Philip Dick's 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' is an interesting though complex piece of fiction that criticizes the influx of technology in our world through the use of robots. Androids in this novel are robots that appear like humans but lack the capacity of empathy and hence are not actually humans. They are either enslaved or hunted down for enslavement. Some try to pass as human beings in order to avoid enslavement but aggressively hunted down by bounty hunters like Rick Deckard, the protagonist of the novel.
             The novel's main premise can be described in one single sentence- men are selfish by nature and want to maintain their supremacy on earth. But that is not exactly all. On deeper analysis, we realize that technology is the main crux of the issue. It is technology that is pitting man against robots and at the same time, allowing men to dominate the rest of the species because they are the only ones who can use this technology effectively. But the premise hits again: man is selfish. He is becoming more and more machine-like and lacks basic empathy for other human and other species as well.
             While in the novel it may first appear that man really cares about animals. That should have been a good sign but the reality is that animals are loved not because of how and what they are but actually for what they represent. They are natural creatures and since wants to maintain the natural life force on earth and hence animals are considered sacred. Also it is important to see that the love for animals is not for any individual animal but for animal community on the whole. That makes it clear that animals are considered sacred because man chooses to preserve natural life force.
             Androids on the other hand are mechanical creatures that man abhors. He wants to eliminate their existence from this planet and hence they are aggressively hunted down or enslaved. By the end of the novel, Deckard realizes that he ...