If Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? were written in 2026, it would be set in 2050.
The short answer
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published in 1968 and set 24 years ahead, in 1992. Written in 2026 instead, the same reach lands in 2050. Editions published after the 1982 film carry a different year, because the text was altered to sit closer to it.
The arithmetic
What year would Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? be set in if it were made in 2026?
When it was made
If it were made in 2026
Sources disagree: Two years have a claim here, and the difference is an edit rather than a dispute. The novel as published says 1992. When the film tie-in edition appeared in 1982, Cornell's exhibit records that "the text of the novel was also altered to change the date of the setting from 1992 to 2021, closer to the film's stated date", and the 1996 trade paperback kept the substitution. This page anchors to the year the author wrote and carries the publisher's as a second date.
- Released
- 1968
- Originally set in
- 1992
- The gap
- 24 years
- Recalculated for 2026
- 2050
Also in this one
The other dates in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The year the publisher substituted
20212079
53 years after release. exhibits.library.cornell.edu, en.wikipedia.org
Verified, sourced
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, in 7 facts
The date is in the novel's first paragraph of scene-setting: in 1992, after a global war has left the atmosphere highly radioactive, most animal species are endangered or extinct. Source
The 1982 tie-in edition changed that date to 2021 to sit closer to the film's, and the 1996 trade paperback maintained the alteration. Source
The book was also renamed for the film. Later printings appeared as "Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", and some simply as "Blade Runner". Source
Doubleday published it in hardcover in 1968, which Cornell reads as a measure of the respect Dick's work had accumulated through the decade. Source
The plot runs over the days immediately after World War Terminus, and turns on six escaped Nexus-6 androids who have come back from Mars. Source
The religion of the book is built on a man named Mercer, a martyr figure shown as being continuously assailed by falling rocks. Source
It became the 1982 film Blade Runner, and elements of it were used again in the 2017 sequel, Blade Runner 2049. Source
The point
What the shift reveals
This is the only work here whose year was changed by somebody other than its author.
Dick wrote 1992, a date 24 years ahead of a novel published in 1968 — near enough that the radioactive dust and the empty zoos read as a warning about the next war rather than a distant one. Then the film arrived, set later, and the tie-in edition rewrote the text so the two would not embarrass each other on a shelf.
That edit is this site’s method, performed badly. Moving a date to keep a story plausible is exactly what recalculating a gap does — except that a gap keeps the distance the author chose and moves the window, while the tie-in kept 1968 and stretched the distance to fit a film. Apply Dick’s own reach from 2026 and you get 2050; apply the publisher’s and you get a different year for the same book, which is a quick way of telling which of the two was doing arithmetic and which was doing marketing.
Asked and answered
Questions people ask
- What year is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? set in?
- 1992 as Dick published it, 24 years after the book came out. Editions from the 1982 film tie-in onwards say 2021 instead.
- Why do different editions give different years?
- The text was altered for the Blade Runner tie-in so that the novel's date would sit closer to the film's. The change was never reversed in the paperbacks that followed.
- What year would the novel be set in if it were written in 2026?
- 2050, using the 24 years gap Dick chose. The publisher's revised date gives a different answer for the same book, which is shown alongside it on this page.
- Is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the same story as Blade Runner?
- It is the source. The 1982 film changed a great deal, and the novel's electric animals and its religion of shared suffering are among the things it left out.
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