in the film.

Empathy is kind of the big thing the makes humans human in the novel's world. The latest android models resemble humans so much that it is nigh impossible to distinguish them. However, they lack empathy. They can fake it but their reactions are not genuine enough to pass the test the novel's protagonist Rick Deckard uses.

Deckard is a bounty hunter for San Francisco Police Department, his job to "retire" rebel androids on the run. After reading so many Alastair Reynolds's space opera novels lately, the difference in characterization is stark: the depth Deckard gets and the view to his thoughts are on a completely different level. Deckard ponders things like life on the novel's heavily polluted Earth and how people have fake animals.

Like androids, the fake animals are nigh indistinguishable from the real things. Everyone knows that most don't have a living, breathing animal because they are very expensive. But asking someone if their animal is real or not is not socially acceptable. So everyone just continues keeping up appearances. Deckard acknowledges the vanity of it but even he and his wife Iran have an electric sheep. While talking to his neighbor, frustrated Deckard ends up confessing his pet is not real. He dreams of being able to afford some truly rare real animal with the bounties from hunting down androids.

The nature of reality and perception are common themes in Dick's stories. I'm pretty sure I've read something from him before but it's been too long to remember what book(s) it may have been. However, I had an impression that the sense of time tends to get weird in Dick's novels. And indeed, there's exactly such an occasion in this one too.

Deckard's department informs him that a Soviet detective will be coming to join him in his current hunt. Deckard calls them to check if the detective has arrived yet and they tell him the detective will be instead coming straight to him -- and then he's already in Deckard's car with him and soon there are android bits and pieces splayed all over it. It happens so alarmingly fast. You'd think there would be waiting and passing time but you already are in a tense confrontation without realizing it.

This translation has an afterword by Toni Jerrman the chief editor of Tähtivaeltaja ("stellar wanderer"), a Finnish quarterly sci-fi magazine. As expected, he praises Dick's works but then he randomly throws shade on Isaac Asimov, Robert E. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke (plus a fourth whose name I didn't recognize and already forgot), calling them authors of young adult literature.

I have now learned that they did actually write YA too so maybe it was more about what science fiction one could find in the olden times to read here in Finland, Dick's works being an exception for more adult audience. And to be fair, that is what Jerrman said in the whole context. Still, it made me initially really perplexed how something like the Foundation and Robot series could be classified as YA. There may be actual subtext of looking down on the mentioned authors here too; Dick's prose is definitely more appealing to the punk spirit Tähtivaeltaja had early on.