Description

MOST RARE SIGNED BY PHILIP K. DICK: EXCEPTIONALLY SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, DICK’S LANDMARK FUSION OF DETECTIVE AND SCIENCE FICTION GENRES AND THE BASIS OF THE FUTURISTIC NOIR FILM BLADE RUNNER

DICK, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Garden City: Doubleday, 1968. Octavo, original gray cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. 

First edition of one of the most famous and influential of all science fiction books, Dick’s masterful fusion of detective and science fiction genres and the basis of the 1982 Ridley Scott noir film Blade Runner, signed by Dick in red ink. Most exceptionally scarce signed.

“In this tale, which became more widely known after the film, android animals are marketed to help expiate the guilt people experience because real ones have been virtually terminated; simultaneously the protagonist must hunt down androids illegally imported from Mars. In so doing, he learns that the society’s new messiah may also be a fake; and that the landscapes of decay and imposture may in fact only mirror his own condition” (Clute & Nicholls, 329). “The hero, Rick Deckard, is a bounty hunter whose task is to shoot rogue androids… The androids have been manufactured for use on other planets of the solar system, but a few of them have escaped the colony worlds and are illicitly roaming the Earth. It is a decaying, underpopulated Earth of several decades hence: World War Terminus has come and gone, and now almost all animals are extinct, killed by radioactive dust. Most of surviving humanity has migrated off-world, and vast empty apartment blocks clutter the Californian landscape, full of dust and dead television sets and all the entropic detritus” (Pringle 55). Currey, 156.

Book fine; lightest wear to extremities of bright dust jacket with light soiling to white rear panel of dust jacket. A nearly fine copy of this scarce first edition, most exceptionally scarce signed.