Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, a book by Phillip K. Dick, is the inspi­ra­tion for  the acclaimed movie Blade Run­ner, although the book far sur­passes the film in rich­ness and com­plex­ity. Here are the open­ing pages:

A merry lit­tle surge of elec­tric­ity piped by auto­matic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awak­ened Rick Deckard. Surprised–it always sur­prised him to find him­self awake with­out prior notice–he rose from the bed, stood up in his mul­ti­col­ored paja­mas, and stretched. Now, in her bed, his wife Iran opened her gray, unmerry eyes, blinked, then groaned and shut her eyes again.

“You set your Pen­field too weak,” he said to her. “I’ll reset it and you’ll be awake and–”

“Keep your hand off my set­tings.” Her voice held bit­ter sharp­ness. “I don’t want to be awake.”

He seated him­self beside her, bent over her, and explained softly. “If you set the surge up high enough, you’ll be glad you’re awake; that’s the whole point. At set­ting C it over­comes the thresh­old bar­ring con­scious­ness, as it does for me.” Friendlily, because he felt well-disposed toward the world–his set­ting had been at D–he pat­ted her bare, pale shoulder.

“Get your crude cop’s hand away,” Iran said.

“I’m not a cop.” He felt irri­ta­ble, now, although he hadn’t dialed for it.

“You’re worse,” his wife said, her eyes still shut. “You’re a mur­derer hired by the cops.”

“I’ve never killed a human being in my life.” His irri­tabil­ity had risen, now; had become out­right hostility.

Iran said, “Just those poor andys.”

“I notice you’ve never had any hes­i­ta­tion as to spend­ing the bounty money I bring home on what­ever momen­tar­ily attracts your atten­tion.” He rose, strode to the con­sole of his mood organ. “Instead of sav­ing,” he said, “so we could buy a real sheep, to replace that fake elec­tric one upstairs. A mere elec­tric ani­mal. And me earn­ing all that I’ve worked my way up to through the years.” At his con­sole he hes­i­tated between dial­ing for a thal­a­mic sup­pres­sant (which would abol­ish his mood of rage) or a thal­a­mic stim­u­lant (which would make him irked enough to win the argument).

“If you dial,” Iran said, eyes open and watch­ing, “for greater venom, then I’ll dial the same. I’ll dial the max­i­mum and you’ll see a fight that makes every argu­ment we’ve had up to now seem like noth­ing. Dial and see; just try me.” She rose swiftly, loped to the con­sole of her own mood organ, stood glar­ing at him, waiting.

He sighed, defeated by her threat. “I’ll dial what’s on my sched­ule for today.” Exam­in­ing the sched­ule for Jan­u­ary 3, 1992, he saw that a busi­nesslike pro­fes­sional atti­tude was called for. “If I dial by sched­ule,” he said war­ily, “will you agree to also?” He waited, canny enough not to com­mit him­self until his wife had agreed to fol­low suit.

“My sched­ule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depres­sion,” Iran said.

“What? Why did you sched­ule that?” It defeated the whole pur­pose of the mood organ. “I didn’t even know you could set it for that,” he said gloomily.

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“I was sit­ting here one after­noon,” Iran said, “and nat­u­rally I had turned on Buster Friendly and His Friendly Friends and he was talk­ing about a big news item he’s about to break and then that awful com­mer­cial came on, the one I hate.…At that moment…when I had the T sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the empti­ness intel­lec­tu­ally, I didn’t feel it. My first reac­tion con­sisted of being grate­ful that we could afford a Pen­field mood organ. But then I real­ized how unhealthy it was, sens­ing the absense of life, not just in this build­ing but every­where, and not reacting–do you see? I guess you don’t. But that used to be con­sid­ered a sign of men­tal ill­ness; they called it ‘absence of appro­pri­ate affect.’ So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I exper­i­mented. And I finally found a set­ting for despair.” Her dark, pert face showed sat­is­fac­tion, as if she had achieved some­thing of worth. “So I put it on my sched­ule for twice a month; I think that’s a rea­son­able amount of time to feel hope­less about every­thing, about stay­ing here on Earth after every­body who’s smart has emi­grated, don’t you think?”

“But a mood like that,” Rick said, “you’re apt to stay in it, not dial your way out. Despair like that, about total real­ity, is self-perpetuating.”

“I pro­gram an auto­matic reset­ting for three hours later,” his wife said sleekly. “A 481. Aware­ness of the man­i­fold pos­si­bil­i­ties open to me in the future; new hope that–”

“I know 481,” he inter­rupted. He had dialed out the com­bi­na­tion many times; he relied on it greatly. “Lis­ten,” he said, seat­ing him­self on his bed and tak­ing hold of her hands to draw her down beside him, “even with an auto­matic cut­off it’s dan­ger­ous to undergo a depres­sion, any kind. For­get what you’ve sched­uled and I’ll for­get what I’ve sched­uled; we’ll dial a 104 together and both expe­ri­ence it, and then you stay in it while I reset mine for my usual busi­nesslike atti­tude. That way I’ll want to hop up to the roof and check out the sheep and then head for the office; mean­while I’ll know you’re not sit­ting her brood­ing with no TV.” He released her slim, long fin­gers, passed through the spa­cious apart­ment to the liv­ing room, which smelled faintly of last night’s cig­a­rettes. There he bent to turn on the TV.

From the bed­room Iran’s voice came. “I can’t stand TV before breakfast.”

“Dial 888,” Rick said as the set warmed. “The desire to watch TV, no mat­ter what’s on it.”

“I don’t feel like dial­ing any­thing at all now,” Iran said.

“Then dial 3,” he said.

“I can’t dial a set­ting that stim­u­lates my cere­bral cor­tex into want­ing to dial! If I don’t want to dial, I don’t want to dial that most of all, because then I will want to dial, and want­ing to dial is right now the most alien drive I can imag­ine; I just want to sit here on the bed and stare at the floor.” Her voice had become sharp with over­tones of bleak­ness as her soul con­gealed and she ceased to move, as the instinc­tive, omnipresent film of great weight, of an almost absolute iner­tia, set­tled over her.

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He turned up the TV sound, and the voice of Buster Friendly boomed out and filled the room. “–ho ho, folks. Time now for a brief note on today’s weather. The Mon­goose satel­lite reports that fall­out will be espe­cially pro­nounced toward noon and will then taper off, so all you folks who’ll be ven­tur­ing out–”

Appear­ing beside him, her long night­gown trail­ing wispily, Iran shut off the TV set. “Okay, I give up; I’ll dial. Any­thing you want me to be: ecsta­tic sex­ual bliss–I feel so bad I’ll even endure that. What the hell. What dif­fer­ence does it make?”

“I’ll dial for both of us,” Rick said, and led her back into the bed­room. There, at her con­sole, he dialed 594; pleased acknowl­edg­ment of husband’s supe­rior wis­dom in all mat­ters. On his own con­sole he dialed for a cre­ative and fresh atti­tude toward his job, although this he hardly needed; such was his habit­ual, innate approach with­out recourse to Pen­field arti­fi­cial brain stimulation.

pgs. 1–7

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