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I have watched different versions the movie and read the book a number of times, and I still can't decide: was Deckard a replicant? I know that he has an emotional reaction to the question of how he feels about killing androids while attached to a Voigt-Kampff machine, but I feel the book is ambiguous about whether or not the Voigt-Kampff tests are even accurate.

My question is: in the original Dick story, were we supposed to believe that Deckard was a replicant?

Gallifreyan
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TML
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5 Answers5

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I believe that the title, while seemingly sort of silly, is a stand in for the real question. Could an android ever experience dreams and emotions the way we do? If they did, what would that mean? Would they really be any different than us? Aren't we just biological machines, a complex chemical reaction, fundamentally no different from a mechanical machine with electric impulses? Dick blurs the line further by making the replicants partially organic.

I think you're supposed to struggle with those questions and believe whatever you want to believe at the end. I doubt Dick even had an opinion on whether Deckard was a replicant.

Matthew Read
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    I struggled with which of these to accept - they're basically the same answer - but in the end I think this one captures the essence a bit more clearly. – TML Aug 11 '11 at 04:23
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    +1. I think you're supposed to finish the book thinking about that question. The answer is not that important in the end. –  Aug 11 '11 at 20:42
  • I think this is true of the movie (Scott thought Deckard was a replicant, while Ford thought he was human, a point of disagreement between the two), but not of the book: in the novel, it's clear Deckard is a human; the androids try and fail to make him think he's an android though. – Andres F. Oct 19 '23 at 15:08
  • Some other comment points out that androids in "Do Androids..." cannot use empathy boxes, like Deckard does, and in fact they cannot feel empathy towards anything (note: in this regard, they are very different to the replicants from Blade Runner). Androids think mercerism is a scam and try to shoot it down with various claims. Deckard clearly feels empathy and experiences mercerism, so he's not an android. – Andres F. Oct 19 '23 at 15:10
  • @AndresF. Accurate for the Nexus-6 androids Deckard is pursuing, yes, but Deckard doesn't have to be a Nexus-6. When he talks to Rachel Rosen, she specifically mentions that the Nexus-7s have modifications for that, and that they have been continuing to iterate until there will be no difference. – Matthew Read Oct 19 '23 at 18:19
  • @MatthewRead yesss, but... aren't the Nexus-7 the next generation? Deckard is older, he's married with a wife (who is not a figment, we witness interactions with her) and has a history. When the other androids trick him into doubting his humanity, it's revealed as a trick. And in any case, like another answer here points out, PKD is on record stating Deckard is human. – Andres F. Oct 19 '23 at 18:27
  • I mean yeah, obviously I was proved incorrect about Dick's opinion, but death of the author and all that. Deckard's wife could just as easily be a replicant, records can be faked, the androids could think he really is human just like everyone else does, etc. etc. I far prefer the reading where it's not known, as it serves Dick's stated question "who is he if there is no real difference?" extremely well. – Matthew Read Oct 20 '23 at 01:10
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Philip K. Dick stated in an interview (see 1) that Dick created Deckard as a human character who is gradually dehumanized through his violence towards replicants.

"The purpose of this story as I saw it was that in his job of hunting and killing these replicants, Deckard becomes progressively dehumanized. At the same time, the replicants are being perceived as becoming more human. Finally, Deckard must question what he is doing, and really what is the essential difference between him and them? And, to take it one step further, who is he if there is no real difference?

In the book, we learn that replicants are becoming more human. This juxtaposition of the arcs of technology and humanity is one of the compelling subtexts which makes the book a modern classic in my opinion.

Valorum
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R. T. Carpenter
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  • If that quote can be directly sourced, then this would be the answer for me. I tried clicking the link to view the quote but I got a certificate error and backed out. – Integration Feb 14 '17 at 15:18
  • @Withywindle it's cited and attributed to PKD in the Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? comic book omnibus, on page 572. – melissa_boiko Aug 09 '17 at 16:53
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    also this academic paper has a direct Dick quote from a making-of: "the theme of the book is that Deckard is dehumanized by tracking down androids". – melissa_boiko Aug 09 '17 at 17:00
  • I remember it being clear that Deckard is not a replicant, which is why I've only upvoted this answer, but I'd have to read it again to be certain. – Todd Wilcox Feb 08 '18 at 14:42
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    This is an excellent answer and spot on. In the novel Deckard is not a replicant. It becomes apparent in the discourse when Deckard is 'arrested' and ends up in the alternate police station (Chap. 10 talking to Garland). I believe there is also a dialogue that infers this between Deckard, Resch, and Luba Luft (Chap. 12). Also, replicants cannot use the 'empathy boxes', and Deckard uses his in the opening of the book (with his wife). – wcullen May 12 '18 at 14:56
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    @Integration I realize it's been 5 years since this discussion, but I finally tracked down the original interview and linked it through the Internet Archive. – TML Feb 15 '22 at 17:21
  • This should be the accepted answer. – Andres F. Oct 19 '23 at 15:11
  • @AndresF. Only the Op can do that (change the accepted) and they've not been active for over a year... – CGCampbell Oct 19 '23 at 16:00
  • @CGCampbell oh, I know. It's just wishful thinking on my part. An expression of support for this answer, in addition to my +1 :) – Andres F. Oct 19 '23 at 18:13
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I haven't read the K. W. Jeter sequels, but I assume this question would be addressed in them. If we're only talking about Dick's novel, though, I don't believe there is an answer. It's deliberately ambiguous to illustrate the lack of distinction between Android and Human. I don't think Dick wanted us to walk away wondering "Was Deckard an android or a human?", but rather "Can we ever really distinguish between the two?" He simply uses Deckard as an example. I don't know about you, but I was emotional about him killing the androids. Does that make me a replicant?

Matthew Read
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    "If we're only talking about Dick's novel though, I don't believe there is an answer. It's deliberately ambiguous to illustrate the lack of disticintion between android and Human." - my question very much was about Dick's novel alone, so I think this is a great answer. As for you being a replicant, I have a few more questions that will help us determine that... ;) – TML Aug 11 '11 at 04:19
  • I don't remember the question being answered in Bladerunner 2 but then it was so bad I've mostly blocked out the memory of it. I certainly couldn't stomach the idea of reading any further. – Mark Booth May 03 '12 at 23:44
  • "Bladerunner 2" -- that's a thing??! Oy. But they announced Bladerunner 2049 recently so I guess it was gonna happen either way. – jcollum Oct 06 '16 at 23:34
  • While the novel has a degree of ambiguity, it's not about Deckard. It's about a fellow android hunter (I forget his name) who questions his humanity and believes he's an android due to his lack of emotions. Deckard, however, is empathetic and can use mercerism's "empathy boxes", which androids cannot -- he's definitely human in the novel. The movie better introduces this ambiguity, but it's not in the novel. – Andres F. Oct 19 '23 at 15:13
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I thought the Dick novel was absolutely clear that Deckard was not an android. No android in the book shows any sign of empathy, but Deckard does; the androids hate and mock Mercerism (the religion of empathy with the persecuted Mercer) - but Deckard is capable of empathizing with Mercer. Some humans in the novel seem to have lost their empathy and become no better than the androids (and the androids work to encourage this), but none of the androids show any sign of growth in the novel. The movie of course reverses all this (both the novel and the movie ask what the difference is between android and human, but in the book the question is "Can humans become as bad as androids?" (Yes), while in the movie the question is "Can androids become as good as (some) humans? (also yes).

Andrew
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    Yes, the novel has no ambiguity. There's a single character who comes to believe he may be an android: a fellow bounty hunter who's so cruel and unempathetic he doubts his humanity (turns out he's just a cruel human). Deckard is always clearly human, except for that bit where the androids try to trick him. – Andres F. Oct 19 '23 at 15:14
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I believe that Rick Deckard is an android. At the alternate police station, while he and Garland are waiting for the other bounty hunter, Resch, to get back with testing equipment, Garland tells Rick that Resch is an android. Resch returns and kills Garland, and the following exchange takes place:

"What did it say to you while I was gone?"

"That he--it--was an android. And you--" Rick broke off, the conduits of his brain humming, calculating, and selecting; he altered what he had started to say. "--would detect it," he finished. "In a few more minutes."

Later, when Rick tests Resch, the reader is not told the result. Rick continues to believe that he himself is human; however, neurons don't hum. They have pathways, not conduits. Moreover, the novel never establishes any difference between androids and human beings. What it does do is confirm the truth of Buddhism, which is that the ego, the "I" does not have an independent objective existence, but is dependent upon something which is its own cause.

"Do Androids Dream" is like the Anatma Lakshana Sutra turned into a paperback detective novel. The title of the sutra means "Discourse on the Characteristics of That Which is Not Self." Thus we learn that form, feelings, relative knowledge, subconsciously willing things to happen, and the resultant awareness of thoughts, are not what makes up Self, or God, although none of these things would exist without Self. Dick even gives androids intuition, an attribute of Self. Therefore, Philip Dick appears to be attempting (crudely) to say that humans believe themselves to possess attributes that the entities they build can never possess--some of which are ego and some of which are Self. However, the five attributes of ego are impermanent and changing, and therefore do not exist in humans or their creations, while the attributes of Self are permanent and immutable in both humans and their creations. And this is because that which creates a human being also creates whatever the human imagines it creates.

"Mahamati, it is like Pisaca, who by means of his magic makes a corpse or a machine-man dance with life though it has no power of its own: the ignorant cling to the non-existent, imagining it to have the power of movement." The Lankavatara Sutra

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    Note that the androids are not mechanical; they are biologically close enough to human that a microscopic analysis is required to definitively identify them. Thus any reference to mechanical/electronic thinking is metaphorical, in the same way that we might speak of someone thinking so hard we can hear the gears turning. – DavidW Mar 26 '20 at 02:58
  • Good point. I think the problem lies with the author. Although the concept is good, the execution is poor. Some things are explained as if it were a children's story and other things are not explained--such as whether Resch is an android and whether there were more than eight androids on Earth, as the scene at the police station implies. If Dick had developed this idea of androids replacing humans on Earth, had given them a longer life span and the ability to reproduce, it would have been a better novel. Instead, he reverted to the "humans are superior and androids are evil" theme at the end. –  Mar 27 '20 at 14:34
  • Deckard can feel empathy and androids cannot; I think that settles the question. What's confusing is that people conflate this with Blade Runner the movie, where replicants can quite obviously feel emotions. The themes of novel and movie do not match perfectly. – Andres F. Oct 19 '23 at 15:16