The story takes place in 2021, and the planet has been devastated by a war that took place on a gigantic scale. One of the disastrous and destructive effects of the war was the radioactive damage throughout the planet. This causes the animals to be cared for and be treated as a prized commodity, and even serve as a prized symbol of societal hierarchy since there are only a few left. Rick, a bounty hunter, is supposed to “retire”, or kill the androids that illegally come to Earth. He feels that the androids, along with an electric sheep he has, are not capable of empathy. However, he learns that there are some androids who are capable of empathy, as well as some humans who do not have empathy, like when he finds Phil Resch kills simply for fun. Mercerism, which is the major religion of that world, emphasizes all humans to be empathetic to other humans. However, the followers of the religion contradicts themselves since they are selective of who gets to immigrate to Mars. Throughout the story, there are several characters who are rejected from Mars but display a great amount of empathy. Another example is that even though he dislikes his artificial sheep, he realizes feelings towards it. I feel that this novel not only greatly related to his time, which was right after the world war, but also relates to today’s environment, where we have selectivity but need to learn true meaning of empathy.