Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
HarperCollins (June 2026)
Reviewed by Briana Morgan
Imagine Weekend at Bernie’s, but with a jaded, aimless gamer and AI thrown into the mix. That’s what you get with Paul Tremblay’s latest release, Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep. In an obvious reference to Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Tremblay departs from his usual style to an ambitious, darkly funny commentary on consciousness and human autonomy.
Julia Flang has managed to eke out a living as a professional gamer. She lives with her uncle and has no real goals for her life. So, when Julia’s estranged CEO mother offers her the payday of a lifetime, it’s a deal she can’t refuse. The only problem? The company wants Julia to use a device to make a locked-in, brain-dead man move from one place to another. In Julia’s own words, thick with disbelief: “You want me to remote control this dead dude across the country?”
What follows is a genre-bending romp that strays far from Tremblay’s other, more supernatural works of fiction. It presents a hero’s journey in which the hero is already dead—yet you still can’t help rooting for him and for Julia. Told in alternating points of view (Julia’s and the dead man’s, dubbed “Bernie”), Tremblay presents us with a compelling argument for the persistence of human consciousness. What makes a human human, and at what point does someone really cease to exist?
The Bernie chapters, told in second-person point of view, were difficult to get through. I had a tough time grasping what was happening in them because they are deliberately ambiguous, reflecting Bernie’s state of awareness. Although I much preferred Julia’s parts of the book, I can understand and appreciate what Tremblay was trying to accomplish overall. For a wry, critical take on the future of artificial intelligence, I definitely recommend Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep.
