Welcome to the first read-along companion essay for Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This essay will cover the main philosophical themes from chapters 1 - 7.

Here’s the full read-along schedule:

• Essay 1 on Nov. 21st - chs. 1 - 7

• Essay 2 on Nov. 28th - chs. 8 - 14

• Essay 3 Dec. 5th - chs. 15 - end

• Substack Live Book Club conversation December 12th

I’m flipping the read-alongs on their head starting with this book. The philosophical companion essays will be for paid subscribers and the Book Club calls—where I discuss the book and my philosophical analysis—will be live here on Substack. I think this is better for paid subscribers who want the most value for their financial support, and best for my free subscribers who may not be as invested in reading all the essays but would tune in to a live discussion of the book or would listen back to a recording of it. I think I’ve had this backwards during my previous read-alongs, so we’ll see if this is more desirable.

If you want to read my philosophical companion essays for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, as well as the back catalog of companion essays for our previous read-alogns, then please do upgrade to a paid subscription and help support this sort of public philosophy.

Here are the main philosophical themes I want to comment on:

• Mood Organs and Stoicism

• Creation Care and Fur Babies

• The Jesus-Sysiphus Empathy Religion

• Organic… Androids??

• Human Uniqueness In Empathy or Reason?

• Entropy as the Great Enemy

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It Really Sets the Mood

Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who finds renegade androids—andys—and decommissions them. He’s a ‘Blade Runner’ if you’ve seen the movies based on this book, but you won’t find that line in the book.

Deckard likes his job, but