It’s the year 2019 in Los Angeles. The planet Earth has seen its fauna virtually disappear following overexploitation, pollution, nuclear wars, and man-made climate change.

The population has been encouraged to move to the colonies situated on other planets. Artificial animals and androids have been created to meet their needs. For the later, their organs are manufactured independently using genetic manipulation. They are built in human form and called Replicants. Following a bloody and

inexplicable uprising in a Martian colony, the Replicants are banned from Earth.

Special police units, or Blade Runners, intervene to enforce the law against offenders but the latest android model is difficult to distinguish from humans pushing the Blade Runners to investigate at length, through a test to establish their lack of empathy, before shutting it down.

From fiction to reality, this book looks at “affective computing”, a branch of research in AI which develops systems capable of recognizing, expressing, synthesizing, and copying human emotions. Discover the androids that could one day become our new life companions, eager to satisfy our every wish.