Technology & AI Book Club - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Book club presentation and discussion of novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? with Professor Jeremy Rosen
About this Event
Technology & AI Book Club – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Overview –
A masterpiece ahead of its time, a prescient rendering of a dark future, and the inspiration for the blockbuster film Blade Runner: By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies build incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and “retire” them. But when cornered, androids fight back—with lethal force.
Schedule of Events
Introduction of Professor Jeremy Rosen, Department of English

Introduction of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and brief reading of book excerpt

General Discussion about book themes and observations

Breakout rooms to discuss book

Reconvene in large group for response to book club comments and general observations

Faculty Bio
Jeremy Rosen is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Utah. His first book, Minor Characters Have Their Day: Genre and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace, was published as part of Columbia’s “Literature Now” series in 2016. His current project “Genre Bending” considers the adoption of forms of popular genre fiction by acclaimed writers of literary fiction. Many writers of “serious” literary fiction in the contemporary moment, for example, have begun to adopt science fiction frameworks and explore dystopian futures. These are genres that had, for much of the twentieth century, been considered popular, “low-brow” forms—and thus their use demonstrates a major reorganization of literary and cultural hierarchies in the new millennium. Rosen teaches post-World War II U.S. and global fiction, with courses on genres like science fiction, detective fiction, climate fiction or “cli-fi,” as well as other timely topics like “Diversity in the Postwar Novel,” “Global/Transnational Literature: Contemporary Fiction of Immigration and Refugees,” and “Contemporary Literature and the Business of Books.”