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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The fol­low­ing are excerpts from The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, Book 1, by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky, the ver­sion trans­lated by Con­stance Garnett:

At the same time, he was all his life one of the most sense­less, fan­tas­ti­cal fel­lows in the whole dis­trict. I repeat, it was not stupiditiy—the major­ity of these fan­tas­ti­cal fel­lows are shrewd and intel­li­gent enough—but just sense­less­ness, and a pecu­liar national form of it.

p 3

I knew a young lady of the last “roman­tic” gen­er­a­tion who after some years of an enig­matic pas­sion for a gen­tle­man, whom she might quite eas­ily have mar­ried at any moment, invented insu­per­a­ble obsta­cles to their union, and ended by throw­ing her­self one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so per­ished, entirely to sat­isfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare’s Ophe­lia. Indeed, if this precipice, a cho­sen and favourite spot of hers, had been less pic­turesque, if there had been a pro­saic flat bank in its place, most likely the sui­cide would never have taken place. This is a fact.… Ade­laida Ivanovna Misuov’s action was sim­i­larly, no doubt, an echo of other people’s ideas, and was due to the irri­ta­tion caused by lack of men­tal free­dom. She wanted, per­haps, to show her fem­i­nine inde­pen­dence, to over­ride class dis­tinc­tions and the despo­tism of her family.

p 3–4

Imme­di­ately Fyo­dor Pavlovitch intro­duced a reg­u­lar harem into the house, and aban­doned him­self to orgies of drunk­en­ness. In the inter­vals he used to drive all over the province, com­plain­ing tear­fully to each and all of Ade­laida Ivanona’s hav­ing left him, going into details too dis­grace­ful for a hus­band to men­tion in regard to his own mar­ried life. What seemed to grat­ify him and flat­ter his self-love most was to play the ridicu­lous part of the injured hus­band, and to parade his woes with embellishments.

p 5

One would think that you’d got a pro­mo­tion, Fyo­dor Pavlovitch, you seem so pleased in spite of your sor­row,” scoffers said to him. Many even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buf­foon, and that it was sim­ply to make it fun­nier that he pre­tended to be unaware of his ludi­crous posi­tion. But, who knows, it may have been sim­plic­ity. At last he suc­ceeded in get­ting on the track of his run­away wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Peters­burg, where she had gone with her divin­ity stu­dent, and where she had thrown her­self into a life of com­plete eman­ci­pa­tion. Fyo­dor Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, mak­ing prepa­ra­tions to go to Peters­burg, with what object he could not him­self have said. He would per­haps have really gone; but hav­ing deter­mined to do so he felt at once enti­tled to for­tify him­self for the jour­ney by another bout of reck­less drink­ing. And just at that time his wife’s fam­ily received the news of her death in Peters­burg. She had died quite sud­denly in a gar­ret, accord­ing to one story, of typhus, or as another ver­sion had it, of star­va­tion. Fyo­dor PAvlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife’s death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shout­ing with joy, rais­ing his hands to Heaven: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy ser­vant depart in peace,” but oth­ers say he wept with­out restraint like a lit­tle child, so much so that peo­ple were sorry for him, in spite of the repul­sion he inspired. It is quite pos­si­ble that both ver­sions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a gen­eral rule, peo­ple, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we sup­pose. And we our­selves are, too.

p 5

He com­pletely aban­doned the child of his mar­riage with Ade­laida Ivanovna, not from mal­ice, nor because of his mat­ri­mo­nial griev­ances, but sim­ply because he for­got him.

p 6

Fyo­dor Pavlovitch was all his life fond of act­ing, of sud­denly play­ing an unex­pected part, some­times with­out any motive for doing so, and even to his own direct dis­ad­van­tage.…

(My ital­ics) p 7

I won’t enlarge upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyo­dor Pavlovitch’s first­born, and must con­fine myself now to the most essen­tial facts about him, with­out which I could not begin my story.

p 7

Though Fyo­dor Pavlovitch was a drunk­ard and a vicious debauchee he never neglected invest­ing his cap­i­tal, and man­aged his busi­ness affairs very suc­cess­fully, though, no doubt, over scrupu­lously. Sofya Ivanovna was the daugh­ter of an obscure dea­con, and was left from child­hood an orphan with­out rela­tions. She grew up in the house of a general’s widow, a wealthy old lady of good posi­tion, who was at once her bene­fac­tress and tor­men­tor. I do not know the details, but I have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gen­tle crea­ture, was once cut down from a hal­ter in which she was hang­ing from a nail in the loft, so ter­ri­ble were her suf­fer­ings from the caprice and ever­last­ing nag­ging of this old woman, who was appar­ently not bad-hearted but had become an insuf­fer­able tyrant through idleness.

p 9

[Alyosha] was sim­ply an early lover of human­ity, and that he adopted the monas­tic life was sim­ply because at that time it struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul strug­gling from the dark­ness of worldly wicked­ness to the light of love. And the rea­son this life struck him in this way was that he found in it at that time, as he thought, an extra­or­di­nary being, our cel­e­brated elder, Zos­sima, to whom he became attached with all the warm first love of his ardent heart. But I do not dis­pute that he was very strange even at that time, and had been so indeed from his cradle.…But he rarely cared to speak of this mem­ory to any one. In his child­hood and youth he was by no means expan­sive, and talked lit­tle indeed, but not from shy­ness or a sullen unso­cia­bil­ity; quite the con­trary, from some­thing dif­fer­ent, from a sort of inner pre­oc­cu­pa­tion entirely per­sonal and uncon­cerned with other peo­ple, but so impor­tant to him that he seemed, as it were, to for­get oth­ers on account of it. But he was fond of peo­ple: he seemed through­out his life to put implicit trust in peo­ple: yet no one ever looked on him as a sim­ple­ton or a naive per­son. There was some­thing about him which made one feel at once (and it was so all his life after­wards) that he did not care to be a judge of others–that he would never take it upon him­self to crit­i­cize and would never con­demn any one for any­thing. He seemed, indeed, to accept every­thing with­out the least con­dem­na­tion though often griev­ing bit­terly: and this was so much so that no one could sur­prise or frighten him even in his ear­li­est youth.

p 15

[Alyosha] had one char­ac­ter­is­tic which made all his schoolfel­lows from the bot­tom class to the top want to mock at him, not from mal­ice but because it amused them. This char­ac­ter­is­tic was a wild fanat­i­cal mod­esty and chastity. He could not bear to hear cer­tain words and cer­tain con­ver­sa­tions about women. There are “cer­tain” words and con­ver­sa­tions unhap­pily impos­si­ble to erad­i­cate in schools. Boys pure in mind and heart, almost chil­dren, are fond of talk­ing in school among them­selves, and even aloud, of things, pic­tures, and images of which even sol­diers would some­times hes­i­tate to speak. More than that, much that sol­diers have no knowl­edge or con­cep­tion of is famil­iar to quite young chil­dren of our intel­lec­tual and higher classes. There is no moral deprav­ity, no real cor­rupt inner cyn­i­cism in it, but there is the appear­ance of it, and it is often looked upon among them as some­thing refined, sub­tle, dar­ing, and wor­thy of imi­ta­tion. See­ing that Alyosha…put his fin­gers in his ears when they talked of “that,” they used some­times to crowd round him, pull his hands away, and shout nas­ti­ness into both ears, while he strug­gled, slipped to the floor, tried to hide him­self with­out utter­ing one word of abuse, endur­ing their insults in silence. But at last they left him alone and gave up taunt­ing him with being a “reg­u­lar girl,” and what’s more they looked upon it with com­pas­sion as a weak­ness. He was always one of the best in the class but was never first.

pg 16–17

Besides, it will be more seemly for you with the harlots…though you’re like an angel, noth­ing touches you. And I dare­say noth­ing will touch you there. That’s why I let you go, because I hope for that. You’ve got all your wits about you. You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again. And I will wait for you. I feel that you’re the only crea­ture in the world who has not con­demned me. My dear boy, I feel it, you know. I can’t help feel­ing it.”

p 21

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The fol­low­ing excerpt is from the remark­able essay The Ser­ial Killer as a Type of Per­son by Mark Seltzer, a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity. (The high­light­ing is my own.)

Obey your thirst!

There is an empty cir­cu­lar­ity in the notion of the kind of per­son called the ser­ial killer lift­ing itself by its own boot­straps: the con­cep­tion that there is noth­ing more to the sub­ject than what he makes of him­self. There is an empty cir­cu­lar­ity, too, in the notion of the social con­struc­tion of the social: the strictly ‘his­tori­cist’ con­cep­tion that there is noth­ing more to the social order than its struc­tur­ing of itself by itself. These two notions are not merely par­al­lel con­struc­tions: they are at once rad­i­cally insep­a­ra­ble and rad­i­cally incom­pat­i­ble. The expe­ri­ence of social con­struc­tion at the level of the subject–to the very extent that it is expe­ri­enced as a social man­date: ‘be your self’–in effect evac­u­ates the sub­ject it man­dates. The law of self-realization is a law that aborts itself. The injunc­tion to real­ize your­self, to desire your­self into being–to enjoy your self–is at the same time imposed as an injunc­tion from with­out. If the for­mula of the first is ‘be your­self,’ the for­mula of the sec­ond is ‘Obey your thirst!’ (Sprite) or ‘Enjoy your symp­tom!’ (Slavoj). ‘Lift­ing one­self up by one’s own boot­straps’ is the logic of the self-made man and the logic of addic­tion both. The thirst of the self-made man to real­ize him­self is at the same time his obe­di­ence to the com­mand: ‘thirst.’ On the addic­tive loop of user and used, substance-abuse and self-abuse, the self-made sub­ject is sub­jected to an end­less drill in self-making that becomes indis­tin­guish­able from a repeated self-evacuation.

Toc­queville antic­i­pated this drill in enjoy­ment of the self-made man (the man who gives birth to him­sef) in the self-legitimated demo­c­ra­tic state (the notion that gives birth to itself) in Democ­racy in America:

The type of oppres­sion which threat­ens democ­racics is dif­fer­ent from any­thing there has ever been in the world before.…It likes to see its cit­i­zens enjoy them­selves, pro­vided they think of noth­ing but this enjoy­ment. It gladly works for their hap­pi­ness but wants to be the sole agent and judge of it. It pro­vides for their secu­rity, fore­sees and sup­plies their neces­si­ties, facil­i­tates their plea­sures, man­ages their prin­ci­pal con­cerns, directs their indus­try, makes rules for their tes­ta­ments, and divides their inher­i­tances. Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trou­ble of think­ing and all the cares of living?

The threat of a total­i­tar­ian con­for­mity of desire and thought in mass cul­ture (oppres­sive enjoy­ment, repres­sive desub­li­ma­tion) has by now become one of the com­mon­places of mass cul­ture (the emperor reveals that he has no clothes — so much for demystification!).

It is pos­si­ble pro­vi­sion­ally to set out a basic impli­ca­tion of this bor­der­ing of the social on the psy­chi­atric, this social­ity bound to pathol­ogy. In the most gen­eral terms, we can detect here one of the con­si­tu­tive ‘psycho-social’ para­doxes of lib­eral soci­ety: a para­dox­i­cal sit­u­at­ed­ness within power (social con­struc­tion) that is at the same time a require­ment of rad­i­cal auton­omy (self-construction). It is the unre­lieved inhab­it­ing of this para­dox that casts the lib­eral sub­ject into fail­ure: ‘the fail­ure to make itself in the con­text of a dis­course in which self-making is assumed, indeed, is its assumed nature.’ This fail­ure inten­si­fies in ‘late mod­ern sec­u­lar soci­ety, in which indi­vid­u­als are buf­feted and con­trolled by global con­fig­u­ra­tions of dis­ci­pli­nary and cap­i­tal­ist power of extra­or­di­nary pro­por­tions, and are at the same time nakedly indi­vid­u­ated, stripped of reprieve from relent­less expo­sure and account­abil­ity for them­selves’ (Bacon: 1995, 67).

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