Book club selection (via PJr; session held November 13, 2016).Author is consistently creative, ahead of his time. This book - primarily about exploring the line between humans and high-functioning androids - seems quite timely almost 50 years after being written.
Protagonist is a bounty hunter - paid to "retire" renegade androids who are increasingly difficult to distinguish from humans in post-nuclear war San Francisco and environs. Android manufacturing company based in Seattle (Rachel's company).
Chickenheads - Isadore. Kipple. Earth in decline; efforts to move folks to Mars, including offering a high-end android to each re-settler, delivered on arrival. But Mars apparently no utopia; renegade androids escape from there.
Empathy as a defining human characteristic - efforts to construct empathy-based tests to weed out hidden androids. Reminds of a Turing test.
Quite a few threads that were hard to follow, at least for me - Mercerism; the obsession with animals (real or "electric"); the Penfield device; Buster Friendly; androids establish an alternative police station (but to what end?)
Rachel and the live goat.
Interesting idea - that these androids are built from a cellular material that lasts no more than four years - perhaps that's for the best if androids are prone to becoming unreliable.
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