Philip.K.Dick's detective/sci-fi novel was published in 1968, its forward thinking address of the issue of humanity and what truly defines us as human is still, i believe relevant today. More interesting, to me particularly is the way in which it illustrates consumerism, in particular the culture industry, and how reality is being constantly distorted. This distortion parallels Baudrillard's hypotheses regarding simulations and simulacra - the loss of relationship between reality and the representations of it. The novel follows an android bounty hunter named Deckard and a 'special chickenhead' named Isidore. The two display opposite ends of the social spectrum in a post-nuclear-holocaust San Francisco. Deckard's job entails hunting down escaped androids from the new human colony on Mars and 'retiring' them, basically killing robots. As the story unfolds the two chracters' lives converge as Deckard strives to claim his bounty and Isidore some semblence of normality in social interraction.
