<P> These official and authorized sequels were written by Dick's friend K.W. Jeter . They continue the story of Rick Deckard and attempt to reconcile many of the differences between the novel and the 1982 film . </P> <P> Critical reception of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has been overshadowed by the popularity of its 1982 film adaptation, Blade Runner . Of those critics who focus on the novel, several nest it predominantly in the history of Philip K. Dick's body of work . In particular, Dick's 1972 speech "The Human and the Android" is cited in this connection . Jill Galvan calls attention to the correspondence between Dick's portrayal of the narrative's dystopian, polluted, man - made setting and the description Dick gives in his speech of the increasingly artificial and potentially sentient or "quasi-alive" environment of his present . The essential point in Dick's speech, for Galvan, is that "(o) nly by recognizing how (technology) has encroached upon our understanding of' life' can we come to full terms with the technologies we have produced" (414). As a "bildungsroman of the cybernetic age," Galvan maintains, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? follows one person's gradual acceptance of the new reality . Christopher Palmer emphasizes Dick's speech to bring to attention the increasingly dangerous risk of humans becoming "mechanical". "Androids threaten reduction of what makes life valuable, yet promise expansion or redefinition of it, and so do aliens and gods". Gregg Rickman cites another, earlier and lesser known Dick novel that also deals with androids, We Can Build You, asserting that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? can be read as a sequel . </P> <P> In a departure from the tendency among most critics to examine the novel in relation to other texts by Dick, Klaus Benesch examined Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? primarily in connection with Lacan's essay on the mirror stage . There, Lacan claims that the formation and reassurance of the self depends on the construction of an Other through imagery, beginning with a double as seen in the mirror . The androids, Benesch argues, perform a doubling function similar to the mirror image of the self, but they do this on a social, not individual, scale . Therefore, human anxiety about androids expresses uncertainty about human identity and society . Benesch draws on Kathleen Woodward's emphasis on the body to illustrate the shape of human anxiety about an android Other . The debate over distinctions between human and machine, Woodward asserts, usually fail to acknowledge the presence of the body . "If machines are invariably contrived as technological prostheses that are designed to amplify the physical faculties of the body, they are also built, according to this logic, to outdo, to surpass the human in the sphere of physicality altogether". </P> <Ul> <Li> 1968--Nebula Award nominee </Li> <Li> 1998--Locus Poll Award, All - Time Best SF Novel before 1990 (Place: 51) </Li> </Ul>

List of characters in do androids dream of electric sheep