3.5 stars? I simply have to rate this higher than The Martian. 
 It's such an interesting premise: hunting down androids in a post-apocalyptic world where empathy is of utmost value. For the bounty hunter, plenty of internal and external struggle ensues. At first i thought the book was not very well-written; the story was interesting but the characters were stiff and awkward. But by the end of it, i appreciated the writing style more, for reasons i can't quite define... 
 I guess it just makes sense, kind of, that these people are strange. They're isolated, simply because there aren't many people left on Earth, and oftentimes they've been left behind because they're strange. Their emotions are artificially-induced, dialed in from some machine in their homes. They have to use a sort of virtual reality to remember what it means to empathize with other human beings. It's easier for these people to relate to the cold, calculating androids than it is for them to relate to one another. It's all sort of eerily reminiscent of the way people spend so much of their time with their phones now. I hope we're not headed for a world in which we fall in love with our devices and care nothing for one another. 
 I thought the whole Mercerism sub-plot was weird and interesting. It seems to say something about Jesus and religion, but i'm not quite sure what. Perhaps: even if it's all false, it's still essential. The society's fixation on animals was never quite explained, but i guess it needs no explanation. In a world where animals are rare, they're much more highly valued. They represent empathy; to keep an animal is to display that you care, even if all you do is keep it in a big pen on your roof and gloat about it. Animals are more of a status symbol than something that people actually inherently value, and what an interesting status symbol. The scene where the main character is buying a goat is clearly a reference to the modern method of buying a car. 
 The androids are of course interesting. And the title of the book with its double meaning. Even if the androids lack empathy, don't they still have dreams and fears and self-awareness? Aren't they people? They're like sociopaths, or perhaps psychopaths. In most cases they only killed humans to gain their own freedom from what was basically slavery. Is it right to hunt them down and kill them for that? 
 As is my usual story, i saw this movie years ago and forgot it completely. It will be interesting to re-watch it and see how it compares.