Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Genre 1 key example

Dick's novel uses several scientific "nova, " or innovations or technological development that fundamentally change the rules of the world. Androids and robotic animals, for example, have become extraordinarily lifelike in this world. The innovation of the "empathy machine" allows humans to "fuse" their feelings together, even when they are living far away from each other.  Space travel has also seen major developments, progressing so far as to allow humans to colonize Mars. All this strangeness is fascinating and memorable in and of itself. It would have seemed doubly so to readers in the mid-20th century, when robotics, psychedelics, and space travel were all relatively new and exciting fields of study. But Dick speculates about this world primarily to make a social commentary. Dick asks readers to imagine the human consequences of the way his imagined society uses technology to solve their problems. In fact, the novel can be categorized even more specifically as dystopian science fiction because it is focused on the social harm that might result in a world where technological advancement is prioritized as the answer to everything.

Dick's novel is also part of the postmodernism movement. Following World War II, this literary movement emphasized existentialism, the chaos of the universe, and the subjective nature of meaning. Over the course of the single day the novel depicts, characters lose track of all of the things they know to be true. As their belief systems unravel, they first spiral but then gain a greater appreciation for existence. All they know for sure by the end is that they live in an unpredictable world they will never be able to fully understand.